@corycarson I think the effects of all of this on the industry are terrible and also I think the arguments I feel legitimately apply to LLMs replacing the creativity of authors and composers and artists with a cheap imitation are much less strong when applied to the regurgitation of code

@gardiner_bryant my choice of code is driven almost 100% by the desire to communicate my intention to another blob of code. My choice of words is significantly more complicated than that.

@Ced a proprietary solution that grants the user an ability to modify free software to match their needs is worse than a free one, but it's still something that enhances that user's freedom

@juliancalaby @glyph I am absolutely not advocating for LLM use in software development in general, I am saying that the actual code is massively less creative than the majority of words or music or graphics consumed by the training and so I don't have an ethical objection *on that basis* (plenty of other ethical objections in most cases)

@MrBerard words aren't just the embodiment of a creative story, they influence how we understand and feel about it. When I read someone else's code I'm not typically feeling that dual creative nature - I'm seeing the embodiment of the creativity that created a novel algorithm or exploited hardware behaviour in an interesting way. That's what I'm interested in, not the actual lines of code that tell the compiler how to implement that.

@platlas my preference would be for local models where the underlying runtime cost is more visible to users

@Pi_rat And?

@Pi_rat

"The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish" is literally one of the FSF's four freedoms

@andi I'm not sure we necessarily disagree that much, then! I feel like there's a significant creative process getting me to the point where the code falls out, and that includes thinking about the overall structure, where components should be separated, where common logic should be merged, and so on. And to me the actual code that emerges is a representation of that work, rather than fundamentally *being* that work.

@MrBerard We've ended up in a situation where people feel they can never look at the implementation of a proprietary codebase to learn how it works because they'll end up tainted, even if they're only going to reproduce the concept behind the code rather than the aspects directly covered by copyright, and a lot of the LLM discussion feels like it's pushing us towards an even harder level of copyright maximalism

@MrBerard I don't, and I also don't think those things matter to an individual just trying to make something work for themselves.

@MrBerard I was unclear in what the motivation for this assertion was, and I think that's left things confusing. I don't think LLMs produce code that is anywhere near equivalent to a skilled coder in terms of clarity or structure without significant handholding. It's more about whether I think the reuse of material is inherently ethically questionable in the way I think it likely is for literature or art or music.

@bsandro If I design a wonderful physical object and then program the CNC machine to make it, I'm proud of the design work rather than proud of putting the numbers in the CNC machine. To me, the actual act of coding feels much closer to that than it does to producing a hand crafted version of the same thing

@tryst That was the state of affairs until 1983!

@mxchara Oh gosh no - I'm not proposing that at all. I'm saying that if someone who doesn't know how to code has software that doesn't do what they need it to do, an LLM would potentially allow them to change that.

I don't think anyone should ever contribute code they don't understand. I don't think anyone should ever encourage other people to run code they had a machine regurgitate without understanding it themselves. I don't think LLMs are the future of free software development.

@epetousis @lodurel Oh yeah 100%

@andi Is it the actual code that's the art for you, or its structure? The algorithms it expresses? The functionality it implements? I'm genuinely curious here - I'm certainly open to the idea that I approach this differently to others

@dekkzz78 A completely sensible position for a company to take

@mxchara I'm better at computers than I am at science, and I spend a whole bunch of my time working on free software for no compensation so

@mxchara The only LLM I use is a local model running on the Apple Silicon device on my desk, and it's been fun figuring out what it can do (more than I expected!). This kind of thing is going to be increasingly viable over time and is what I'm interested in in this respect. Can it take existing source code and add a new feature? Yes, and that seems like it would be helpful for people who don't know how to code! It's not how *I'd* approach the problem, and I don't see that changing.