Comment by habitue | Hacker News Reader

Comment by habitue | Hacker News Reader

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I do genuinely appreciate the hard work, and I don't appreciate being told what I appreciate.

Regardless, I think you're also confused.

"How it is being used ... to build cheap distributions on it slapping a different name on front"

I'm sorry but this is literally exactly the thing GPL is designed to allow. I don't understand why this is so confusing.

Copyleft is designed to prevent people from improving on the code and then keeping their changes secret and closed source. That's not what Omarchy or anyone else is doing, they're all already sharing their changes.

Let's walk through it from the Asahi linux perspective so we're all on the same page:

- Asahi makes software licensed MIT

- Omarchy takes that software, slops the AI-iest slop on top.

- Omarchy releases the source code of those changes to Omarchy's users.

- Asahi is mad because they hate AI, but they have no recourse unless Omarchy violates their trademark.

Now compare how it works under GPL:

- Asahi makes software licensed GPL

- Omarchy takes that software, slops the AI-iest slop on top.

- Omarchy releases the source code of those changes to Omarchy's users.

- Asahi is mad because they hate AI, but they have no recourse unless Omarchy violates their trademark.

> the AI-iest slop

Omarchy devs with LLM support have implemented this functionality not available on Asahi:

- TouchID

- M3 GPU

- DisplayPort over USB-C

- demoed DisplayPort over Thunderbolt (WIP)

- deep sleep (0.05W discharge)

- MacBook Neo support

- demoed M4 Pro/mini support (WIP)

If that's slop, then please, sir, I'd like some more slop.

What do you think that list proves? Something more than the LLM being a multiplier of man hours? Have you checked the code or waited to see the severity of bugs? Do you even know which kind of issues Asahi dealt with in the past like the ones related to the speakers that the "dev with an LLM" or the LLM itself would have never guessed existed?

It's ok, here, read the speakers section: https://asahilinux.org/2024/01/fedora-asahi-new/

And also, I see many people forgetting that someone has been accused of taking code from unreleased branches for new features and adding it to the rest as its own.

I'm definitely not anti-genAI since that allows me to focus only on the less boring things but man, some people sound like they never wrote a line of code in their life, zero respect for years of work of someone else. They could have tried building that form scratch... and instead... I wonder why.

> some people

I guess you're talking about me

> sound like they never wrote a line of code in their life

I see. Well, I have, quite a few.

> zero respect for years of work of someone else

Unclear how "respect" is supposed to manifest in this case. Not contributing to open source? Not forking or extending open source?

> They could have tried building that form scratch... and instead... I wonder why.

They could have started from zero, reading the Apple specs and probing the hardware to discover how it works, rather than extending existing code? Why would anyone do that? Surely the goal is to ship software, not chase purity.

No, I'm not talking about you, whoever has really wrote code with at least a modicum of complexity will respect the work of others that did the same.

> Not contributing to open source? Not forking or extending open source?

What? Are you really asking? You keep ignoring that Asahi pointed out some dishonest behavior like integrating parts of code from unreleased branches as their own and so on.

> They could have started from zero, reading the Apple specs and probing the hardware to discover how it works, rather than extending existing code? Why would anyone do that? Surely the goal is to ship software, not chase purity.

There are no apple specs. The hypothetic "could" means nothing.

> "Why would anyone do that?"

They wouldn't. Because they are not capable of doing it.

> Surely the goal is to ship software, not chase purity.

Ok, so they take what they want and are free to criticize those who gifted them the source like idiots. No decency.

The concept above was quite simple: You take code from someone? In addition to following the license also show some appreciations for those that saved you months if not years of development and bug fixing.

Anyway, I'm really convinced that licenses like MIT or BSD have no future or maybe the opensource movement in general, at least for software that was written by humans and not some dumb poser with a model in a weekend.

I'm starting to think that the problem here is just that you don't like the Asahi people for that stupid shit that you americans (or considering the timezone other nationalities infected with the same stupid ideas or simplified view of the world) call "politics"...

Man brought worldviews into this conversation. You sir are being a moron.

> they are not capable of doing it.

So someone who leverages tools is incapable of doing something? To make a good meal, I must raise my own cows instead of going to the butcher.

Anyway, if you do not like AI. That is fine. But do not tell the rest of the world how they are allowed to use it. Some of the most talented people use and leverage AI to increase their velocity. Does that make it slop? What a silly view of the world.

Also stop bringing nationalities into things. It's moronic and makes you look like an idiot.

> Man brought worldviews into this conversation.

Brought what? What does that even mean? Don't daydream on what others think kid and try to come up with better opinions. This whole exchange was a complete waste of time, and the silly stuff you just attempted to write is just the cherry on top.

Imagine trying to explain that you should respect the upstream that gave you code YOU TOOK FOR FREE to a guy that I hope was playing dumb because he doesn't like the lefties. I criticized the polarized thinking and the stupid anglophone modern internet culture, not the nationalities. It's a cancer for the brain.

What a time to be alive, full blown idiocracy, even worse than the movie. I hope that AI (that I use but not like a meat proxy) will help me reduce this kind of interactions. How low has HN fallen, one stupid thread after another.

You, go out an play with the other morons.

Respectfully, you are the moron.

You just wrote word slop. It's ironic you want AI to help reduce these kind of interactions, because so do I. It'll help you understand what is going on, or at least help you write your thoughts so you can actually articulate them well.

Ok stranger, stop commenting, I know you just started but it's already time to stop.

Get yourself some worldview and stop arguing about stupid shit.

I'm well aware of the content of GPL and that it doesn't stop derivative software from being created but please don't phrase it as " this is literally exactly the thing GPL is designed to allow!!", it makes it sound like a desired outcome. Pretty sure that Stallman would find pretty pathetic the kind of derivative I've described.

The right way to handle this would have been for Omarchy to give something back in another form (monetary probably) since Asahi doesn't want their Gen-AI code. Why? Because that's what a good neighbor does with upstream and because frankly I expect they will need more of the Asahi code in the future (if they don't decide to just ask Claude to get it, as Asahi seem to imply they already did). It seems to me that their shitty "community" is just insulting the Asahi people forgetting that without them they wouldn't be running Linux on their Macs.

The only thing that the move to GPL does is forcing them to adopt a compatible license if they need to take more code in the future, but considering the Omarchy is a distribution with no commercial/closed-source aspirations. Should have been GPL since the beginning.

> Because that's what a good neighbor does with upstream…

I’m jumping in here but I really don’t understand this perspective. The license doesn’t say that downstream must be a good neighbor. In fact it explicitly avoids any restrictions on how downstream code is used. If you’re not happy with that then the GPL is not the right license. Holding others up to an unwritten standard (which is inherently not enforceable) is a recipe for disappointment.

> is a recipe for disappointment.

True, but like in a working society, many things are being done even if not explicitly requested by some regulation because it's obvious that they help improving the society for everyone. For me it's pretty automatic, I have money for or coming in thanks to my project? The first thing I will do is giving back to the dependencies that made my project possible, I don't even need to think about it too hard.

And let me add also this, upstream decided that for whatever reason they don't want code generated by AI? It's their project, they are free to decide to follow this route, who cares. Pretty pathetic to whine about it on X, though.

Uh, no, you cannot just invent new terms to a license and impose them on people like that. It’s a contract; there is not reading between the lines to guess what other people want. And the GPL explicitly forbids adding additional terms, so Asahi loses the ability to forbid downstream users from using AI to modify the source code.

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