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by Grokify 77 days ago
Open source has never been more alive for me. I have been publishing low key for years, and AI has expanded that capability more than 100 fold, in all directions. I had previously published packages in multiple languages but recently started to cut back to just one manually. But now with AI, I started to expand languages again. Instead of feeling constrained by toolchains I feel comfortable with, I feel freedom to publish more and more.

The benefits to publishing AI generated code as open source are immense including code hosting and CI/CD pipelines for build, test, lint, security scans, etc. In additional to CI/CD pipelines, my repos have commits authored by Claude, Dependabot, GitHub Advanced Security Bot, Copilot, etc. All of this makes the code more reliable and maintainable, for both human and AI authored code.

Some thoughts on two recent posts:

1. 90% of Claude-linked output going to GitHub repos w <2 stars (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47521157): I'm generally too busy to publishing code to promote, but at some time it might settle down. Additionally, with how fast AI can generate and refactor code, it can take some time before the code is stable enough to promote.

2. So where are all the AI apps? (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47503006): They are in GitHub with <2 stars! They are there but without promotion it takes a while to get started in popularity. That being said, I'm starting to get some PRs.
2 comments
As1287 77 days ago
So we'll have 100 2-star repositories per software developer containing stolen code and that is somehow a good thing?

It is completely delusional that these copied "works" will have any effect or be used by anyone but the most rabid AI proponents just to make a point.

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Grokify 77 days ago
If there's any stolen code generated by AI, it's certainly not intentional and a DMCA notice would be appreciated. It would be interesting to see how prevalent this is in AI generated code - is anyone doing a study?

Stars will likely go up over time, but more than the stars it's the testing and maintenance over time that's valuable. There's little promotion right now, but there are already some stars, PRs, and issues. In fact, I'm working on merging PRs now.

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gf000 76 days ago
Well, is slightly modified regurgitated code a copy or not? We have yet to have it answered in the age of AI, but e.g. I could not be selling Mickey Mouse merch with a simple color filter on for long.
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Grokify 76 days ago
Agree it will be interesting to see how things play out. There's enough permissive open-source licensed code available that using that only could be an option.

As for Mickey, is the difference from Oswald enough today?

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roncesvalles 77 days ago
>my repos have commits authored by Claude, Dependabot, GitHub Advanced Security Bot, Copilot, etc.

Unless you're using an enterprise license that indemnifies your liabilities, you're almost certainly breaking copyright law and your packages are unusable by any serious company as a dependency. Even permissive OSS licenses like MIT don't take effect since they're predicated on the author actually holding a valid copyright (which you don't if AI agents have committed to your repo, as affirmed by USCO).

We'll almost certainly have a situation where if an open-source repo has direct AI agent commits in its history, it will be just as untouchable for companies as GPL repos.

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Grokify 77 days ago
Given that Claude is attributed to 19M+ commits on GitHub, it will be interesting to see where this ends up. Specifically on copyright, it will be interesting to see if any DMCA takedown notices are filed, including popular projects such as OpenClaw, GSD, Gas Town, Vibium, and others.

More on the 19M+ commits here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47501348

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lelanthran 76 days ago
This argument sounds like "Well, it's too big to fail now, so it's legal for them. For all you smaller peons, it's still illegal".
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Grokify 76 days ago
That's not the intention. The intention is:

1. The code generated should be available to use. Some languages are simple enough there is an obvious way to do it. Many companies have developer programs with staff producing code intended to be used in the form of open source SDKs, example code, and tutorials.

2. If on the off chance, there is code that shouldn't be there, people should use DMCA. Anthropic, GitHub, and others support this.

3. At the macro level, it's hard to know know where this is going, so we should look to bellwether apps with more attention for guidance.

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