Re: Looking for advice on how to deal with potential slop packages

[Simon Josefsson <simon@josefsson.org>]

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Morten Linderud <foxboron@archlinux.org> writes:

> A lot of this is probably already a lost cause I think.

+1

I wonder if there is even consensus to refuse to package AI-rewritten
packages with a different license, such as python-chardet:

https://github.com/chardet/chardet/issues/327
https://github.com/chardet/chardet/issues/331

I think that is a separate category of LLM contributions, unlike the
LLM-assistance used for many years in the Linux kernel.

If AI-rewrites for copyright reasons becomes common, that is problematic
for a free software perspective.  One recurse is to actively chose to
not use such rewrites, but to insist on using copyleft packages as a
policy and preference in order to defend user's rights.

To some extent we already see this split, between copyleft-aligned
GNU/Linux distributions like Guix that default to GnuPG and GNU
coreutils, and some commercial distributions that is on a path to
replace all GPL'd code.

Given that we couldn't establish such consensus in the pre-AI times (for
GnuPG vs Seqoia and GNU coreutils vs uutils), and there even seem to
some preference towards the non-copyleft agenda, I think the same will
happen again for AI-rewrites.

The commercial dynamic is pro LLM and against copyleft.  It is possible
to offer an alternative but it requires an active choice and interested
developers/users.

/Simon

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