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The Rsync maintainer, Andrew Tridgell, used Claude Opus to add a Discord link to the README in one of his recent commits
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this post was submitted on 31 May 2026
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Fuck AI
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AI, in this case, refers to LLMs, GPT technology, and anything listed as "AI" meant to increase market valuations.
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We dont have the capacity to replace like 50% of all open source devs. We just have to hope that they get their shit together again.
I mean. What they need is help. Other people who can code who are willing to contribute time to the help maintain the project.
Burnout is real and I don't think "getting their shit together" actually fixes anything. The next time they burn out we wash rinse repeat?
Considering the pool of open source power maintainers is shrinking year by year and no fresh blood seems to come forward, I wonder what next time will look like? If you add the frank hostility from the community I don't see what could motivate people to start helping on high profile projects
That's my question about people who are now looking to jump to a fork. When the fork maintainer can't keep up, what's happens?
I wish I did have a solution to put forward to get people interested in helping on these kinds of projects (or the relevant skills). I don't have an answer, but this really just sucks.
It's up to them how they develop their completely free software. If you're not happy with it and can't stop using it, you can fork it. If you can't do it yourself, you pay someone else to. If it suddenly seems like paying for 50% of your FOSS is too much, then consider that the FOSS devs themselves pay for most of it with their largely uncompensated free time and probably want to have a bit more of said free time back.
How do they make money? Like they're consultants and make plenty of money and then spend some free time maintaining OSS projects?
Usually they're just regular software engineers who spend some of their free time on FOSS. Very few projects earn enough in donations to pay salaries.
I don't see anyone here quietly hoping
Indeed.
What I see: A world class software engineer (Samba, rsync, linux, and more) is learning how to use the latest tech that is vastly changing the industry he works in. It would be both foolish and irresponsible to not learn it and embrace it responsibly. If anyone is in a good position to direct and judge the output of LLMs, it will be engineers like Andrew who have spent their life applying critical thinking and good judgement.
And on the opposing side, we see a bunch of droll jammerlappies, pitching tents on the side of a highway, waving their fists at the world zooming by.
Keep outsourcing your critical thinking to a glorified autocorrect. Hope that works out for you.
Keep outsourcing your critical thinking to a glorified internet mob turning against open source maintainers, one of our last significant allies in the field. Hope that works out for you.
Lol nice comeback
i think it's as shitty as the comment it replies to
One could just as well argue that books / written knowledge is a crutch that prevents people from learning.
Assuming everyone using a tool is outsourcing their thinking is daft, and casting unfounded aspersions on others isn't exactly a model of critical thinking either. lol
Truly spoken like someone who's never actually read a book before.
Is THAT the best you could come up with? Oh dear.
Come up with? Did you think I was aiming for some kind of pithy comeback?
You literally said that books are a crutch that prevent people from learning. Something an illiterate person would say.
Perhaps you should work on your english comprehension.
jbloggs, could you try making this argument? I really want to see what it looks like.
IIRC, the ancient greek philosophers took a swing at writing, claiming it would weaken memory/increase reliance on written texts to create an illusion of knowledge, plus it can't engage in dialogue which they considered a requirement to develop true knowledge.
IMHO, there's some narrow merit to the arguments, but on the whole, writing has helped to democratise knowledge, and serves as an important tool in education.
The greek philosophers are largely wrong for reasons that can be explained and given.
Speaking requires mental work.
Writing requires mental work.
Reading (such that you can speak) requires mental work.
AI use requires nothing.
This fourth one is not like the other three. "Democratizing knowledge" has nothing to do with it.
Worse even because they're not waving their fists at "the world", they're waving them at a person.
Honestly I would not be shocked if years from now we discover these harassment campaigns are funded by Thiel.