I've felt similar to the author, a sort of despair that the only point of writing software now is to prop up the valuation of AI companies, that quality no longer matters, etc.
Then I realized that nothings stopping me from writing software how I want and feel is best. I've stopped using LLMs completely and couldn't be happier. I'm not even struggling at work or feeling like I'm behind. I work on a number of personal projects too, all without LLMs, and I couldn't feel better.
MIT isn’t “weak” because it allows LLM training; it’s weak because it puts zero obligations on the recipient.
Blocking “LLM training” in a license feels satisfying, but I’ve run into three practical issues while benchmarking models for clients:
1. Auditability — You can grep for GPL strings; you can’t grep a trillion-token corpus to prove your repo wasn’t in it. Enforcement ends up resting on whistle-blowers, not license text.
2. Community hard-forks — “No-AI” clauses split the ecosystem. Half the modern Python stack depends on MIT/BSD; if even 5 % flips to an LLM-ban variant, reproducible builds become a nightmare.
3. Misaligned incentives — Training is no longer the expensive part. At today’s prices a single 70 B checkpoint costs about \$60 k to fine-tune, but running inference at scale can exceed that each day. A license that focuses on training ignores the bigger capture point.
A model company that actually wants to give back can do so via attribution, upstream fixes, and funding small maintainers (things AGPL/SSPL rarely compel). Until we can fingerprint data provenance, social pressure—or carrot contracts like RAIL terms—may move the needle more than another GPL fork.
Happy to be proven wrong; I’d love to see a case where a “no-LLM” clause was enforced and led to meaningful contributions rather than a silent ignore.
This is also a good opportunity to remember that MIT is not a strong enough open source license, and if you want to prevent corporations making money off your work, make it AGPL or even SSPL, plus a statement that AI training creates a derivative work (the latter may or may not have any legal effect).
MIT is a donation of your labour to corporations. With a stronger license, at least they're more likely to contribute back or to pay you for a looser license.
Tangentially, I wonder if logins and click-throughs can help address this on the legal front.
If you set up a login flow with a click through that explicitly sets the terms of access, specifying no cost for access by a person, and some large cost for access by AI.
Stepping past this prompt into the content would require an AI to either lie, committing both fraud and unauthorized access of content.. or behave truthfully, opting in the proprietor of the API to the associated costs.
In either case, the site operator can then go after the company doing the scraping to collect the fees as specified in the copyright contract (and perhaps some additional delta of punitive fines if content was accessed fraudulently).
> MIT is a donation of your labour to corporations.
Unless you are willing to spend yourself into financial ruin pursuing legal action against some faceless megacorp - it literally doesn't matter what license you use.
I've lived enough to know there is "what should be" and then there is what actually happens in reality. We don't live in a reality where everyone just does things out of the goodness of their heart...
Adding some text to your project, hosted on a public website for all to see means some people will take your code regardless of the license or your intent - and, realistically, what are you going to do about it? Nothing...
So... please, let's get off this GPL high-horse. It's not some end-all-be-all holy text that solves all of the world's problems.
Perhaps many would have refused to donate if they knew that the project would be archived in a year. Collecting for audit and then archiving the project is, in a way, a violation of expectations.
Would they have refused to donate if they knew the author would be hit by a bus in a year? Or hired by someone who refused to allow them to continue working on it?
I don't think the author had explicit plans to do this a year ago.
(I'm not trying to throw shades at the author. I know they have no obligation to maintain an open source project. I'm simply having a hard time gasping what's happening.)
Seems like the author is abandoning software because in his opinion due to AI explosion employers don't care anymore about code quality and only quality.
I don't get it either, because that has always been the case, thus most of his post is borderline non sense.
Imo, what happened is that he took the opportunity of him entering academia to vent some stuff and quit maintaining his project.
> I don't get it either, because that has always been the case, thus most of his post is borderline non sense.
Yes, making software development cheaper has been the main priority of the industry for a long time. The new development is that there's now a magic "do what I want" button that obviously won't quite do what you want but it's so cheap (for corporations, not humanity...) that you might as well pretend it does. (Compared to paying professionals who might even care about doing a good job, that is.)
He doesn't have interest in the project anymore. He didn't have a long time, and now that he stopped with software development and gone into the academia- he certainly doesn't have interest. Is that hard to get?
He explained the reasons he went into the academia, which is because of the AI, and AI is not the reason he stopped with development.
- The author enjoyed writing quality open source code
- The author needs to make strategic decisions for his own career and livelihood and he doesn't have enough bandwidth for both
I don't feel he is happy about the decision he needs to make and he is pointing to something dark happening to software development and open source.
Now this is not new, and didn't start with LLM. I am sure if we ask the OpenBSD devs what they think about the modern mainstream open source ecosystem, docker, full stack development, etc. they see it like we might look at LLM generated code.
This is just a question how much of a purist you are.
I was thinking exactly the same : I also don't get it (even though I totally get that someone may lose motivation to work on a project, and certainly has no obligation to continue. But this justification sounds a bit weird to me).
Could this mean that he has been approached by some "men in black" asking to insert some backdoor in the code or to stop working on it, together with a gag order ? (actually I also wondered the same a long time ago with Truecrypt, even though to my knowledge no backdoor has ever been found in further audits...)
I like the creativity behind this. And I feel sorry for them that the current wave of AI has lead to them abandoning their pet project. Maybe they will pick up the project again, once the dust has settled. At the end, at least for me, they are pet projects for exactly that reason: An escape route from the day to day business. One should still be proud of what they achieved in their spare time. I don’t care if my job requires me to use K8s, Claude or Docker. Or if that’s considered "industry standard".
I'm starting to feel kinda old and out of the loop. Could someone please explain the conversational style of this post?
It begins with a prompt directed at Gemini, followed by what appears to be an AI-generated response. Are these actual AI responses or is the developer writing their parting message in a whimsical way? I'm genuinely confused. Help much appreciated!
This is a post framed in medias res, from the perspective of the developer, as portrayed by themselves, asking an LLM to construct the post that they post immediately afterwards.
I'm unsure if the post is actually created by Gemini or the developer's imitation. I suspect the latter.
It's something of a satire, although presumably actually comes from a "conversation" with Gemini (because who would bother writing a bot's verbose and uninsightful responses like that?)
In regards to "As long as you can run the code, archiving this project means nothing, really." I think this section misses the main concern of archived software - what happens when one of those bugs is run into (either something not yet noticed or something due to external changes down the road) and there is no actively maintained version (which could include one you're willing to hack st yourself) to just update to?
The simpler the software the less urgent the concern but "I haven't had a problem in the last 2 years" is something I could say of most software which I end up needing to update, and it makes sense to make myself able to do so at a convenient time rather than the moment the problem occurs.
This project seems popular enough I'm sure eaiting a bit and seeing who the successor project is would be a safe bet as well though.
LLMs are glorified "LMGTFY" tools. AI assistance doesn't make people experts at anything. Some genz vibe coder isn't getting your job guys calm the heck down.
I think people who are afraid that AI coding is going to replace them should try using it a bit seriously. They should be quickly reassured.
What worries me more (on coding related impact of AI - because of course all the impact on fake news and democracies are much more worrying IMO) is having to deal with code written by others using AI (yes, people can write shity code on their own, but with manageable pace)
I'm not worried that LLMs, as they currently and foreseeably (i.e. 18 months) are, will be a good substitute for high quality developers like me.
But oh boy have I seen a lot of mediocre coders get away with mediocrity for a long time — there's a big risk that employers won't care about the quality, just the price, for long enough that the developments in AI are no longer foreseeable.
As someone whos a bit older, and remembers the latter wave of offshoring, I can tell you that quality doesn't matter.
Yes, fake news driving by AI slop is a big problem, but that is only enabled by social media personality fiefdoms.
The shit is going to hit the fan if 10% of the highest paid US working population is laid off for AI outsourcing. That kind of social change brings revolution. and thats before the fracture of US social fabric.
Because a lot of devs were getting a free ride off the back of ten years of zirp money, and firing people is a sure fire way to pump your share options.
With the .com crashes through 2000 and 2001, it wasn't until well after 2005-2008 until pay had started to come back up, and still without the crazy signing bonuses. We're still in the down trend, and the industry is bigger today, so longer/larger impact.
Not only that, but it's pushing market rates down significantly. I'm making about 60% of what I made the past few years... I could only handle not having income for so long. I was juggling two jobs for a while, but just couldn't manage it. Hoping to pick up some side work to fill the gaps. Have to face it, a lot of the high pay contract software jobs have just dried up for now.
I’m concerned that AI slop will affect open source projects by tilting the already unfavorable maintainer-contributor balance even more towards low-quality contributions.
Daniel Stenberg (from the curl project) has blogged a bunch about AI slop seeping into vulnerability reports[1], and if the same happens to code contributions, documentation and so forth that can help turning a fun hobby project into something you dread maintaing.
You don't need an equal replacement to lose your job, just a good enough and more economical one.
Lots of graphic designers lost their jobs or at least a lot of their work now that image generation models have gotten decent at rendering text. Now any idiot can whip up some advertising graphics at half the quality of a designer, but in 1/10th the time and 1/100th the cost (or even for free!). It doesn't matter that it looks like ass and makes no sense in context, they produced an acceptable result for a fraction of the cost.
Quality does not matter in the market, it never has. Whoever can produce the most slop at the lowest price nearly always wins. Yes, there are exceptions, many of them even. But not enough to employ nearly as many of us as there are now.
The fear may just be a result of thinking about who is making the decisions. I know I'm good, my peers know I'm good. But how far up in management chain does that knowledge go?
Considering the author is explicitly going into AI research, has an AI-generated profile picture, and claims front-and-centre on their website they are excited about LLMs, I don’t think that analogy works. Or rather, it is like a knitter throwing away their needles to eagerly go work in the loom manufacturing industry.
I dont think many people would be excited at the thought of going from handcrafted artisan knitting to babying machines in the knitting factory. You need a certain type of autism to be into the latter.
So basically, he’s leaving software development because the job market is bad. Instead, he’s joining AI research which (currently) has a more healthy job market. That seems pretty reasonable to me, given that even widely used open source projects are only barely financially viable. Many open source projects end when the author finally gets a girlfriend, this one ends for a new job. Seems like a good outcome to me. Plus truly fascinating presentation.
Where a precipitous drop in earning power, combined with longer working hours, high inflation and large companies making people unemployed cause large social unrest.
As a complete outsider looking at this, without additional context, I just have a hard time believing there aren’t more reasons, they’re just not willing to share them:
* I’m not passionate about it anymore
* I’m tired
* I want to repurpose my free time
* I’m not adding enough value compared to other options now available
In the end, it’s pointless to argue about why someone feels the way they do. If they are firm on their stance, don’t waste anybody’s time, no matter how irrational their argument is. Give up trying to be right.
Probably this guy should have just stopped engaging directly with some of the dialogue, but the fact that he is exploring the idea of trying to hand it off in some manner tells me he really does care about the project.
Readit News
Then I realized that nothings stopping me from writing software how I want and feel is best. I've stopped using LLMs completely and couldn't be happier. I'm not even struggling at work or feeling like I'm behind. I work on a number of personal projects too, all without LLMs, and I couldn't feel better.
Blocking “LLM training” in a license feels satisfying, but I’ve run into three practical issues while benchmarking models for clients:
1. Auditability — You can grep for GPL strings; you can’t grep a trillion-token corpus to prove your repo wasn’t in it. Enforcement ends up resting on whistle-blowers, not license text.
2. Community hard-forks — “No-AI” clauses split the ecosystem. Half the modern Python stack depends on MIT/BSD; if even 5 % flips to an LLM-ban variant, reproducible builds become a nightmare.
3. Misaligned incentives — Training is no longer the expensive part. At today’s prices a single 70 B checkpoint costs about \$60 k to fine-tune, but running inference at scale can exceed that each day. A license that focuses on training ignores the bigger capture point.
A model company that actually wants to give back can do so via attribution, upstream fixes, and funding small maintainers (things AGPL/SSPL rarely compel). Until we can fingerprint data provenance, social pressure—or carrot contracts like RAIL terms—may move the needle more than another GPL fork.
Happy to be proven wrong; I’d love to see a case where a “no-LLM” clause was enforced and led to meaningful contributions rather than a silent ignore.
MIT is a donation of your labour to corporations. With a stronger license, at least they're more likely to contribute back or to pay you for a looser license.
If you want a permissive license MIT is perfectly reasonable. If you want more restrictions or stronger copy-left then don't pick MIT.
No, MIT is a donation of your labor to the public. That includes corporations, yes, but it is not only corporations.
If you set up a login flow with a click through that explicitly sets the terms of access, specifying no cost for access by a person, and some large cost for access by AI.
Stepping past this prompt into the content would require an AI to either lie, committing both fraud and unauthorized access of content.. or behave truthfully, opting in the proprietor of the API to the associated costs.
In either case, the site operator can then go after the company doing the scraping to collect the fees as specified in the copyright contract (and perhaps some additional delta of punitive fines if content was accessed fraudulently).
Unless you are willing to spend yourself into financial ruin pursuing legal action against some faceless megacorp - it literally doesn't matter what license you use.
I've lived enough to know there is "what should be" and then there is what actually happens in reality. We don't live in a reality where everyone just does things out of the goodness of their heart...
Adding some text to your project, hosted on a public website for all to see means some people will take your code regardless of the license or your intent - and, realistically, what are you going to do about it? Nothing...
So... please, let's get off this GPL high-horse. It's not some end-all-be-all holy text that solves all of the world's problems.
Surely a recent audit only increases the odds of someone assuming responsibility for a fork. Knowing there is a solid baseline to proceed from.
Perhaps many would have refused to donate if they knew that the project would be archived in a year. Collecting for audit and then archiving the project is, in a way, a violation of expectations.
The more and more you start modifying code after the audit, the more and more useless the audit becomes.
I don't think the author had explicit plans to do this a year ago.
(I'm not trying to throw shades at the author. I know they have no obligation to maintain an open source project. I'm simply having a hard time gasping what's happening.)
I don't get it either, because that has always been the case, thus most of his post is borderline non sense.
Imo, what happened is that he took the opportunity of him entering academia to vent some stuff and quit maintaining his project.
Yes, making software development cheaper has been the main priority of the industry for a long time. The new development is that there's now a magic "do what I want" button that obviously won't quite do what you want but it's so cheap (for corporations, not humanity...) that you might as well pretend it does. (Compared to paying professionals who might even care about doing a good job, that is.)
He explained the reasons he went into the academia, which is because of the AI, and AI is not the reason he stopped with development.
- The author enjoyed writing quality open source code
- The author needs to make strategic decisions for his own career and livelihood and he doesn't have enough bandwidth for both
I don't feel he is happy about the decision he needs to make and he is pointing to something dark happening to software development and open source.
Now this is not new, and didn't start with LLM. I am sure if we ask the OpenBSD devs what they think about the modern mainstream open source ecosystem, docker, full stack development, etc. they see it like we might look at LLM generated code. This is just a question how much of a purist you are.
Could this mean that he has been approached by some "men in black" asking to insert some backdoor in the code or to stop working on it, together with a gag order ? (actually I also wondered the same a long time ago with Truecrypt, even though to my knowledge no backdoor has ever been found in further audits...)
My projects, my rules.
It begins with a prompt directed at Gemini, followed by what appears to be an AI-generated response. Are these actual AI responses or is the developer writing their parting message in a whimsical way? I'm genuinely confused. Help much appreciated!
I'm unsure if the post is actually created by Gemini or the developer's imitation. I suspect the latter.
The simpler the software the less urgent the concern but "I haven't had a problem in the last 2 years" is something I could say of most software which I end up needing to update, and it makes sense to make myself able to do so at a convenient time rather than the moment the problem occurs.
This project seems popular enough I'm sure eaiting a bit and seeing who the successor project is would be a safe bet as well though.
What worries me more (on coding related impact of AI - because of course all the impact on fake news and democracies are much more worrying IMO) is having to deal with code written by others using AI (yes, people can write shity code on their own, but with manageable pace)
But oh boy have I seen a lot of mediocre coders get away with mediocrity for a long time — there's a big risk that employers won't care about the quality, just the price, for long enough that the developments in AI are no longer foreseeable.
Yes, fake news driving by AI slop is a big problem, but that is only enabled by social media personality fiefdoms.
The shit is going to hit the fan if 10% of the highest paid US working population is laid off for AI outsourcing. That kind of social change brings revolution. and thats before the fracture of US social fabric.
Then why isn't the software job market recovering
Not only that, but it's pushing market rates down significantly. I'm making about 60% of what I made the past few years... I could only handle not having income for so long. I was juggling two jobs for a while, but just couldn't manage it. Hoping to pick up some side work to fill the gaps. Have to face it, a lot of the high pay contract software jobs have just dried up for now.
Daniel Stenberg (from the curl project) has blogged a bunch about AI slop seeping into vulnerability reports[1], and if the same happens to code contributions, documentation and so forth that can help turning a fun hobby project into something you dread maintaing.
[1] https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2025/07/14/death-by-a-thousand-s...
Dead Comment
Lots of graphic designers lost their jobs or at least a lot of their work now that image generation models have gotten decent at rendering text. Now any idiot can whip up some advertising graphics at half the quality of a designer, but in 1/10th the time and 1/100th the cost (or even for free!). It doesn't matter that it looks like ass and makes no sense in context, they produced an acceptable result for a fraction of the cost.
Quality does not matter in the market, it never has. Whoever can produce the most slop at the lowest price nearly always wins. Yes, there are exceptions, many of them even. But not enough to employ nearly as many of us as there are now.
This to me is the crux of the whole thing.
Almost like a knitter throwing away their needles because they saw a loom.
What your grasping for is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-loom_riots
Where a precipitous drop in earning power, combined with longer working hours, high inflation and large companies making people unemployed cause large social unrest.
And yeah, I can see why they rioted.
* I’m not passionate about it anymore
* I’m tired
* I want to repurpose my free time
* I’m not adding enough value compared to other options now available
In the end, it’s pointless to argue about why someone feels the way they do. If they are firm on their stance, don’t waste anybody’s time, no matter how irrational their argument is. Give up trying to be right.
Probably this guy should have just stopped engaging directly with some of the dialogue, but the fact that he is exploring the idea of trying to hand it off in some manner tells me he really does care about the project.
Deleted Comment