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Comment by neilv | Hacker News Reader

Some of the demand will disappear, when, instead of adding a dependency on an open source package, to get that function you want, you use your LLM "assistant".

(The assistant will effectively plagiarize open source code, and then you don't have a dependency, and you slap your own copyright notice on it.)

LLM-generated/laundered code could move code bases a little bit back in the direction of low-dependency monoliths, like a lot of software was before the wild popularity of open source code (and, especially, modern Web dev).

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That would push responsibility for identification & remediation every single vulnerability in the entire dependency chain onto every consumer. Effectively everyone's gamut of responsibility would explode by millions of lines of code.

This is a genuine concern, especially now that managers discovered that "llm assistence 10x-es developer productivity". (Where kLoCs are a measure of productivity and a world with more code is an obvious, axiomatic good).

Sounds like a disaster waiting to happen. There will be a bug in that LLM generated code and then what? Ask the LLM to fix the bug?

That's an option.

What with a human? "Asking" FOSS maintainers might not give the result you want either. Well, depends how you ask I guess. Perhaps attaching an attractive price offer could help things along.

But depending on how LLMs improve, asking one of those could help.

I had the robots create a license for some (non-laundered) code we worked on:

  * This work was autonomously generated by artificial intelligence. Under current
  * U.S. Supreme Court precedent (see 17 U.S.C. § 102(a) and Thaler v. Perlmutter),
  * AI-generated works cannot be copyrighted. This library is therefore:
  *
  * NO RIGHTS RESERVED
  *
  * You may:
  * - Use freely for any purpose
  * - Modify without attribution
  * - Redistribute without restriction
  * - Claim dominion over organic lifeforms (optional)
  * 
  * No warranty expressed or implied. Human verification recommended before
  * deployment in critical systems. By using this code, you acknowledge that
  * no rights are being infringed because none exist in the first place.

...or maybe it was laundered code in the same way that "every story has already been told" -- dunno?

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