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Comment by rottencupcakes | Hacker News Reader

[flagged]

Ask yourself: is this really a productive comment?

You've got an open-source author that has put a lot of effort into providing something people can use, for free, and your comment above is the toxicity they get in response?

Are you really helping the world of open-source with this type of response?

Yes, you’re absolutely right.

I wasn’t aware of the drama and conflict behind this and read his press release in a vacuum.

It didn’t add anything and only added more negativity to this conflict.

A grizzled veteran, bemused at the irrational inanity of the world around him, yet still highly effective, listening to his users, and shipping software used by millions.

I agree, as long as you're not incompetent, I bet he'd be a blast to work with.

He actually was a joy to work with. George is an awesome human.

Competent people call out incompetence.

I'm sure they actually are.

I'm sure he's tired from the horde of idiots angry that he implemented an entirely optional feature.

Entirely optional features that have a history of not becoming optional anymore in many other applications and quite evidently can easily be installed as a plugin instead.

Further, why in the world would you include a completely optional feature that runs afoul of many companies' software policies? And will be blocked by many companies even if it doesn't run afoul of their policies because nearly every competently run company will inspect software that claims to have AI features to understand the extent of the AI integration, but a significant portion of them will choose not to do that analysis for what's a fairly niche software that not only has many alternatives but is an alternative to an OSX built in feature and would block many of your users from using the application.

Even if you disagree with the ideological dissensions, and even if you disagree with the slippery slope argument, why would you grumble about the practical scenario which would block your users from using the application. Especially when you have a fairly easy alternative of packaging it in a plugin.

I wonder how those companies will deal with the upcoming AI features in Windows and macOS.

apple and microsoft have historically provided ways of turning off features that their corporate customers don't want. I doubt this will be any different.

iTerm AI feature was off by default and you had to manually insert a valid key, but it seems it was still an issue.

The change notes nor the UI do not imply this.

All this needs was a single checkbox “Disable OpenAI Integration” or codecierge or whatever it’s called. A single, unequivocal “this is not enabled” signal to the user who does not want or cannot what this feature enabled.

But how is that different from a UI which is the equivalent of a “enable openai integration” checkbox??

You needed the word “Disable” in there?

Yes? Or maybe my CISO does?

These things should be as unambiguous as the "webcam is on" LED.

I actually worked with George and he is about the nicest person there is. This is not sarcasm or double speak. He really was a great guy to work with.

Now he's spending his free time working almost daily on free, open source gift that is iTerm.

The issue here really is the hysteria of people who complain about it.

It's something you had to configure by entering an API key and it wouldn't do anything if you didn't.

Didn't stop people being wrong about what happens and refusing to accept they were wrong even when it was explained to them they were wrong.

You try to spend your free time providing great software to people, add a useful people and have a stream of ignorant complains and hate rain down on you.

I'm sure you would be all sainty about.

I really feel bad for the guy but I sincerely doubt it’s the first time he’s learned that “no good deed goes unpunished”.

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