Aug 17, 2026, 4:16 PMp.s. Wondering if the whole concept of FOSS needs to be redefined to include a rule about not using LLMs. It's difficult to see how FOSS is meaningfully free or libre if its maintenance depends on planet-destroying plagiarism services controlled by giant corporations.
Aug 17, 2026, 4:21 PM@homegrown FOSH? Free Open Source and Human-made/Hand-coded.
Aug 17, 2026, 4:41 PMI like it in principle, but maybe sounds a bit too much like FASH? ☹️
Aug 17, 2026, 4:45 PM@homegrown Oh yes indeed maybe 😑
my position is that it's been irredeemably infested & that work needs to go under a different banner
perhaps "post-open source"
perhaps "ethical source"
perhaps "permacomputing"
perhaps some combination of the above, and some new things
(there have been bright spots here & there, and Debian may as yet surprise me)
Aug 17, 2026, 4:35 PM@homegrown I think adding something in about "hand-coded" is accepting the framing of the corporations pushing this stuff. Claiming other people's work as your own with no credit given is already against the FOSS ethos. It doesn't matter if you use a neural network to shuffle the chairs around a bit first.
@homegrown Eh, just because LLMs are involved in a project's development at some point, it doesn't mean that continued use of LLMs is required to maintain the project. There are many projects that have accepted LLM contributions, or in some (fewer) cases have been entirely vibe coded, but would be completely fine from a future maintenance perspective if LLMs suddenly stopped working or became available.
The only ways I can think of in which LLM use would make a project non-FOSS are if the project actually includes an LLM - that is, the model weights are part of the "source code" - or if LLM output is held to be under copyright protection as a derivative work of its training data, but that seems unlikely. Maybe there are some other cases I'm missing, but hopefully only niche ones.
So, my take on it would be, if you want to avoid promoting projects that have used LLMs in their development, that's totally fine, but in that case you'd probably be limiting yourself to a stricter criterion than just FOSS, and it would be only fair to your audience to be clear about that.
Aug 17, 2026, 5:29 PMWhat happens when LLM use displaces and deskills contributors? This is an issue that pilots noticed, to the point where they had to bring in mandatory manual flying periods to prevent deskilling due to automation (and autopilot is a lot more reliable than LLMs).
Also, regardless of skills etc, LLMs are unethical to use due to their planet-burning and plagiarised nature. This alone would make me suspicious of projects that use them, as they seem to accept unethical contributions.
@homegrown I don't think any of that changes my argument. Like, it's far from a given that LLM use in a project is going to displace and de-skill contributors. And even if it does, de-skilling often has as much or more to do with how the contributors choose to use LLMs than anything done at the project level. That is to say, people can use LLMs in a careful way that improves their coding ability, or in a thoughtless way that replaces it. (I have personal experience with both 😅) Both extremes and everything in between get lumped under the heading of "allows LLMs", but it doesn't necessarily make sense to treat them all identically. And only a small fraction of this LLM use is going to clash with the definition of FOSS. Like, even if LLM use is displacing and de-skilling contributors, there's a big difference between that and making it so a project is fundamentally unmaintainable without LLMs.
And if you want to avoid promoting projects that use LLMs because of the environmental impacts and your concerns about plagiarism, you can certainly do that; it's just that, again, that goes beyond the definition of FOSS. (Except for the copyright argument I brought up in the previous post.) I could offer an argument as to how many people who use LLMs don't see those ethical issues in the same way - not just "people don't care about ethics", it's nuanced - but it doesn't really make a difference to my main point, which is that what you're considering is a more restrictive criterion than just FOSS and should be described accordingly.
@homegrown or on giant corporations at all (which is, what? 60% of existing FOSS?)
@homegrown a large proportion of FOSS has always been produced by capitalist companies with often questionable morale. How did you manage to come to terms with that? This is the way you'll come to terms with AI. Boycott the most egregious cases, live with the rest.
On the last point: you can redefine FOSS to anything you want, attempts have been made already (various "fascists not allowed" licenses, for instance). The question is how to avoid being locked in your small corner.