SDL bans AI-written commits

We’ll need “Organic software” seal of approval soon.

I don’t use public repos very often but I had toyed with the idea of just creating a git user specifically for an agent to use for this purpose so it would not be my user account, is this not standard practice already? Kinda seems obvious to me, I mean so people can tell which parts of my public project were commits managed by an agent.

On the one hand open source projects are going to be overrun with AI code that no one reviewed.

On the other hand, code produced with AI and reviewed by humans can be perfectly good, maintainable, and indistinguishable from regular old code.

So many processes are no longer sufficient to manage a world where thousands of lines of working code are easy to conjure out of thin air. Already strained open source review processes are definitely one.

I get wanting to blanket reject AI generated code, but the reality is that no one's going to be able to tell what's what in many cases. Something like a more thorough review process for onboarding trusted contributors, or some other method of cutting down on the volume of review, is probably going to be needed.

Why are these projects still on Github? Isn't it better to move away from Github than go through all this shenanigans? This AI slopam nonsense isn't going to stop. Github is no longer the "social network" for software dev. It's just a vehicle to shove more and more Copilot stuff.

The userbase is also changing. There are vast numbers of new users on Github who have no desire to learn the architecture or culture of the project they are contributing to. They just spin up their favorite LLM and make a PR out of whatever slop comes out.

At this point why not move to something like Codeberg? It's based in Europe. It's run by a non-profit. Good chance it won't suffer from the same fate a greedy corporate owned platform would suffer?

While this is a perfectly fine policy in the space of possible policies (it's probably what I'd pick, for what it's worth) the arguments being given for it leave a bad taste in my mouth.

Good move, and a good reminder of how much of an echo chamber Hacker News is on AI matters.

In here, and big tech at large, it's touted like the unavoidable future that either you adapt or you die. LLMs are always a few months away from the (u|dys)topia of never having to write code ever again. Elsewhere, especially in fields where craft and artistry are valued (i.e. game development), AI is synonym of wanting to cut corners, poor quality, and to put it simply, slop. Sure, we're now inundated from people with a Claude subscription and a dream hoping to create the next Minecraft, but no one is taking them seriously. They're not making the game forum front pages, that's for sure.

Personally, I have made my existential worries a little better by pivoting away from big tech where the only metric is line of code committed per day, and moving towards those fields where human craftsmanship is still king.

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What’s the point? People will just fork it and improve it with AI anyway. In another hand, it would be an interesting experiment to watch how the original and the fork diverge over time. Especially in terms of security discoveries and feature development.

tbh if the change works and the code is ok who cares what was used to build it? ChatGPT or C++ code generator. If the code looks crap - reject PR, why drama?

Stopping a flood with a tissue.

What’s next? Are they going to forbid the use of Intellisrnse? Maybe IDEs in general?

Why not just specify all contributions must be written with a steady hand and a strong magnet.

People who can wield AI properly have no use for SDL at all. It’s a library for humans to figure out platform code. AI has no such limitations.

> Given that the source of code generated by AI is unknown, we can't accept it under the Zlib license.

So what about SO code snippets? I'm not here to make a stance for AI, but this thread is leaning towards biased.

Address the elephant, LLM-assisted PR's have a chance of being lower quality. People are not obligated to review their code. Doing this manually, you are more inclined to review what you're submitting.

I don't get why these conversations always target their opinion, not the facts. I totally agree about the ethicality, the fact it's bound to get monopolized (unless GLM becomes SOTA soon), and is harming the environment. That's my opinion though, and shouldn't interfere with what others do. I don't scoff at people eating meat, let them be.

The issue is real, the solution is not.