If I look around in the FLOSS communities, I see a lot of skepticism towards LLMs. The main concerns are:

1. they were trained on FLOSS repositories without consent of the authors, including GPL and AGPL repos

2. the best models are proprietary

3. folks making low-effort contribution attempts using AI (PRs, security reports, etc).

I agree those are legitimate problems but LLMs are the new reality, they are not going to go away. Much more powerful lobbies than the OSS ones are losing fights against the LLM companies (the big copyright holders in media).

But while companies can use LLMs to build replacements for GPL licensed code (where those LLMs have that GPL code probably in their training set), the reverse thing can also be done: one can break monopolies open using LLMs, and build so much open source software using LLMs.

In the end, the GPL is only a means to an end.

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piker 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

> LLMs are the new reality, they are not going to go away

That's the conventional wisdom, but it isn't a given. A lot of financial wizardry is taking place to prop up the best of these things, and even their most ardent proponents are starting to recognize their futility once a certain complexity level is reached. The open weight models are the stalking horse that gives this proposition the most legs, but it's not given that Anthropic and OpenAI exist as anything more than shells of their current selves in 5 years.

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vetler 2 days ago | parent [-]

But LLMs themselves are literally not going away, I think that's the point. Once a model is trained and let out into the open for free download, it's there, and can be used by anyone - and it's only going to get cheaper and easier.

	▲	jofzar 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Yeah like Kimi is good enough, if there was some kind of LLM fire and all the closed source models suddenly burnt down and could never be remade, Kimi 2.5 is already good enough forever. Good enough is probably redundant, it's amazing compared to last year's models

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giancarlostoro 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> 3. folks making low-effort contribution attempts using AI (PRs, security reports, etc).

Meanwhile as people sleep on LLMs to help them audit their code for security holes, or even any security code auditing tools. Script kiddies don't care that you think AI isn't ready, they'll use AI models to scrape your website for security gaps. They'll use LLMs to figure out how to hack your employees and steal your data. We already saw that hackers broke into government servers for the Mexican government, basically scraping every document of every Mexican citizen. Now is the time to start investing in security auditing, before you become the next news headline.

AI isn't the future, it's already here, and hackers will use it against you.

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59nadir 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

This reads like a "You wouldn't download a car!" ad but it's trying to scare you into using AI instead.

	▲	giancarlostoro 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		More like, you're still using horses to move your product, meanwhile thieves and your competitors are using trucks to outpace you. A truck can get in the way of your horse carriage and then they can rob you easily and take all your cargo. Yes, you can still get your cargo from point A to point B, but you're going to be targeted by bad actors in vehicles.

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2790276 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

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wolvesechoes 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> one can break monopolies open using LLMs

Let me know when you succeed.

> the GPL is only a means to an end

And how this end is closer with LLMs?

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est31 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

> And how this end is closer with LLMs?

The blog post of this thread argues that now, even average users have the ability to modify GPL'd code thanks to LLMs. The bigger advantage though is that one can use it to break open software monopolies in the first place.

A lot of such monopolies are based on proprietary formats.

If LLM swarms can build a browser (not from scratch) and C compiler (from scratch), they can also build an LLVM backend for a bespoke architecture that only has a proprietary C compiler for it. They can also build adobe software replacements, pdf editors, debug/fix linux driver issues, etc.

	▲	wolvesechoes 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Not interested what they can build. Show me the fruits, not image of fruits

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rzmmm 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

LMMs can be used for example faster reverse engineering, to turn proprietary content into free.

	▲	wolvesechoes 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		I am not asking what they can be used for. Tell me what they are actually being used for

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2790276 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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claud_ia 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

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