🤖 NetBSD’s New Policy: No Place for AI-Created Code
— @linuxiac
“New development policy: code generated by a large language model or similar technology (e.g. ChatGPT, GitHub Copilot) is presumed to be tainted (i.e. of unclear copyright, not fitting NetBSD’s licensing goals) and cannot be committed to NetBSD.”
#NetBSD joins the ranks of software projects that ban #AI generated code.
How they are going to enforce such ban is an obvious question lingering in the air.
Does it include only cases like “hey #ChatGPT write a suite of unit tests for this class”? Or also cases where #Copilot simply autocompletes a for loop while I’m typing it?
In the latter case, how would a hypothetical reviewer enforce the ban? How would the for loop autocompleted by Copilot, or the boilerplate population of hashmap values, look any different than one I would write myself?
And if the issue is with any code that isn’t directly written by a human, then why stop at modern AI generation? Why not include LINTers and traditional IDE autocomplete features?
I have no doubt that the projects that are announcing these no-AI policies have good intentions, but it’s probably time for all of us to have an honest talk.
Code completion isn’t a clear cut binary feature. It’s a big spectrum that goes from the old exuberant ctags to ChatGPT writing whole classes.
And code completion shouldn’t be banned. If it makes a developer more productive, and if the developer understands the code that is being completed, then such bans are akin to a “drivers should only use cars with manual transmission because we feel that it’s more manly”. It’s a conservative and elitist act of shunning out new productive tools because we can’t understand them and regulate them properly.
And more people need to call out the bluff: in cases where the AI only completes a few lines of code, its basically impossible to tell if that snippet was written by a human or an AI assistant.
"Code generated by a large language model or similar technology, such as GitHub/Microsoft's Copilot, OpenAI's ChatGPT, or Facebook/Meta's Code Llama, is presumed to be tainted code, and must not be committed without prior written approval by core."
I think this stance is exactly right. Until the copyright and licensing issues with LLMs have been tested in courts, it is a huge risk to be including LLM-generated code. Especially when the LICENSE is such a defining part of the project.
To those that ask “but how will they know”—ultimately, they cannot, but having a clear policy like this sets expectations upfront; just like they have a policy not to include GPL-licensed code.
👀 PowerPC 40x Processor Support To Be Dropped From The Linux Kernel
— @phoronix
"Back in 2020 was a proposal for dropping PowerPC 40x support from the Linux kernel given that the code was orphaned for a long time with no apparent users. The PowerPC 40x processors were found in thin clients, set-top boxes, and other devices during the 90's. Finally now it looks like that the PowerPC 40x removal is set to happen"
Also noticed that #DNSCrypt provides a large amount of binary distributions for #FreeBSD, #OpenBSD, #NetBSD, #DragonFlyBSD, #Solaris, among several other OSs, plus many architecture-specific binaries. That is really nice! Next thing will be deploying it on the beastie server.
My recent try raises issues with missing css files. Weird thing is FreeBSD PLIST does not reference them either. And compiling from source does not seem to solve the problem.
I want an @ActionRetro -like video channel but using #NetBSD. Not sure if there is an audience for it, but it would be amazing and should allow for some pretty old hardware to run modern software.
How can I be up-to-date with current developments of all #bsd without following their mailing lists? I'd love to know what they are cooking (got or graphical installer for example) but without following dev discussions, as those are too low-level for my needs.
🧑💻 NetBSD On The State & Future Of X.Org/X11
➥ @phoronix
「 The bad news is that to have applications running we require access to a larger open source ecosystem, and that ecosystem has a lot of churn and is easily distracted by shiny new squirrels. The process of upstreaming stuff to X.Org is an ongoing process, but it's likely we'll run into things that will never be suitable for upstream 」
And here is more I learned on the same subject: 'lock' is not implemented under Ubuntu or #slackware so 'tmux lockc' does not seem to work either. The utility 'vlock' does the same thing, but is not installed by default.
But installing 'vlock' does not make 'tmux lockc' work under Linux. ☹️
Under #OpenBSD and #NetBSD 'lock -p' uses your default password, but 'tmux lockc' work as expected (meaning, it asks for your login password). No '-p' means entering a separate password for unlocking.
Got my hands on an old Mac Mini G4 PPC and immediately installed NetBSD 10 #macppc. Good docs of course, including specific to the G4. Once you get the hang of partioning for Open Firmware 3, pretty straight forward. My first Apple product 😂
"There’s a multitude of Operating Systems to choose from. You may have been using something like Windows or MacOS and be perfectly happy with it. You can step up and use Linux, Haiku or even Amiga OS. So, why do I think a BSD system may be a great choice?"
Didn’t get around to spinning up a new OpenBSD instance this weekend but now I’m also tempted to try out #NetBSD, which is the only one of the big three that I haven’t used much by now — I used FreeBSD on a server and also desktops for years, and I’ve run an OpenBSD server for a bit too, but I’ve only used NetBSD occasionally, on the SDF server. Maybe it’s time.