There’s a problem with that. The vast majority of Linux users are probably more tech savvy than average but I’d wager not all of them or even the vast majority have the skills to vet the code.
Lots of the people in the gaming space who are having Lutris suggested/recommended to them are not going in to check that code for problems. They install the flatpak on move on with their lives.
It appears (from what I’ve read which isn’t necessarily the end all be all) that the people taking exception to the use of AI to code Lutris are doing so because they do decompile and vet code.
My understanding is that it’s harder to get AI code in general because when it hallucinates it may do so in ways that appear correct on the surface, and or do so in ways that don’t even give a significant indication of what that code is attempting to do. This is the problem with vibe coding in general from my understanding and it becomes harder and harder even for senior code engineers to check the output because of the lack of a frame of reference.
You’re asking people who don’t have the skills to ignore people who do have the skills who are sounding the alarm.
I get that this person is a single person writing code and disseminating it for free. I get that we should be thankful for free and open software. I fully understand why this person might use AI to help with coding.
I understand that they are upset about the backlash. But that was a very much foreseeable consequence of the credits they gave the AI (a choice they made), and honestly the use of AI (which might have been called out later on if they hadn’t credited it).
They shot themselves in the foot with the part of their response that was flippant and a “fuck you” to anyone who might find the use of AI concerning.
There’s also the fact that AI is something that a lot of people in the Linux community at large seem to already be boycotting and boycotting derivatives of it make sense.
Just because you create something for free doesn’t mean people have to use it. Or that people aren’t free to boycott it.
I think the simple fact is that some of the people in this thread don’t understand is that the people they’re asking to vet the code don’t know how.
They may mean that the people who can vet code should do so before making a fuss about the AI written portions of it, but I don’t know that most of the people in opposition to their comments understand that context.
I haven’t coded anything since the 90’s. I know HTML and basic CSS and that’s it. I wouldn’t have known where to start without guides to explain what commands in Linux do and how they work together. Growing up with various versions of Windows and DOS, I’d still consider myself a novice computer user. I absolutely do know how to go into command line and make things happen. But I wouldn’t know where to start to make a program. It’s not part of my skill set.
Most users are like that. They engage with only parts of a thing. It’s why so many people these days are computer illiterate due to the rise of smartphone usage and apps for everything.
It’d be like me asking a frequent flyer to inspect a plane engine for damage or figure out why the landing gear doesn’t retract. A lot of people wouldn’t know where to start.
I fully agree that other coders on the internet who frequent places like GitHub and make it a point to vet the code of other devs who provide their code for free probably should vet the code before they make assumptions about its quality. And I fully agree that deliberately stirring shit without actually contributing anything meaningful to the community or the project is really just messed up behavior.
But the way I see it there’s two different groups and they have very different views of this situation.
The people who can’t code are consumers. Their contribution is to use the software if they want, and if it works for them to spread by word of mouth what they like about it. Maybe to donate if they can and the dev accepts donations.
If those people choose to boycott, it’ll be on the basis of their moral feelings about the use of AI or at the recommendation of the second group due to quality.
The second group are the peer reviewers so to speak and they can and should both vet the code and sound the alarm if there’s something wrong.
I suppose there’s a third subset of people in the case of FOSS work who can and often do help with projects and I wonder if that is better or worse for the reasons listed in the thread like poorly human written code and simple mistakes.
Humans certainly aren’t infallible. But at least they can tell you how they got the output they got or the reason why they did x. You can have a rational conversation with a human being and for the most part they aren’t going to make something up unless they have an ulterior motive.
Perhaps breaking things down into tiny chunks makes AI better or it’s outputs more usable. Maybe there’s a 'sweet spot".
But I think people also get worried that what happens a lot is people who use AI often start to offload their own thinking onto it and that’s dangerous for many reasons.
This person also admits to having depression. Depression can affect how you respond to information, how well you actually understand the information in front of you. It can make you forget things you know, or make things that much harder to recall.
I know that from experience. So in this case does the AI have more potential to help or do harm?
There’s a lot to this. I have not personally used Lutris, but before this happened I wouldn’t have thought twice about saying that I’ve heard good things about it if someone asked me for a Heroic launcher style software for Linux.
But just like the Ladybird fork of Firefox I don’t know that I feel comfortable suggesting it if this is the state of things. For the same reason I don’t currently feel comfortable recommending Windows 11 or Chrome.
There are so many sensitive things that OS’s, and web browsers handle that people take for granted. If nobody was sounding the alarm about those, I feel like nothing would get better. By contrast, Lutris isn’t swimming in a big pond of sensitive information but it is running on people’s hardware and they should have both the right to be informed and the right to choose.