6 ms·

This is the way it should've always been. I don't care what tool you use, but you'd better be ready to stand by and explain the results if necessary.

by oooyay 18d ago

dguest 18d ago
Are there examples of anyone discussing this and reaching other conclusions? We've come to the same conclusion in our organization and while it felt like it needed to be discussed and stated, I've never heard of anyone coming to a different conclusion. [EDIT: I was referring specifically to the idea that you have to stand by the code that you write. Is anyone deciding on a policy that says "the AI did it" is a valid excuse for breaking code?]
- internet2000 18d ago
  > Are there examples of anyone discussing this and reaching other conclusions? Yes. Very notably: https://ziglang.org/code-of-conduct/ https://ziglang.org/code-of-conduct/
  - sodapopcan 18d ago
    On the opposite side or the noteable spectrum, look up "Steve Yegge wants you to stop looking at your code." He said it in a video interview, though plenty of summaries online of exact wording and ideas. Though it's being argued that you could still be responsible for it without looking at it?
    - rapind 18d ago
      Extremes on both sides. I'd wager were moving in Yegge's direction though, like it or not. > Though it's being argued that you could still be responsible for it without looking at it? If you have a much test coverage as SQLite, I'd be tempted to trust it, and I think that's where we are headed. Someone still needs to define these guardrails though, so IMO the developers job is just mutating into something else, but is still necessary. Long term, who knows.
      - Topfi 18d ago
        For me, it’s not a question of whether I like it, nor where we might move in the future, but purely what is proven currently. In my experience, as in my evals, any model, including notably Fable 5 and GPT-5.6 Sol can and indeed do produce code that does not consider many edge cases, can be hard to maintain (especially Sol though it’s output has become markedly better with recent changes to Codex) and sometimes introduce bugs with visibly apparent issues. Existing test coverage doesn’t necessarily prevent such issues when changes or additions are made. The idea that models tend to gravitate towards the house style without major CI based restrictions also has not born fruit in my book. More, I have found even the frontier models amazing at utterly deviating from established standards and tests, what lint, tc and co don’t catch the model will take to introduce code that feels and reads like it does not fits with the rest. Models also still can have major task adherence issues, so even a perfectly well scoped, well considered prompt that covers all situations and coverage can, in many scenarios lead to output users may not expect or notice without reading code. Seen it a lot, just lost some blood and tears to a very straight front end implementation task that I ended up applying manually cause both Sol and Fable struggle to copy a few dozen HTML/JS/CSS snippets properly into a slightly obscure codebase, despite the reference being fully featured and even using the same token scheme, etc… We also see such issues in what labs deliver in their own software products. We are not at the stage where a human shouldn’t sign off on code that they have tested and understood. A hypothetical future, I don’t really care for, we’d notice when labs stop shipping easily apparent bugs, though even then, I’d still feel there is a while in between that and not needing to assess the output anymore. There is, in my mind, no need for this “narrative shifting”, overtone window (don’t get me started on the idea of applying that to what should be a purely technical discussion), convince the unbelievers nonesense that some spend their time on. If models could provide code that didn’t necessitate review, there’d be no one needing to argue that case. If and when they can, we’ll know it, but not because of those espousing this currently.
        nick__m 18d ago
        Sol and Fable are not doers, they are thinkers. Using them to "copy a few dozen HTML/JS/CSS snippets properly into a slightly obscure codebase, despite the reference being fully featured" is one of the most ineffective possible usage of those model. What you described is a job for luna. Also I suspect you overprompt, with GPT-5.6 (sol, terra and luna), a lot's of what's used to be mandatory in the AGENT.md is redondant at best and frequantly actively harmful.
    - scotty79 18d ago
      > Though it's being argued that you could still be responsible for it without looking at it? Works for ToS and software and media licenses. Allegedly.
      - sodapopcan 18d ago
        HA! Touché.
        scotty79 18d ago
        That might be an interesting parallel. Maybe code becomes like legal documents. Binding but inscrutable, full of small mistakes and not really tailored for human ingestion.
        kwarcode 18d ago
        like legal documents, software is best avoided wherever possible
  - throwaway2037 17d ago
    > No LLMs for finding bugs. This is so dumb. How can they know if someone used an LLMs to find bug or debug a bug? In short: They cannot. LLMs are an excellent tool for debugging error messages.
- nicoburns 18d ago
  Yep, in both directions. Some projects ban use of AI entirely. Others are happy to live with slop.
- bodge5000 18d ago
  As others have said there are other conclusions going both ways (though I do think most settle on as you said), though one very fair conclusion I came across is that it's not allowed because the whole issue of copyright is still somewhat unresolved, and though its fine right now, that could (probably wont, but could) massively backfire later.
- Aurornis 18d ago
  Yes. There are pockets of hardline anti-LLM policies for various reasons. SourceHut bans LLM generated code from their platform https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49461724 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49461724 The Asahi Linux project bans LLMs. Unfortunate as LLM reverse engineering and driver writing would bring Linux to more Mac models much faster. The Zig project rejects LLM based contributions. Some of these policies were introduced when LLMs were really bad at writing code and haven’t been revisited. Some groups don’t care about the quality and object on moral or copyright grounds.
  - KennyBlanken 18d ago
    > Some groups don’t care about the quality and object on moral or copyright grounds. Precisely why Debian Project's decision is both baffling and infuriating. I hope Debian forks over this. They have severely lost their way.
    - pessimizer 18d ago
      Debian gives attribution to every single open source project in existence that is capable of running on Linux, and is Free Software. It is exactly the project that shouldn't worry about copyright. The "moral" argument I haven't even heard. It's just people pouring out invective, likely imo because Ruby-monkey is not going to be a $150K job anymore. I have problems with these companies, but companies who are problematic can be targeted specifically, and somehow everybody started using Facebook's frontend framework and Microsoft's IDE, all on MacBooks, and this is what they're throwing a shitfit about. To me it's narcissism, not a coherent moral objection. If you hate these companies (as you should), there are open models. But most didn't object to anything that didn't threaten their income.
    - inigyou 18d ago
      Note that Debian is mostly an aggregation of packages. There's nothing wrong with Debian importing a package that was written by AI, if it's something that people want to install. The questionable copyright of that package does not taint Debian as a whole. Debian allows public domain packages, so it wouldn't even be a DFSG violation. There's also nothing wrong with an AI-written install script (if it's correct) because those are likely too trivial to copyright anyway. What are your specific worries? Mine is brain rot.
- matheusmoreira 18d ago
  Many. https://lobste.rs/s/29pm2f/llm_generated_submissions_should_be https://lobste.rs/s/29pm2f/llm_generated_submissions_should_... https://sourcehut.org/blog/2026-08-27-tos-changes-and-llms/ https://sourcehut.org/blog/2026-08-27-tos-changes-and-llms/ https://blog.codeberg.org/protecting-our-floss-commons-from-llms.html https://blog.codeberg.org/protecting-our-floss-commons-from-... https://ziglang.org/code-of-conduct/#strict-no-llm-no-ai-policy https://ziglang.org/code-of-conduct/#strict-no-llm-no-ai-pol... https://lwn.net/Articles/1086041/ https://lwn.net/Articles/1086041/ https://asahilinux.org/docs/project/policies/slop/ https://asahilinux.org/docs/project/policies/slop/
- orthogonal_cube 18d ago
  > I was referring specifically to the idea that you have to stand by the code that you write. Any serious entity which has experts handling code will do so, yes. My employer, for example, has various teams of actual developers and others with a significant number of “not really” devs who found their way into DevOps roles. The teams with seasoned developers hold the author responsible as to the integrity and quality of code, regardless of tools used. They won’t hesitate to call someone out directly for low-quality submissions in Teams channels. The teams that have a lot of “not really” devs will blame the model for issues that surface. Of course, they’re also pushing to not have to write any code directly by FY2028, but instead have models do it as part of an internal AI initiative. Somehow the idea of using AI to generate reports, process reports, write code, test and deploy got signed off.
- bogdanoff_2 18d ago
  I could imagine (in a commercial organization) a case for something like: "we're obviously going to be relying more and more on AI, so if bad code comes out of it, instead of just shaming the engineer, let's study together what happened -- what was the chat context, the model, the system prompt, etc... ? What seemed to cause the issue? What processes or systems could we put in place to improve it? Etc... -- and then use the learnings to improve AI use throughout the whole org."
sergiotapia 18d ago
These are unprecedented times, I think every single company on the planet is figuring our what AI means to them. I think the dust has kind of settled though for engineering teams on: You must use AI for your work, and you must stand by your work. The meat between these two mandates are still being fleshed out.
deleted 18d ago
[deleted]
__MatrixMan__ 18d ago
"This works for me, but I need help understanding why, because maybe it would help others" is a legitimate position to be in--has been since long before LLMs. I think we miss out on something when we ignore that position. I'm not saying that anybody should be obligated to review large volumes of low confidence code... just that we should not make policies that ignore shades of gray which, with some collaboration, could bear fruit.
- oldmanhorton 18d ago
  The change with this justification absolutely exists and has existed for a long time, but this justification only works for small changes (in the past and still today). Don’t come to me with a huge refactor or new feature and this explanation, which is happening more and more recently (it’s an easy strawman to make and hard to prove, but I certainly see it in practice).
- blm126 18d ago
  I think the key thing you are missing here is that most successful open source maintainers don’t lack expertise, they lack time. They are generally capable of improving their projects in any direction they want without help. Mentoring new contributors is basically always a loss in the short term as far as the maintainer is concerned. The project does get improved, but it generally takes longer than if they did it by themselves from scratch, and the improvements might be in an area they don’t much care about. The payoff for the maintainers only ever happened in the long term if the mentorship succeeded and they get a viable independent long term contributor.
shimman 18d ago
What happens when the people "responsible" for the code just walk away?

This is the way it should've always been. I don't care what tool you use, but you'd better be ready to stand by and explain the results if necessary.

by oooyay 18d ago

This is the way it should've always been. I don't care what tool you use, but you'd better be ready to stand by and explain the results if necessary.

dguest 18d ago

Are there examples of anyone discussing this and reaching other conclusions? We've come to the same conclusion in our organization and while it felt like it needed to be discussed and stated, I've never heard of anyone coming to a different conclusion. [EDIT: I was referring specifically to the idea that you have to stand by the code that you write. Is anyone deciding on a policy that says "the AI did it" is a valid excuse for breaking code?]

internet2000 18d ago
> Are there examples of anyone discussing this and reaching other conclusions? Yes. Very notably: https://ziglang.org/code-of-conduct/ https://ziglang.org/code-of-conduct/
- sodapopcan 18d ago
  On the opposite side or the noteable spectrum, look up "Steve Yegge wants you to stop looking at your code." He said it in a video interview, though plenty of summaries online of exact wording and ideas. Though it's being argued that you could still be responsible for it without looking at it?
  - rapind 18d ago
    Extremes on both sides. I'd wager were moving in Yegge's direction though, like it or not. > Though it's being argued that you could still be responsible for it without looking at it? If you have a much test coverage as SQLite, I'd be tempted to trust it, and I think that's where we are headed. Someone still needs to define these guardrails though, so IMO the developers job is just mutating into something else, but is still necessary. Long term, who knows.
    - Topfi 18d ago
      For me, it’s not a question of whether I like it, nor where we might move in the future, but purely what is proven currently. In my experience, as in my evals, any model, including notably Fable 5 and GPT-5.6 Sol can and indeed do produce code that does not consider many edge cases, can be hard to maintain (especially Sol though it’s output has become markedly better with recent changes to Codex) and sometimes introduce bugs with visibly apparent issues. Existing test coverage doesn’t necessarily prevent such issues when changes or additions are made. The idea that models tend to gravitate towards the house style without major CI based restrictions also has not born fruit in my book. More, I have found even the frontier models amazing at utterly deviating from established standards and tests, what lint, tc and co don’t catch the model will take to introduce code that feels and reads like it does not fits with the rest. Models also still can have major task adherence issues, so even a perfectly well scoped, well considered prompt that covers all situations and coverage can, in many scenarios lead to output users may not expect or notice without reading code. Seen it a lot, just lost some blood and tears to a very straight front end implementation task that I ended up applying manually cause both Sol and Fable struggle to copy a few dozen HTML/JS/CSS snippets properly into a slightly obscure codebase, despite the reference being fully featured and even using the same token scheme, etc… We also see such issues in what labs deliver in their own software products. We are not at the stage where a human shouldn’t sign off on code that they have tested and understood. A hypothetical future, I don’t really care for, we’d notice when labs stop shipping easily apparent bugs, though even then, I’d still feel there is a while in between that and not needing to assess the output anymore. There is, in my mind, no need for this “narrative shifting”, overtone window (don’t get me started on the idea of applying that to what should be a purely technical discussion), convince the unbelievers nonesense that some spend their time on. If models could provide code that didn’t necessitate review, there’d be no one needing to argue that case. If and when they can, we’ll know it, but not because of those espousing this currently.
      - nick__m 18d ago
        Sol and Fable are not doers, they are thinkers. Using them to "copy a few dozen HTML/JS/CSS snippets properly into a slightly obscure codebase, despite the reference being fully featured" is one of the most ineffective possible usage of those model. What you described is a job for luna. Also I suspect you overprompt, with GPT-5.6 (sol, terra and luna), a lot's of what's used to be mandatory in the AGENT.md is redondant at best and frequantly actively harmful.
  - scotty79 18d ago
    > Though it's being argued that you could still be responsible for it without looking at it? Works for ToS and software and media licenses. Allegedly.
    - sodapopcan 18d ago
      HA! Touché.
      - scotty79 18d ago
        That might be an interesting parallel. Maybe code becomes like legal documents. Binding but inscrutable, full of small mistakes and not really tailored for human ingestion.
        kwarcode 18d ago
        like legal documents, software is best avoided wherever possible
- throwaway2037 17d ago
  > No LLMs for finding bugs. This is so dumb. How can they know if someone used an LLMs to find bug or debug a bug? In short: They cannot. LLMs are an excellent tool for debugging error messages.
nicoburns 18d ago
Yep, in both directions. Some projects ban use of AI entirely. Others are happy to live with slop.
bodge5000 18d ago
As others have said there are other conclusions going both ways (though I do think most settle on as you said), though one very fair conclusion I came across is that it's not allowed because the whole issue of copyright is still somewhat unresolved, and though its fine right now, that could (probably wont, but could) massively backfire later.
Aurornis 18d ago
Yes. There are pockets of hardline anti-LLM policies for various reasons. SourceHut bans LLM generated code from their platform https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49461724 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49461724 The Asahi Linux project bans LLMs. Unfortunate as LLM reverse engineering and driver writing would bring Linux to more Mac models much faster. The Zig project rejects LLM based contributions. Some of these policies were introduced when LLMs were really bad at writing code and haven’t been revisited. Some groups don’t care about the quality and object on moral or copyright grounds.
- KennyBlanken 18d ago
  > Some groups don’t care about the quality and object on moral or copyright grounds. Precisely why Debian Project's decision is both baffling and infuriating. I hope Debian forks over this. They have severely lost their way.
  - pessimizer 18d ago
    Debian gives attribution to every single open source project in existence that is capable of running on Linux, and is Free Software. It is exactly the project that shouldn't worry about copyright. The "moral" argument I haven't even heard. It's just people pouring out invective, likely imo because Ruby-monkey is not going to be a $150K job anymore. I have problems with these companies, but companies who are problematic can be targeted specifically, and somehow everybody started using Facebook's frontend framework and Microsoft's IDE, all on MacBooks, and this is what they're throwing a shitfit about. To me it's narcissism, not a coherent moral objection. If you hate these companies (as you should), there are open models. But most didn't object to anything that didn't threaten their income.
  - inigyou 18d ago
    Note that Debian is mostly an aggregation of packages. There's nothing wrong with Debian importing a package that was written by AI, if it's something that people want to install. The questionable copyright of that package does not taint Debian as a whole. Debian allows public domain packages, so it wouldn't even be a DFSG violation. There's also nothing wrong with an AI-written install script (if it's correct) because those are likely too trivial to copyright anyway. What are your specific worries? Mine is brain rot.
matheusmoreira 18d ago
Many. https://lobste.rs/s/29pm2f/llm_generated_submissions_should_be https://lobste.rs/s/29pm2f/llm_generated_submissions_should_... https://sourcehut.org/blog/2026-08-27-tos-changes-and-llms/ https://sourcehut.org/blog/2026-08-27-tos-changes-and-llms/ https://blog.codeberg.org/protecting-our-floss-commons-from-llms.html https://blog.codeberg.org/protecting-our-floss-commons-from-... https://ziglang.org/code-of-conduct/#strict-no-llm-no-ai-policy https://ziglang.org/code-of-conduct/#strict-no-llm-no-ai-pol... https://lwn.net/Articles/1086041/ https://lwn.net/Articles/1086041/ https://asahilinux.org/docs/project/policies/slop/ https://asahilinux.org/docs/project/policies/slop/
orthogonal_cube 18d ago
> I was referring specifically to the idea that you have to stand by the code that you write. Any serious entity which has experts handling code will do so, yes. My employer, for example, has various teams of actual developers and others with a significant number of “not really” devs who found their way into DevOps roles. The teams with seasoned developers hold the author responsible as to the integrity and quality of code, regardless of tools used. They won’t hesitate to call someone out directly for low-quality submissions in Teams channels. The teams that have a lot of “not really” devs will blame the model for issues that surface. Of course, they’re also pushing to not have to write any code directly by FY2028, but instead have models do it as part of an internal AI initiative. Somehow the idea of using AI to generate reports, process reports, write code, test and deploy got signed off.
bogdanoff_2 18d ago
I could imagine (in a commercial organization) a case for something like: "we're obviously going to be relying more and more on AI, so if bad code comes out of it, instead of just shaming the engineer, let's study together what happened -- what was the chat context, the model, the system prompt, etc... ? What seemed to cause the issue? What processes or systems could we put in place to improve it? Etc... -- and then use the learnings to improve AI use throughout the whole org."

sergiotapia 18d ago

These are unprecedented times, I think every single company on the planet is figuring our what AI means to them. I think the dust has kind of settled though for engineering teams on: You must use AI for your work, and you must stand by your work. The meat between these two mandates are still being fleshed out.

deleted 18d ago

[deleted]

__MatrixMan__ 18d ago

"This works for me, but I need help understanding why, because maybe it would help others" is a legitimate position to be in--has been since long before LLMs. I think we miss out on something when we ignore that position. I'm not saying that anybody should be obligated to review large volumes of low confidence code... just that we should not make policies that ignore shades of gray which, with some collaboration, could bear fruit.

oldmanhorton 18d ago
The change with this justification absolutely exists and has existed for a long time, but this justification only works for small changes (in the past and still today). Don’t come to me with a huge refactor or new feature and this explanation, which is happening more and more recently (it’s an easy strawman to make and hard to prove, but I certainly see it in practice).
blm126 18d ago
I think the key thing you are missing here is that most successful open source maintainers don’t lack expertise, they lack time. They are generally capable of improving their projects in any direction they want without help. Mentoring new contributors is basically always a loss in the short term as far as the maintainer is concerned. The project does get improved, but it generally takes longer than if they did it by themselves from scratch, and the improvements might be in an area they don’t much care about. The payoff for the maintainers only ever happened in the long term if the mentorship succeeded and they get a viable independent long term contributor.

shimman 18d ago

What happens when the people "responsible" for the code just walk away?