{"id":105709,"date":"2026-11-06T03:00:21","date_gmt":"2026-11-06T08:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=105709"},"modified":"2026-11-04T10:48:46","modified_gmt":"2026-11-04T15:48:46","slug":"ai-and-open-source-software","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/ai-and-open-source-software\/","title":{"rendered":"AI and open-source software"},"content":{"rendered":"

ESR<\/a> has become a big fan of AI-assisted code writing, and as a result I’m a bit less “doom-y” about the potential uses of AI because ESR is a living legend in the software world. If he<\/em> thinks it’s a good thing, then I’m inclined to believe him. That said, as he illustrates here, not everyone in the OS community agrees with him about code-writing clankers:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I find it bizarre that so many open-source projects have posted policies against AI-assisted contributions. <\/p>\n

This will not last, because they’ll be outcompeted by projects not afraid to use power tools to debug the code and and features. In crucial cases, AI-hostile projects will be forked to remove that restriction. <\/p>\n

How can anybody not see this coming? <\/p>\n

This dynamic is so obvious – and anti-AI rules so patently futile and doomed – that I have to conclude there is something like a religious frenzy going on. <\/p>\n

I’m going to bend over backwards to be fair about this. There was a point earlier in the development of AI at which such restrictions might have made temporary sense, because model outputs were prone to enough noise and hallucination to be a net drag on productivity.<\/p>\n

We’re long past that now. And the obvious solution to merge-request queues flooded with AI-generated slop is to use AI to filter them so exercising human judgment on the remainder remains practical.<\/p>\n

I’m not going to argue rights and wrongs here. One might just as well argue that it’s wrong for sandcastles to collapse when the tide comes in.<\/p>\n

The religious frenzy does bother me, though. Maybe less than it did 5 minutes ago when the mind infection was “wokeness”, but a mob of crazies is never an edifying or reassuring sight.<\/p>\n

I guess the most positive thing I can observe is that this phase of nuttery won’t last long, because it can’t. The selective pressure against it is too brutal. <\/p>\n

It does leave me wondering what cause the nutters will attach themselves to next. Alas.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ESR has become a big fan of AI-assisted code writing, and as a result I’m a bit less “doom-y” about the potential uses of AI because ESR is a living legend in the software world. If he thinks it’s a good thing, then I’m inclined to believe him. That said, as he illustrates here, not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[15],"tags":[1506,1235,93,92],"class_list":["post-105709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-esr","tag-opensource","tag-software"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-ruZ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105709"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105709\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":105761,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105709\/revisions\/105761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}