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▲ ImaCake 7 hours ago

They REALLY don't like AI, to the point of "wish I didn't need to rely on GCC and GRUB because they have AI in them" levels of hate AI. See this further down the linked page:

>The fork in question, of U-Boot, is heavily AI vibe-coded and thus useless to Libreboot. This is not mere conjecture; in said aforementioned U-Boot mailing list thread, the author stated thus. We will not, in any way, encourage or facilitate use of AI. It has been made clear that several projects Libreboot uses also have some AI-assisted commits; GCC, GRUB, etc. This is not our fault, but it is my intention that I and others will audit these projects in the future, de-slopping them and possibly even forking them entirely for that very reason.

▲jameshilliard 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> U-Boot upstream itself is staunchly anti-AI, at least at the time of this release, and much discussion of the above was had on their mailing list.

I saw this as well, which is funny because I've sent plenty of patches written using AI assistance to upstream U-Boot. It was my understanding that U-Boot was mostly following kernel conventions in general as many U-Boot drivers share code(in addition to the actual subsystem maintainers themselves) with their kernel equivalents.

▲cromka 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> de-slopping them and possibly even forking

Or, hear me out, they could instead just improve and contribute the code they think is suboptimal

▲tecleandor 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That's in the previous half of the sentence you removed:

> ...it is my intention that I and others will audit these projects in the future, de-slopping them...

▲Loquebantur 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> think for yourself. AI will only ruin your mind and deskill you. here are some articles:

> think AI makes you super hacker? think again: https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.09089 ["Measuring the Impact of Early-2025 AI on Experienced Open-Source Developer Productivity"]

> https://blog.codeberg.org/protecting-our-floss-commons-from-...

> consider that the infrastructure for AI is economically unsustainable; when the bubble bursts, and it will, we will suddenly be left with millions of people thoroughly deskilled who will be useless. lots of reeducation needed, and lots of people will just be left behind.

> consider that it is controlled by only a minority of very wealthy individuals; with it, they have unprecedented control over human thought through manipulation of information, and control over what information is presented through filtering (what they call training).

> AI is a threat to the health and democracy of our entire world.

> libreboot will not facilitate its use. AI is the most dangerous technology ever invented by human beings.

...

They have plenty of reasons not to.

▲jameshilliard 2 hours ago | parent [-]

> Early-2025 AI

This one especially really just shows they are cherry picking things which support a particular position regardless of the relevance, the difference between Early-2025 AI and Late-2026 AI is absolutely massive. Early 2026 it was reported by Greg Kroah-Hartman that AI bug reports rapidly went from obviously wrong or low quality to being real reports.[0] The kernel now has AI tooling heavily integrated into patch review workflows as well with quite good results.[1]

> They have plenty of reasons not to.

Not really any good reasons however.

[0] https://www.theregister.com/software/2026/03/26/linux-kernel...

[1] https://github.com/sashiko-dev/sashiko

▲leahlibre 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

contributing to projects that have slop in them has legal liability. you'd have to essentially hardfork to remove the slop from git history and such.

for my part, when i do work on this, what i will do is this: re-use existing nuke.list mechanism in lbmk (used already to delete dubious files, e.g. code files with unclear licensing in u-boot) to delete the slopped files. then provide cleaned versions of the same files, with necessary patching re-written as necessary, and files that use it patched to include e.g. foo.deslop.c instead of foo.c - then git history is removed inside tarballs. filter out the changelogs for projects accordingly.

this is the most reasonable way to do it on projects with very little slop. with projects that become almost entirely slop, a hard fork becomes necessary.

▲yjftsjthsd-h 2 hours ago | parent [-]

So what OS are you building on and running on the machine? https://codeberg.org/ethical-foss/open-slopware#kernels doesn't seem to list anything I would consider a good alternative to Linux, although illumos or 9front becoming the preferred build environment for libreboot would make my inner nerd happy.

▲leahlibre an hour ago | parent [-]

currently debian linux, though i have porting lbmk to openbsd on TODO. with a few small exceptions (e.g. recent tmux patch) they're generally quite hostile to use of AI.

▲bitwize 31 minutes ago | parent [-]

the kernel is like 20% AI code now

▲p-e-w 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I have learned to treat statements like that as a general red flag.

Someone who acts like a radical on practical issues will almost certainly act like a radical in other areas as well - including areas that matter to me.

There are debates to be had on every technology, but foaming-at-the-mouth kind of talk is a sure sign of a maintainer (and by extension a project) I want nothing to do with.

I respect projects with a no AI policy, but if that policy starts with the words “fuck no”, I’m out of there.

▲cwiggs 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It's possible this type of "radical" behavior is why this project exists in the first place. I'm willing to bet if the Libreboot maintainer(s) were not "radical" they'd just be using a Mac and be content with a closed source bootloader.

Not to say this "radical" behavior is helpful, and I understand why people don't like it.

▲zenoprax 5 hours ago | parent [-]

The timeless debate of separating art from the artist.

In another project (literally: "Untitled") of theirs they are explicit about motivation:

> This is to fight against the trend of crappy github-powered websites that plague the internet.

▲qlte 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I don't really see it as a question of "separating art from the artist". That's usually invoked when other aspects of the personal life of the artist has the potential to distract from the art itself.

The parent comment is closer to saying that Picasso wouldn't have been Picasso if in an alternate universe he had avoided controversial/politically charged subjects like the Spanish Civil War and instead appealed to the lowest common denominator for a mainstream commercial audience to sell postcards.

▲simonask 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

AI in its current form is a commercial product created from stolen labor.

I think there are extremely legitimate reasons to be critical of that part at the very least, and I don't think it's a particularly "radical" stance within Free Software, which is fundamentally conscientious of such questions.

(I don't know whether the Libreboot authors have this particular point in mind.)

▲behringer 5 hours ago | parent [-]

All things are built on knowledge that came before it. In what way is AI built on stolen labor?

▲simonask 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Has anyone who contributed to producing the wealth of human knowledge, art, code, and literature making up the training data been compensated in any way?

I'm certainly still waiting for my check.

▲pbhjpbhj 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Well since the early 18th Century (in a limited way) copyright rights have been given to creators - the overwhelming majority of countries are signatories to international treaties (for the last 100 years) that give creators control of created artistic works (which has been deemed to include program code).

Exploitation of those rights is down to individuals, only since Google came on the scene has any company been able to get away with broad ranging infringement of these rights without censure.

As for your cheque, you have the right to sell your work. No-one is obliged to buy it, of course. You also, under copyright, have the right to make a license to exchange use of your works for binding the users to conditions of release of their derivative/associated works ([F]OSS licensing).

You still have the right to sell it, and if ML models have been trained on those works you have the right to seek compensation.

▲flavionm 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

That already didn't happen, regardless of AI. The thing about freely sharing knowledge is that people take that knowledge and use it to build further knowledge that helps you.

You might say that the fact LLMs are being provided as services by big techs invalidate that. But some people taking the provided knowledge for themselves has also always happened. More importantly, though, is that big tech provided LLMs aren't the only way to access the technology. Open weights and local models exist.

▲brendoelfrendo 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Well, it was literally stolen in some cases, for starters.

▲behringer 5 hours ago | parent [-]

How do you steal knowledge? Knowledge shouldn't be locked up.

▲mschuster91 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

One thing is that most if not all models more likely than not were trained on leaked Microsoft and other proprietary code sets.

For projects like WINE or ReactOS that absolutely have to enforce hard firewalls between people with "insider knowledge" to avoid contamination and resulting legal issues, this alone makes the use of AI for coding highly problematic.

▲simonask 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If you believe that, then why aren't LLMs free to use for every person on Earth?

If you want anybody to keep making anything, including programmers, artists, and writers, you're going to have to pay them somehow.

Anthropic and OpenAI would not have a product at all without the contributions of thousands of non-consenting humans. Yet they somehow have the gall to charge customers a premium.

▲maximilianburke 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Anthropic and OpenAI aren't the only ways to use LLMs. There are plenty of LLMs where you can download the weights and run them locally. There are even others that you can train yourself (see the LLM360 family).

▲doublepg23 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You're paying for compute?

▲thereader12 4 hours ago | parent [-]

They refuse to release the models, the training method and, training data. They don't even want you to ask it too many questions lest you teach another ai. Very "open".

▲behringer 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I'm all for it, free AI allotment and universal income is the future.

▲0c3ca83 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[dead]

▲CircuitSeuss 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

When your project is literally writing a BIOS/ UEFI alternative that exists for the purpose of making base runtime systems open and verifiable and to improve the user’s ability to trust in their system, an opposition to unverified machine generated code seems not only justifiable but sensible. If Leah were not taking steps to mitigate generated code in the project, the project would no longer meet my needs as a Libreboot user.

▲ImaCake 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yeah its quite the contrast to the recent QGIS core "no AI" policy that very pointedly had no emotive language at all.

▲prmoustache 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

We've reached the godwin point quite quickly.

▲nxobject 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Well, yes, this is a project to create a fully libre, GPL'd boot chain free of binary blobs. The few users I know stick with aging ThinkPads. I'm not sure what you expected.

▲AdmiralAsshat 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You realize that it is their "radicalism" that gives us the Libreboot project to begin with, right?

▲cromka 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You make it sound like it's required to have nice, free things.

▲leahlibre 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

it absolutely is. appeasement never worked. i put my foot to the floor and that's it. without me, there would be no libreboot at all.

▲AdmiralAsshat 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

"I dunno about this GNU project, man. They seem like a bunch of radicals. Why do they have to impugn all proprietary software like that?"

▲cwiggs 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Hah! Glad I'm not the only one who has this theory https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50104114

▲trollbridge 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Likewise, it if claims something is “vibe coded” when it clearly is not (such as U-Boot).

Agentic AI has allowed 86Box to make massive strides forward. This includes a substantial contribution to emulate the Intel Inboard 386 that was created by someone who describes himself as a non-programmer. The community is now bigger and stronger, although we’ve had some aches and pains with slop AI generated PRs.

The same goes for Gravity Linux which is booting in my M4 Macs with working GPU and most other peripherals. What used to take years now takes weeks, so we can do much more thorough testing and ultimately have a better end product.

▲Forgeties79 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I find it hard to square treating that like such a red flag while supporting free open source software more generally. The entire ecosystem is rife with ethics/morals driving the initiative. There is a lot of flag planting and red line drawing.

People say AI or not, if the thing is good then it should be used. But if a group actively rejects it (which is valid even if I’m not that militant myself) it compromises the project suddenly?

▲ 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]
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▲mindslight 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Personally I treat whinging about other people's ideals as a red flag.

It's libreboot. The entire point of its creation was to take coreboot and rip out the non-libre blobs. Its author is trans (IIRC), which also carries its own very pointed perspective on the world.

Some of it goes too far in my own opinion - I have no problem trusting AMD's final microcode for the Opteron 63xx any differently than the baked-in mask for the 62xx. But regardless, I respect someone who is pushing the whole envelope as they see it. At the very least their effort creates a lot of things I do care about!

▲behringer 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I wouldn't trust their products simply because AI as a tool works and their refusal to use it means their software will be worse off for it.

▲primarily9 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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