There are a few distros that do reject all AI code, which you can find in these two lists:

https://noai.starlightnet.work/list.html

https://codeberg.org/ethical-foss/open-slopware#linux-based (under the 'Alternative Linux-based operating systems' section).

while still promoting copyright for copyleft’s sake.

What the hell.

Copyleft means "the absence of copyright", not "copyright wielded by radlibs".

That all is good and lovely. My point is that this is a side benefit of having an awesome community and most people when given the choice will help someone rather than gatekeep.

The main purpose of the license is exactly the one that is forcing facebook to contribute back to the kernel, because they want the enourmous firepower of all other competitors work, and would like that their own is easy to keep with future upgrades, so they contribute not only because they are forced, but because tit is the most efficient way for them to get what modifications they need integrated properly. 40 years of this gave us the current kernel.

So if ai tools help this process they will be used, regardless of how they work morally. Because most contributors to the code are developers payed by corporations.

The thing is, if all other things remain the same, an absence of copyright will also be used by the wealthy and powerful to further enrich and empower themselves and as a tool of oppression.

From the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition:

#34 War is good for business.

#35 Peace is good for business.

You cannot have internally consistent, principled view on copyright without also having a compatible view on the economy. And even then, the economy needs to come first; you cannot start destroying load-bearing pillars, no matter how ugly, without first getting everyone out of the house.

The tool in itself can really be usefull when well used. Many people use it and get nice results.

The way I see it, there are two kinds of people: those to whom AI is utterly useless because it just ends up taking more time and have them burn through their cognitive endurance faster, and those to whom it would be irresponsible to let them use it, because it would prevent them from finding better solutions for the busywork they're letting the AI do, and they just end up creating a lot of needless maintenance overhead.

But more importantly, being "useful" to certain individuals is not the same as being good for society. Which brings us back to it undermining licenses like the GPL, which would further enrich and empower the already advantaged.

Also, I can’t find any example in history of a technology that was successfully banned despite being usefull.

CFCs? Asbestos? The bans on them aren't perfectly enforced, but nevertheless, the hole in the ozone layer is shrinking and the number of people dying of asbestos-related lung cancer is reducing, so they do have value.

The strict “no-AI” movement has already lost its battle

Even if it were true, that would be no reason to stop trying or to stop saying the truth: No matter useful you experience it as being, you are causing harm. To yourself, to the field, to society.

You do realise that even if copyright were abolished, large, powerful corporations would continue to exist and even manage to use the absence of copyright to their advantage?

Without the GPL being enforced, a company like Microsoft could finally start digging a moat around Linux without constraints.

Words have different usages among different groups of people. Wikipedia seems to support my use: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyleft

No. It’s not practical.

No matter how you feel about ai or how you think it is wrong, the increased tempo of bug fixes and security patches necessitates either manpower beyond what is feasible for volunteer projects or the use of ai tools.

It’s an arms race and you can’t opt out without just missing the patch schedule.

TIL radlibs' holy scripture smears copyleft. The page reads like it was written by a bourgie copyright advocate.

I should have known, radlibs' holy scripture was founded by ancaps after all.

It was a successful/cheap way of attracting views/likes, that also increased ltt's screwdriver sales. It was transparent, and lacked integrity. The screwdriver itself was just a lightly reworked screwdriver form a different brand, with ltt branding, and a $69 price tag. Tools for fools.

Project Farm did it worse (and more successfully), he reached a result that didn't place the ltt screwdriver in 1st place, so he removed one of his own criteria to change the final ranking... and was applauded for doing so.

You can call it "the truth", but I will call it "the dogma".

"Copyright" was made to empower and protect large corpos like microsoft.

If you think copyright "protects" linux in any way, you're a fool.

thanks, TrollAccount69, that's genuinely what I thought too!

Also fuck_ai@lemmy.world

and antiaialliance@lemmy.blahaj.zone (maybe ignore this one though)

How about posting alongside a… friend?

Didn't every single option in that 'vote' include using ai though?

And didn't they all seem like very deliberately long winded options, designed knowing that the majority of users would only read the titles?

The majority of governments are at least partially at the mercy of the usa government in this respect though, easily one of the most absurd, and corrupt governments on the planet.

That's many new words for me, seems some groups of people also have no usage of words that others use!

I value software freedom; basically being in control of your own computing. I dislike others taking my code and then denying their users the same freedoms they enjoyed. If not for that I could do without most of Copyright as it is today.

Yeah the Debian Project's position makes a lot of sense to me. They're basically saying that they won't be wasting a bunch of resources trying to seek out LLM generated code and purge it and will instead just focus on making sure ALL the code is up to their quality standards. This will likely mean they spend a lot of time sifting out slop anyway, and will allow them to keep just focusing on making the project do what it's always done. Ship a stable, usable, and free distro.

Sorry to bring this into the Linux discussion but OpenBSD is still here. even if the code were AI-generated it would have to go into the meat grinder of style, logic, and cleanliness that all human code goes through to get into release.

Maybe it's time to consider your switch?

i love your mailing list, i learn so much about literally everything every single day from misc@

You don't get what copyright is at all. The bourgie propaganda seems to have convinced you that "copyright protects you from copyright and if it weren't there nothing would protect you from copyright"

For some people, it's easier to imagine the end of the world, than to imagine the end of capitalism the copyright system.

Aye, I could do that

100%.

Some of us learned how to code in the first place, and didn't write overly complicated spaghetti code full of vulnerabilities for the AI to find.

Yeah, all the FOSS communities have been starving for labor since they started. Likely the best we could hope for is that the true experts at the top are maintaining a critical eye on what makes it in.

Plus NetBSD has Anti AI contributor policy these two are safe haven for people that don't want AI. Also Ironclad OS GPLv3 licensed also available for anyone wants to.

Is most of the training data for popular LLM tools stolen? Yes, but the algorithms are not so from a theoretical perspective there's nothing inherently wrong with developers using AI (which itself is a broad term covering frontier models to simple neural net classifiers) but it's a matter of their tools which afaik is the responsibility of the developer. (Ex. Devs aren't banned from using VS Code even though Microsoft is not a good company) (Ex. Dont upload user PII to online tools just to convert a pdf you're responsible if they steal user data)

So really responsible AI means developers accept liability for any theft or plagarism these tools commit, just as they would if they plagarized code themselves which is less problematic for developers than introducing precedent for restricting developer tooling.

In theory you could revert the commits that are labelled AI-generated but given the scale and application of LLMs that's a lot of code to rewrite that was already reviewed by maintainers for a lot of important processes and will have likely undergone far less scrutiny and correctness tests. Until AI companies are held responsible for training data that's stolen and their generated outputs are held to legally be plagarism there is negative incentive to rewrite ai-generated code.

Unless you literally programmed every component yourself, you can't get away from some level of LLM involvement, even if the distro itself bans it. There is no 100% certain way to check code for LLM use. So if a developer doesn't disclose it, and the maintainers accept the code, it's in the official codebase now.

There's a deeper problem though, which is a problem of demarcation. What counts as an "AI contribution" to you? Obviously vibe-coding is. But what about more subtle uses?

What if a developer uses an LLM to read the code and suggest a way to make a certain contribution, but it never actually generates any code, the developer implements the LLM's suggestion completely by hand. Does that count?

What about if a developer hand writes 95% of the code themselves, but that last 5% they aren't as confident in, so they have the LLM generate it. Does that count?

What if an extremely experienced developer uses an LLM to generate 100% of the code, but spends hours going over every single line making sure it is correct and making little tweaks before submitting the code?

What if a developer writes the initial code 100% by hand, and only uses an LLM to go through and optimize the formatting and performance before submitting it?

What if a developer writes 100% of the code by hand, but uses an LLM to generate a bunch of unit tests and documentation?

These are just some of the ways that LLMs can be involved in the process of software development, and most of these wouldn't have any real chance of being caught by a maintainer doing some sort of scan to detect LLM usage.

I'm not saying these uses are or aren't justifiable/acceptable, but my point is it's often not clear what people consider to be "over the line". Almost no experienced devs in the FOSS world are advocating for the 100% vibe-code/token-maxing approach. But lots of them are comfortable with using LLMs in similar ways to what I listed earlier.

The tough truth is that you're almost certainly already using software that has LLM involvement at some level. Short of going full Amish mode, or using completely pre-LLM software in some kind of air gapped setup, you're not going to be able to avoid it.

NetBSD! I am currently learning UVM and it's really impressive to a memory newbie

I think you can see large Linux distributions like a supermarket. In a supermarket, you can find junk food, booze, and pringles, or bio fruits and vegetables which you prepare yourself. Of course there are differences between what different markets offer, but what ultimately matters is what you chose to buy.

Distributions do have mostly influence over their internal build tools, packaging, infrastructural decisions like when to adopt Wayland or the choice of init system. They are unlikely to reject security fixes in the kernel or in a browser just because these contain AI-assisted bug fixes. They do not have real control over upstream development practices.

The above might change if security gets affected by AI slop. For example, Debian is used a lot as a server distribution and security matters a lot. So, it is unlikely to compromise on that.

One can use smaller, more minimalist distributions, or alternatively make minimalist choices in ones own package selection. Or use e.g. not vim but the ai free fork of vim.

One distribution which stands out in its philosophy is Guix. It is entirely reproducible and stresses that anyone can built it from reviewable source code. This is so important that non-free firmwares are rejected (which gets them a lot of hate and negative astroturfing). That gives a lot of transparency and a solid base for trust.

Now, accepting vibecoded, unreviewable packages would make the whole buildable-from-source aspect moot, so I guess they are unlikely to accept slop packages.

It's been ages since i saw the video but didn't Jeff bring that up? He said shivering along the lines of that the ltt screwdriver was good but it might not be that good given it's price and the one it borrowed it's design from being cheaper and probably more bang for your buck.

I might be misremembering though, it wouldn't be the first time.

Btw, today I tried once again to install Void and successfully installed it on my computer. With 5hrs + concentrated setup, I installed graphic drivers, power management tools, swap and app armor on the system.

Don't know how the experience will be, but this time, with a successful installation, I feel much more satisfied than building arch.

People sue companies that take our code and redistribute it while denying their users the freedoms we indended for them (via the software license). We call it GPL enforcement, or copyleft license enforcement.
https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/oct/01/compliance-principles/

I heard that OpenBSD is not so friendly enough to daily drive as a primary operating system. Are you using it?

Can you share your experience with OpenBSD please?

It doesn't matter what the reason for its creation is, you can make similar arguments about laws against assault and murder or the right to vote, what matters is what it's doing in the current legal situation.

If you think that the end of copyright will suddenly render corporations powerless, you are beyond naive. Some will fail to adapt, undoubtedly, but many will not just adapt, they'll be able to take full advantage of this new situation. Copyright isn't the only mechanism they can dig a moat with, and as long as the economic incentives remain what they are, they will find a way and be no less exploitative. Meanwhile, the individual creator or indeed projects like Linux will lose what little protections they have and be completely at the mercy of these monsters. Forget exploitative contracts, they can just exploit you without one!

A better world without copyright is possible, it just doesn't look exactly like this world, except without copyright. The abolishment of copyright is not an ideal, it's a means to an end. But for those means to lead to a good end, how and when it happens matters. To cheer on a development because it nominally achieves what you believe is needed to lead to your ideal outcome, even when the way it happens would lead to an outcome that is in direct opposition of the ideals that lead to that belief in the first place, is a sign you've stopped thinking.

The linux kernel is compromised. Lets use NetBSD!

It only appears dogmatic to someone under the mistaken impression that technologies are value-neutral. Make no mistake: even if every generative AI model were open-source and you could run on your own hardware, it would still be a technology that empowers the already advantaged far more than anyone else.

You have to format communities like this to get a link that gets you there on your local instance:

• !fuck_ai@lemmy.world
• !antiai@lemmy.ml
• !AntiAI@lemmy.blahaj.zone

I think I get what you're saying. That is the purpose of the license text. I mean not just companies, everyone needs to abide by the rules. But yeah, that's basically what that text does.

What I'm trying to say is: In my experience that's not all there is to Free Software. I mean Linux famously started out "Just for Fun" and under a different (more restrictive) license. And it took a while before it got corporate attention. Before that it was used by individuals for their own individual benefit. And it still does both as of today.

And I tend to see that a lot. Software like the software I was talking about and a lot of stuff on my computer was started by individuals. They had an itch to scratch or whatever and just put it out there. Lots of projects I use don't see any contributions by (other) companies and they don't seem to care. They're fine. There's quite some nice large/high-profile projects out there which work the way you said. And that's exactly how it should be like.

Guess there's just a lot of reasons to publish Free Software. Some do it for profit. Some do it by themselves or in a small team. Some gets used by companies and companies contribute back. Some is done by students to learn, some because someone needed something to get a job done in their life and they're a nice person... I also like the (A)GPL. I don't expect my stuff to be picked up by anyone and that's not why I write software as a hobby. But uploading it is mainly a gift to the world. Not for for-profit companies to capitalize on my work. That's why I do copyleft.

So I think when I look at software like the one I mentioned, or the platform we're currently using: Getting contributions back (by large corporations) might not be what the developers had in mind at all. It is however the purpose of the license text in the repository. That's correct.

And regarding the AI tools: Yeah, I don't think that's noteworthy. AI is here to stay. It's being used as of today and will be used in the future, the world doesn't stop or turn back.

Pour yourself a cup of coffee.

IN GENERAL:
You will encounter much more friction in dealing with certain day to day tasks (until you configure everything) but unlike Linux you will find that the system is much easier to understand and therefore the fixes "stick" in your head a bit easier.

Overall, Linux is like going on a pleasant hike that has occasional 120° cliff faces you need to climb. OpenBSD is like hiking a mountain where you are at a consistent 45° angle. You'll face challenges but the resolutions are understandable and internally consistent with each other, and you will find you're own understanding of the system improves much more consistently through use.

USER EXPERIENCE:
Desktop:
You will be using X11 for the forseable future, particularly OpenBSD's security oriented fork of Xorg. For the most part any knowledge of setting up an Xorg desktop will transfer with little issue and the applications one would expect to see in such a desktop are present. OpenBSD comes with a few built in window managers which all ere on the "classic" side of the house. Most notably is cwm (Calm Window Manager) which is somewhat inspired by plan9's Rio.

Wayland is still experimental but there has been a good deal of progress here, DWL is at a point where it "mostly works" though it is far off from being the default. It is important to note that "being the default" actually means something in this space. The OpenBSD developers pride themselves on having and extremely secure and well maintained "base system" so the OS and it's surrounding ecosystem encourages users to not deviate from defaults as much as possible. That being said Wayland will likely, eventually, become the default.

Applications:
The ports tree is less comprehensive than FreeBSD and certainly less than Linux but there is a surprising amount of less commonly used software in there. Case in point, Librewolf is in the ports tree as of 8.0 current. For the most part you will find the tools you need with little issue though; Krita, Kicad, Emacs, etc. There is generally a tool to match your need, though you may need to adapt your workflow to the OS from time to time.

System Administration:
This is where she really shines. OpenBSD is understandable; it presents a clean and comprehensible computing experience that invites you to fully grasp how your operating system works. Unlike Linux, which has to cater to a wide variety of use cases, OpenBSD's tooling is simple and focused on a few specific tasks. In general OpenBSD leans heavily on being a UNIX-like and as a result understanding of Unix is directly transferrable to understanding of OpenBSD.

That being said, OpenBSD also suffers somewhat from being tied closely to its Unix roots so certain aspects of the base system can seem a bit "dated". A few notable examples being limits on shared memory and concurrent processes being low by default and the default partitioning scheme not fully utilizing very large SSDs. Important to note here; all of these can be easily configured so it's not that much of a headache.

Another area where OpenBSD is a bit behind, though it has not negatively impacted me, is its file system. FFS is serviceable but it is not a featureful or performant as the "cool kids" of FreeBSD and Linux (ZFS, btrfs). This is being remediated though (see below).

SECURITY:
OpenBSD doesn't have namespace or chroot based process isolation the way Linux or FreeBSD does. Instead it uses a novel approach in the form of two simple syscalls, pledge and unveil.

Pledge is used to limit the specific syscalls a process is allowed to make and when, unveil limits the portions of the file system that are accessible to the process.

Despite seeming less powerful than things like a Linux container these two primitives have proven to be remarkably capable of isolating and securing software used in OpenBSD.

That being said they do take some getting used to and can create certain headaches if you are not familiar. In general, whenever you download a package there will be a message about a new file in /use/local/doc/pkg-readme/; read it.

THE FUTURE:
OpenBSD's development is best described as communal. Users are somewhat tacitly expected to contribute in some way (bug reports, write ups, etc). Personally I like this as it creates a more tight knit and supportive community.

As a direct result of this, and the simplicity/understandability of the system there is a lot of "low hanging fruit" being attacked right now. As mentioned above Wayland is close to being stable and one of the developers for 9front (Ori Bernstein) is working on porting GEFS (the Good Enough File System) to OpenBSD which should bring OpenBSD much closer in performance to its peers in terms of file system. Vmm (the native hypervisor) just got multi-vcpu support in 8.0 and there are a slew of other minor improvements that are accruing.

THE COMMUNITY:
The most concise way I can describe the OpenBSD community is "they respect your intelligence." It is expected that you have read the man-pages and readmes for the software you are using, it's expected you have an understanding of the guts of the system. This can seem gatekeepy or a bit conceited but allow me to present a counter argument. They don't think you're an idiot by default.

The community, as a result of its proximity to other areas in the "indie" computing scene, tends to carry a certain set of cultural markers. There is a lot of cross pollination from the 9front and Suckless communities and as a result you'll interact more with that computing philosophy. In general the community appreciates simplicity, comprehensibility, and hackability.

CONCLUSION:
It is fun, satisfying, comfy and, most importantly, AI free. Learning how the system works feels good partly because the barrier to learning the system and contributing to it is actually much lower than in other systems. I have come to love it, principally, because it has a certain degree of "humanity" that makes it a joy to use.

You may have me mistaken with someone else haha. That being said maybe I should start one lol

I hope this whole thing makes hurd grow.

Are Anti-AI Linux distributions practical?

No, because there's no such thing as "AI". It's irrational to try to remove something that doesn't exist. People will continue using computers to compute regardless.

On the other hand I don't think developers should accept generated slop. I guess that's what "responsible" means.

What if someone does a copy/paste of a code snippet from a google search and then modified it for their own purposes?

According to the grifters, this is "AI" but it's not and nobody cares. There is no boundary for something that doesn't exist ("AI"). That's fundamental to the grift.

Even if you're a genious coder, you'll still have vulnerabilities in your dependencies.

!the_big_lai@lemmy.dbzer0.com

I think my hardware situation is simpler (iGPU). May be why I haven’t had many issues. There is a derivative called Odyssey Linux that makes Void easier. It is very new with a very small community at the moment but I’ve tried it and it makes many things easier.

Hurd's tAInted too :/