The LLM part is bad news but it isn't the sign.
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And for Linux as a plausibly community-managed meaningfully open as in open project, that clock is definitely ticking.
The end of this road is some corporate-funded retirement home for understaffed and underfunded projects once enough of the current devs have aged out without anyone growing into those roles, with private forks at companies that relied on the kernel, also privately relieved there's no need or reason to deal with antediluvian developer processes or bother giving back anymore.
@mhoye The "just stop onboarding new maintainers" thing was even more shocking to me than the heavy AI psychosis, although they're probably related.
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@lykso@tiny.tilde.website @hipsterelectron@circumstances.run @mhoye@cosocial.ca @froztbyte@mastodon.social In my case I have no belief my license works as more than a statement of intent/principles.
So I try instead to compensate in things which I believe the generally applicable contribution to autonomy remains applicable regardless of whatever corposcum might copy it (whatever bastardized copy may not retain that, but the one I will continue to provide will).
I believe finding the source of things matters and that the tooling for current code helps a lot.
Ultimately of course even with protections, corposcum have very well demonstrated in book publishing just how effectively they can drown out one’s signal so that one is never heard of anyway (copyright was a monopolist and censorship tool first & foremost and it is what it does best; the same is applicable to patents in a very similar way). The system has always protected the monopolists and corposcum first, anyone else being a pretense or incidental at best.
@lispi314
By the way of my Anti AI license project I read some court decisions and this was very disappointing for me. At least in Germany it is nearly impossible to run a (national/international) project of distributed volunteers which share code in the open. There are very weak protections for, say, GPL to be obeyed. In other countries it is probably the same.
I also believe I now understand what these EULAs are supposed to achieve. Funnily enough they seem to be non-binding in Germany if not printed outside the CD you buy. -
To explain what I mean by this: for a long time the Perl community took great pride in how difficult and terse the language was. The old joke that well-written perl was indistinguishable from line noise wasn't just a joke, it was a badge of honour.
That attitude was sustainable when the internet was small and alternatives were scarce. But the moment tools appeared that prioritized things like human ergonomics (python) and human interaction (ruby) the perl community started aging out and dying.
@mhoye I tend to disagree a bit about perl. Yes, it looks like line noise to the uninitiated, but the amount of initiation is not huge. I understand that this is pushing away beginners who in Python can just start typing code. OTOH, perl was invented by a linguist and it is intended to be dumped into the Wernicke area and parsed there, whereas python looks like line noise piped thru `gzip -d` , resulting in phrases exceeding the input buffer size of said area. Disclaimer: I'm 64 and use raku.
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@sackofbones @Netzblockierer @torvalds @mhoye Perhaps consider trusting a project (and its leader) that have delivered increasingly capable kernels and a strong development community for 35 years?
I am not thrilled (to put it lightly) about this rush to LLMs, but I don't think that this sort of attitude makes things better. -
@Lunaphied @fedward @mhoye Yes, raku is fun and good. It is essentially perl with the bad things (ambiguous syntax, lack of static typing and good OO) fixed and cool stuff thrown in (grammars, hyperoperators,...). It feels like complex analysis versus real analysis in math: perl5 and real functions can be a nightmare full of traps and counterexamples; with perl6 and complex functions almost anything that looks plausible is proven to be correct.
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@paulmckrcu oh, on a personal level I think I've been round that loop a few times. A lot of what U. G. Krishnamurti said to people who thought they wanted to replicate his path has come back to me over the years!
@srtcd424 Fair enough!
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@mhoye tldr; #LLMs are here to stay. People who actually deliver working solutions that shape the world have spoken. Measures to limit slop are being developed. #Linux becomes even more commercial.
I personally hope more open models will arrive, GPUs will become cheaper and universal income will help people who wont be able to find job in such toxic and draining field as computer science.2026 welcome in ultimate hell everyone! Dont forget to enjoy the ride!
@grayrattus @mhoye How do cheaper gpus make universal income possible? The wealth hoarding class can make universal income a reality right now.
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@grayrattus @mhoye How do cheaper gpus make universal income possible? The wealth hoarding class can make universal income a reality right now.
@Howitzer105mm @grayrattus You can see it's definitely a well-thought out position.
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@Howitzer105mm @grayrattus You can see it's definitely a well-thought out position.
@mhoye @Howitzer105mm I wrote that I hope for 3 things: cheaper GPUs, more open models, universal income.
Without those next 5 years will be tough as many IT engineers will land on the streets with huge debts and burnouts.
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@mhoye @Howitzer105mm I wrote that I hope for 3 things: cheaper GPUs, more open models, universal income.
Without those next 5 years will be tough as many IT engineers will land on the streets with huge debts and burnouts.
@grayrattus @mhoye We can have cheaper gpus now. Tell Altman to quit buying bare silicon with no use for it.
Prevent data centers from consuming, checks notes, EVERYTHING.
Make the tech bros pay the fair market price and royalties for every scrap of human output they've stolen.
We stopped 'domain tasting' by instantly charging 0.50 cents to corpo squatters trying to extort money for your domain name.
We'd kill AI the moment we use the same model on them.
No waiting required. -
@lykso@tiny.tilde.website @hipsterelectron@circumstances.run @mhoye@cosocial.ca @froztbyte@mastodon.social
It is a chosen tradeoff, I suppose.if it is coopted then it becomes irrelevant whether I am maintaining a “good” version; it gets drowned out. Worse, my maintenance may be upstreamed and used to benefit the capitalist version.
It being preserved and public does enable the chance for it to be rediscovered at any time, and possibly in ways that inconvenience malicious parties (if they haven’t died out prior).
Ideally we would be actively undermining this system.
Of course. Though the overthrow of capitalism will not come purely from software.
I would like to avoid a situation where the people responsible for the disease, where the diseased system itself, can use my work to save themselves/itself.
That would be unfortunate. Although I deem it extremely unlikely.
Most work that promotes autonomy and agency is worthless to them at best or inimical to their interests.
Most work that puts autonomy, security and control in the hands of the people/users, especially ones who use it to enact their agency & assert autonomy, is actively unwanted to the point that direct hostile intervention has been undertaken at points in the past over it.
(Not only in software work there.)
Collective access to and control of this technology is a form of power; it would be fantastic if I could find a way to direct that power into a political form which may challenge the current form.
A direct challenge seem unlikely, but if what its purpose is and what it enables is contrary to the malicious interests, then it does have good odds of providing indirect challenge or contribution to a direct challenge.
And of course, some in quest of liberation may use it to survive or save themselves long enough for the wider overthrow to take place (hopefully).
Although it may be that the system is so diseased and falling apart so quickly that the pace of my work will render it useless in that regard.
That would be a Plan9 ending.
Were you luckier, you might complete your work after the hostile system’s crumbling and see it finding use too.
Good chance as well that the system finds no use for what I’m doing, having other tools better suited already at hand.
Quite.
Still, it’s a risk I’d rather not take just now, I guess.
Fair enough. You do have that choice, and your discomfort is not groundless.
@lispi314 @hipsterelectron @mhoye @froztbyte Yeah, tradeoffs are everywhere. No free lunches, figuratively speaking.
The overthrow of capitalism will not come purely from any single thing, no. A struggle dependent on technology controlled by its enemies will not get far, though.
My work is not so strongly ideologically pointed that it can't be put to other ends. Most work is not, IMO. Tools have bents, but you can never say "this tool is useless to the enemy."
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@lispi314 @hipsterelectron @mhoye @froztbyte Yeah, tradeoffs are everywhere. No free lunches, figuratively speaking.
The overthrow of capitalism will not come purely from any single thing, no. A struggle dependent on technology controlled by its enemies will not get far, though.
My work is not so strongly ideologically pointed that it can't be put to other ends. Most work is not, IMO. Tools have bents, but you can never say "this tool is useless to the enemy."
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@lispi314 @hipsterelectron @mhoye @froztbyte I don't consider "direct hostile intervention" to be proof of "they couldn't subvert it" but rather of "they decided this was the easiest way to subvert it."
I've also seen cryptocurrency become the opposite of what many had hoped it would be in the early stages. I now tend to think that technological features are secondary to the social and material features around them.
I am happy to share my work and to work in community with others, but I 2/
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@lispi314 @hipsterelectron @mhoye @froztbyte I don't consider "direct hostile intervention" to be proof of "they couldn't subvert it" but rather of "they decided this was the easiest way to subvert it."
I've also seen cryptocurrency become the opposite of what many had hoped it would be in the early stages. I now tend to think that technological features are secondary to the social and material features around them.
I am happy to share my work and to work in community with others, but I 2/
@lispi314 @hipsterelectron @mhoye @froztbyte think now that it is wisest to grow that group along lines of trust rather than just leaving everything out in the open for bots to hoover up.
By "useless in that regard" I meant "useless to the diseased system."
I don't imagine one can keep a secret forever, so I expect my work will leak eventually if it ever becomes interesting enough. I'd like there to be a real, coherent system rooted in material reality in place to challenge the incumbent 3/
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@lispi314 @hipsterelectron @mhoye @froztbyte I don't consider "direct hostile intervention" to be proof of "they couldn't subvert it" but rather of "they decided this was the easiest way to subvert it."
I've also seen cryptocurrency become the opposite of what many had hoped it would be in the early stages. I now tend to think that technological features are secondary to the social and material features around them.
I am happy to share my work and to work in community with others, but I 2/
@lykso@tiny.tilde.website @hipsterelectron@circumstances.run @mhoye@cosocial.ca @froztbyte@mastodon.social
I don’t consider “direct hostile intervention” to be proof of “they couldn’t subvert it” but rather of “they decided this was the easiest way to subvert it.”
There is some truth to that, but it’s also just a relatively effective way of stopping work even if they didn’t have a use to subvert it to.
I’ve also seen cryptocurrency become the opposite of what many had hoped it would be in the early stages.
It enshrined capitalism and scarcity at its core. There was never a chance of liberatory potential. At best it could be a poor substitute for hawala for the ones that have anonymization.
(Hawala is still subject to a lot of the harmful dynamics of capitalism.)
It’s why most anarchists reject anarcho-capitalism as an oxymoron.
I now tend to think that technological features are secondary to the social and material features around them.
Technologies are instanced applications of social features. Pure technical mechanisms don’t really make sense unless considered within their context of operation or the notion of what problem they solve.
The closest is abstract mathematics, and that semi-frequently turns out applicable to things one hadn’t expected.
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@lispi314 @hipsterelectron @mhoye @froztbyte think now that it is wisest to grow that group along lines of trust rather than just leaving everything out in the open for bots to hoover up.
By "useless in that regard" I meant "useless to the diseased system."
I don't imagine one can keep a secret forever, so I expect my work will leak eventually if it ever becomes interesting enough. I'd like there to be a real, coherent system rooted in material reality in place to challenge the incumbent 3/
@lispi314 @hipsterelectron @mhoye @froztbyte one by that point, though. I'd imagine a commons away from the bots, rooted in pseudonymity and relations of trust built over time, would be conducive to this. So that's kind of what I have been hoping for in my gestures towards "a human Web" and "careful.party." 4/4
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@Netzblockierer @mhoye @torvalds that's likely never going to happen, I would advise finding or establishing a fork. Isn't that the great promise of open source? I don't understand a lot of the whinging around this topic because by my estimation schisms are nothing new to humans, digital or meat space.
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Today the number of people under 50 who'll reach for perl or raku or who cares what it's called as their first choice of tool for anything new is zero. In practice Perl is an esolang now.
Torvalds' position is that contributing to the kernel should be _more_ difficult for everyone else, but, through LLM usage, easier for existing kernel developers.
Ted Tso's adamant position that "you can't make us learn Rust" is the same insularity.
If the kernel was a country, we'd recognize this.
Today the number of people under 50 who’ll reach for perl or raku or who cares what it’s called as their first choice of tool for anything new is zero.
@mhoye@cosocial.ca ‘Extremely low’! The words you are looking for are ‘extremely low’. <img class=“not-responsive emoji” src=“https://jam.xwx.moe/emoji/Gutkatoj/gutkato_post_muro.png” title=“:gutkato_post_muro:” />
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Today the number of people under 50 who'll reach for perl or raku or who cares what it's called as their first choice of tool for anything new is zero. In practice Perl is an esolang now.
Torvalds' position is that contributing to the kernel should be _more_ difficult for everyone else, but, through LLM usage, easier for existing kernel developers.
Ted Tso's adamant position that "you can't make us learn Rust" is the same insularity.
If the kernel was a country, we'd recognize this.
@mhoye Under 50 here and I do.
Why? I need something well supported and portable. That is frankly Perl.
Also honestly don't remember that being a Perl community take about it being difficult to parse etc. I remember that largely being slander pushed by the Python community to try to make up for how shit python was at everything for the longest time. Basically a lie pushed at the academic level and as a meme on forums based around trotting out the worst code imaginable treating it like it was the language was only capable of.
It is was/is the intellectual equivalent of taking C or Python code written for a obfuscation contest and telling people this is what the language is and only how it can be written.
Also holy fuck? Human ergonomics and python and ruby? From a tooling/dev/admin perspective I think the only thing worse I've encountered is node.
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@mhoye As a 34 years old Perl dev, I have to disagree on the number being zero.
@mhoye @demiguise Aye. Under 50 here.
Also why Perl? Portable.
Only langauge sorta close to it in that area is rust, but it so needs a hell of a lot of maturing to do in terms of feature stability(very much suffers constantly introducing stuff that can't be counted on to be available in the version of rust available in the package repo for Debian or the like).
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I remember in early 2000 trying to recompile some small tool written by esr on an sgi and never reaching the speed of the binary. The makefile he provided was doing something strange with the source files I never bothered to understand. The readme was hawking his services as a developer. I decided this guy was a full of shit extractionist and subsequently cought much flak from my "friends" for shitting on CATB.
I was sooo smug the last years
