their repo (checked the commit graphs and basically they did most of the work, 2nd dev agree with them, covers 90%+) their choice of governance
their repo, their choice of tooling
I genuinely believe they think are doing “good enough” code and they are probably right about it in their context
they do have fair points on the economical power dynamics, namely that yes Anthropic is slightly less worst than Meta, Google, OpenAI, Microsoft, etc (… but IMHO honestly that’s a damn low bar)
but also
obfuscation rather than discussion (closed the issue and limited to maintainers only) so clearly the signal is precisely “my repo, my choice”
no mention of the copyright or license washing
no mention of ecological impact
so I would personally consider instead Bottles, GOG (have different problems), Steam (obviously not open source and basically monopolistic position), etc.
Overall I think preventing discussion is unhealthy (even though sadly sometimes needed, here I lack context, maybe the issue poster did this numerous time on other platforms, title definitely was provocative) but removing provenance is NEVER a good choice. They want to use Claude on their repo? Absolutely fine (even though not to me) but hiding it makes it instantly untrustworthy to me. In fact I even argued in the past that even though I personally do not use GenAI/LLMs (for coding or otherwise) except for testing it should always be disclosed precisely so that others can make THEIR choice in consequence, including using or contributing, cf https://fabien.benetou.fr/Analysis/AgainstPoorArtificialIntelligencePractices
Tbh, I think it’s a bit of pick your battles. GOG and Steam are mostly good companies, but it’s all closed source and I would bet money they are using AI to develop too. And they don’t even provide any way that you could check that, because their code isn’t open at all.
Is that really better than some open source dev developing with AI in broad daylight?
I totally understand why the Lutris dev shut down the discussion. The dev posted about struggling with mental health, and developing open source software is sadly really bad for your mental health. There’s just too many people who think that the code is public and thus they get a say in it, even if they didn’t contribute anything at all.
As an open source dev, you contribute without getting anything in return, and then you have to justify your actions in front of random strangers who often get quite aggressive. It’s a really big problem in the FOSS sector. Look up e.g. the controversy around Marcel Bokhorst (M66B). He almost shut down all his great FOSS projects because of all the hassle he got from randos on the internet.
I agree. I still don’t think it’s right. I’m not sure how to do better. Overall, developing (in open source or not) or creating art or whatever one is into my once advice is to cherry pick whatever strangers are telling you. You only listen to the healthy advice and everything else must be like water off a duck’s back.
In commercial development that’s easy. I don’t really care about the product I am working on. I am doing a good job working on it, but it’s not my baby. Also, I am a developer, so I develop. There’s customer support people who get paid to have customers scream at them.
If this is your personal pet project, that you love and that you poured your soul in, that’s more difficult. Especially if you are already struggling with mental health.
And I don’t like it when we say “only mentally stable people who don’t mind engaging with a toxic community deserve to be FOSS developers”. That’s just not right.
I don’t like it when we say “only mentally stable people who don’t mind engaging with a toxic community deserve to be FOSS developers”. That’s just not right.
No idea where that came from, I surely didn’t mean nor suggest so.
Overall, developing (in open source or not) or creating art or whatever one is into my once advice is to cherry pick whatever strangers are telling you. You only listen to the healthy advice and everything else must be like water off a duck’s back.
This part here.
Only taking healthy advice and ignoring everything else is something you can do if you are super mentally stable. If you aren’t this is often not possible.
obfuscation rather than discussion (closed the issue and limited to maintainers only) so clearly the signal is precisely “my repo, my choice”
There is discussion but it is limited to the people who contribute to the project, it is closed to the public because of the harassment campaign. Nobody wants to listen to a bunch of toxic children copy and paste the same opinions and insults.
no mention of the copyright or license washing
no mention of ecological impact
The developers who use AI tools are not repeating the anti-AI memes, this isn’t surprising.
It’s one thing if you want to not use the software, but contributing to or whitewashing this harassment campaign is toxic and needs to stop.
but also
so I would personally consider instead Bottles, GOG (have different problems), Steam (obviously not open source and basically monopolistic position), etc.
Overall I think preventing discussion is unhealthy (even though sadly sometimes needed, here I lack context, maybe the issue poster did this numerous time on other platforms, title definitely was provocative) but removing provenance is NEVER a good choice. They want to use Claude on their repo? Absolutely fine (even though not to me) but hiding it makes it instantly untrustworthy to me. In fact I even argued in the past that even though I personally do not use GenAI/LLMs (for coding or otherwise) except for testing it should always be disclosed precisely so that others can make THEIR choice in consequence, including using or contributing, cf https://fabien.benetou.fr/Analysis/AgainstPoorArtificialIntelligencePractices
Tbh, I think it’s a bit of pick your battles. GOG and Steam are mostly good companies, but it’s all closed source and I would bet money they are using AI to develop too. And they don’t even provide any way that you could check that, because their code isn’t open at all.
Is that really better than some open source dev developing with AI in broad daylight?
I totally understand why the Lutris dev shut down the discussion. The dev posted about struggling with mental health, and developing open source software is sadly really bad for your mental health. There’s just too many people who think that the code is public and thus they get a say in it, even if they didn’t contribute anything at all.
As an open source dev, you contribute without getting anything in return, and then you have to justify your actions in front of random strangers who often get quite aggressive. It’s a really big problem in the FOSS sector. Look up e.g. the controversy around Marcel Bokhorst (M66B). He almost shut down all his great FOSS projects because of all the hassle he got from randos on the internet.
I agree. I still don’t think it’s right. I’m not sure how to do better. Overall, developing (in open source or not) or creating art or whatever one is into my once advice is to cherry pick whatever strangers are telling you. You only listen to the healthy advice and everything else must be like water off a duck’s back.
In commercial development that’s easy. I don’t really care about the product I am working on. I am doing a good job working on it, but it’s not my baby. Also, I am a developer, so I develop. There’s customer support people who get paid to have customers scream at them.
If this is your personal pet project, that you love and that you poured your soul in, that’s more difficult. Especially if you are already struggling with mental health.
And I don’t like it when we say “only mentally stable people who don’t mind engaging with a toxic community deserve to be FOSS developers”. That’s just not right.
No idea where that came from, I surely didn’t mean nor suggest so.
This part here.
Only taking healthy advice and ignoring everything else is something you can do if you are super mentally stable. If you aren’t this is often not possible.
That’s precisely not engaging though.
There is discussion but it is limited to the people who contribute to the project, it is closed to the public because of the harassment campaign. Nobody wants to listen to a bunch of toxic children copy and paste the same opinions and insults.
The developers who use AI tools are not repeating the anti-AI memes, this isn’t surprising.
It’s one thing if you want to not use the software, but contributing to or whitewashing this harassment campaign is toxic and needs to stop.
but GOG is not open source too (if you use GOG Galaxy)
Yes, that’s part of the problems, thanks for clarifying
Yw