Flathub has replaced its blanket ban on AI-generated applications with a disclosure requirement. Reviewers can still reject submissions, and manifests remain off-limits for AI-generated content.
By and large flathubs metadata has allowed for pretty transparent overviews. Stick the same filtering that safe and unsafe containers have and everyone retains a clear choice.
I think they should just create a policy where unmaintained software gets removed? Or flagged where it’s easy to filter out.
Most AI slop just gets abandoned, but a real developer who wants to maintain FOSS software long term with some AI assistance is quite a different thing.
An unforeseen consequence from AI Slop is that normal people can now create quite handy software for niche use cases, but the barrier to entry is so low that those people often abandon it quickly too. Rather than security risks, abandonedware is starting to become a bigger problem.
I don’t know about other normal people, but I’m certainly actively maintaining my own vibecoded apps as long as it’s affordable to do so. By that I mean they give me the niche functionality I want & new features are not added anymore, but if a pillow or pyqt update breaks my app, I may figure out how to fix it even on my own.
there should be a place for ai apps, that is separate from human built apps
We could call it SlopHub
sounds nice
Probably the right decision given there’s no way to truly tell what level of AI generation or effort within the project itself with AI has taken place.
I understand the willingness to ban low effort low quality one shot projects, but given most software nowadays incorporating some level of LLMs, I can’t ever see a blanket ban working out anywhere.
that’s like saying that because we can’t all always 100% tell if someone is cheating at an online game we should forget about banning cheaters - you can prohibit a behavior you aren’t always able to sus out and use a combination of detection heuristics and making that behavior unwelcome (i will say i believe the correct policy is to label projects which discernibly use llms rather than banning them)
This suggests that it has to be disclosed to the reviewers, which is a good thing, but how will end users be made aware?
I only use 6 flatpaks (due them not being available in the arch official repo’s) and I get them via a gui package manager. I’m assuming I am going to have to modify how I do this for any future installs, and check my existing ones, but then what about future releases/updates?
A ‘no ai’ swtich/toggle would be swell.
You are aware, that if you are using Linux you are using AI generated code?
Yes, I’m also aware that is redundant to this conversation. There is no reason for decent people to just give up on decency just because one layer (even the top layer) of something is f*cked up.
If people gave up that easily, we would all be working in coal mines 14 hours a day, living in trash societies, with slave labour, and trash governments… oh
Hopefully someone forks the kernel, and there is an increase in anti ai distro’s, de’s etc.
I don’t have an issue with this. If it’s AI you can usually tell, if you can’t tell then even if it’s AI it’s not slop and it’s fine to use.
It means you contain the generated code.
