NetBSD may have found a new role: The AI-free FOSS OS | Hacker News Reader

NetBSD may have found a new role: The AI-free FOSS OS

theregister.com

34 pointspjmlp13 comments

Haiku OS is similarly hard-line about this, and is also starting from the point of an extremely clean codebase.

Neat stuff, though I can't say AI policy is the biggest priority when I choose projects to use, plenty of projects are using it in a measured and sane way without needing a complete prohibition.

> I can't say AI policy is the biggest priority when I choose projects to use

I wouldn't expect it to be on HN. This place is a den of AI iniquity.

But for a lot of people out there, slop-free software is an increasingly rare and desirable thing.

> This place is a den of AI iniquity.

The downvotes demonstrate my point. :-) Go on, chaps.

Good, I can feel your anger! I am defenceless. Take your weapon. Vote me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!

I've seen AI writing better code than many senior developers because the person using AI was better at directing. So the point about only humans creating "clean code" is nonsense. Most junior and even senior developers don't create clean code.

While I agree, it's not because it's clean code that it is free from slop, untested bugs.

Have you ever tested an app written by AI after reading its code ?

The projects I'm referring to are ones that have a complete prohibition on "slop". Any serious project would, which is why you should check whether it's a serious project instead of worrying about the specifics of their AI policy.

As long as Linux doesnt fully commit to vibe coding i dont see a reason to switch, but if it ever does its essentially proprietary software that only AI companies with their frontier models can modify, so i hope they dont

Given the linux kernel is being forced to remove AI attribution notes. Welcome to the end times.

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-Dropping-Assisted-By-Req

This will probably lead to the os-free foss ai agent

Oh, cool, thanks for sharing this -- it's one of mine.

This is a project that insists on using CVS so yeah, it's not surprising that they do not try the most modern development techniques

Every project is AI free, until it's not.

NetBSD will soon realize there's very limited value, to put it nicely, in shipping code full of bugs that an LLM would quickly find.

Either that, or a fork that anybody sensible within NetBSD will embrace.

I doubt that they're against an LLM finding bugs; they would simply prefer that a human fixes them.

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