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It feels like there’s a meta-discussion to be had about AI disclosure and AI use in a lot of these projects and it’s starting to boil over.
I would suggest that maintainers should:
- Add an AI disclosure in their readme, which is what I do on my projects. If you don’t like AI then it’s on the tin and you can avoid it – explicit is always better than implicit.
- Provide guidelines on AI contributions to their project. Every project needs an AI contribution policy now because we live in a world where most devs do use AI code gen. If you accept a patch from a community user it’s probably been touched by AI.
- Detail their AI workflow, but specifically how they review this code. I can only really work and review at a file-at-a-time pace so that 100% of AI code is reviewed by me, in detail, and it’s up to my standards.
When it comes to existing projects that start adding AI contributions it’s always going to be difficult. It’s not something projects started with even the option of, there’s no way to get consent from your users (nor consensus on whether you should you get their consent), and there have been varying levels of AI code gen for years now from simple completions to now agentic vibe coding.
I’ll be honest, most of my own projects use AI generated code, and I use it for work. It’s never code I couldn’t have written myself – because if it were how could I review it? But the fact is, in the year 2026 AI code generation is both fast, usable, and it’s near ubiquitous. There are tasks I could work on for weeks that I can build plus review in a couple of hours with AI. It’s very hard to argue with that, and I’m a very picky coder+reviewer with a full time job.
And lastly, for the community we all need to be mindful of open source maintainers.
They work hard, for free, and get treated like shit by users, the law, and big corporations. There’s a new generation of people who sign up for code hosting services just to request features or complain in your git issues, they’re opening up slop PRs and emailing you. Plus, internet users love to pile on and harass people.
Please remember there’s (usually) a human made of meat at the end of the intertubes, and when 100s of people write mean/abrasive things it adds up. Nobody is perfect, open source devs are just trying to share and help.
PS for mods: I saw there was another thread on another app using AI that was locked as off topic, I am trying to be constructive in this comment, but if it’s off topic/too divisive I understand.
I think disclosure is good and should be tackled as soon as possible because being transparent in your communication is just good practice in general.
However I feel like this will soon be rendered useless as all projects will move to agentic (or otherwise ai-assisted) coding.
Maybe there’ll be a movement of hand coded FOSS but realistically they’ll have a hard time. Resources are already tight for most projects, and rejecting productivity in favor of aesthetics is a rich guy’s strategy.
However I feel like this will soon be rendered useless as all projects will move to agentic (or otherwise ai-assisted) coding.
mine won’t. ever.
Resources are already tight for most projects, and rejecting productivity in favor of aesthetics is a rich guy’s strategy.
you’re overlooking principles. I’ll trade “productivity” for my morals every time.
I know I’m not the only dev to feel like this.
And that’s great for you but I still think you’ll be in a minority. Which is not necessarily bad of course.
Open Source devs mostly come from the industry and the penetration of agentic coding in the industry has been massive over the last six months. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything of this scale.
minority or not. I’m not going to make excuses to just “join in” when there’s heavy implications of licensing violations and poor ethical practices surrounding the implementation of slopware.
I’ll never use AI in the development of a project because it goes against every single principal that drives me. AI is my arch enemy, the antithesis of my whole being.
Hello
Somebody developed a Home Assistant integration for monitoring and managing sourdough starters
I’ve never tried Booklore (glad of that now!) but what were the greatest benefits over something like Audiobookshelf (what I currently use)?
I never tried ABS, but since I just read ebooks and don’t listen to audiobooks, it just never seemed fitting for me.
The BookLore thing is really disappointing. I hope we see a quality fork in the near future.
I’m not sure a fork makes sense given the dev merged way too much nonsense already. Maybe from a point in time before it started?
I’ve been looking to check out Booklore over some annoyances I have with CWA but IDK anymore.
Don’t let perfect stop you from achieving good.
It’s not radioactive waste, it’s code. You can read it, write it, change it. Just like any legacy codebase it’s full of shit, and maintaining means addressing the specific issues.
This whole debacle is showing that people fundamentally misunderstand how code works. They are trying to declare code good or code bad because of some silly heuristics like ai/not-ai, as if it wasn’t literal lines of text which you can read before you form an opinion and make a fool of yourself.
Good code has always been about simplicity, taste, and understanding.
If a human provides understanding and taste, they can elevate AI code to be good.
Likewise if an AI isn’t well guided it won’t understand, has no taste, and will generate overly complex code. AKA Slop.
Exactly. And a commit is a commit. Unless it’s 10Kloc in one go you can just read what’s in it and decide for yourself.
At my previous job we used to jokingly (?) tell our engineering manager “no commits, no opinions” well I think it’s kinda like that.
After reading both the accusations and the dev response I don’t know who to believe. I love BookLore and have not encountered any issues, so I guess I’ll stick with it for now.
BookLore
I have seriously considered spinning up Booklore. Great looking UI. Oh well.
I’d rather have a happy and productive maintainer than a burnout and an orphaned project. Either way forks can be made at any point - so if you don’t like the use of AI just fork it or don’t update any more and stay happy. No need to get mad at each other.
They said they were disappointed, not mad.
Just read through some of the BookLore stuff and that was a wild ride.
Yeah… I will not be updating my instance for a while. Will probably start looking for something else.
Wild ride…
