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Comment by Bigpet | Hacker News Reader

Well maybe we shouldn't then? Before LLMs some not just clueless but also malicious rando could've send a PR too. And the maintainers might've gotten burned out any and just said f-it and merged stuff randomly. I don't see how AI changed the calculation here much.

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No reasonable maintainer would recklessly merge something he/she hasn’t reviewed. Well, those who blindly accept whatever AI outputs… perhaps it’s time for them to find another job.

Just because one offers software for free doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be standards.

That's an interesting use of the word 'job'. How much is the rsync maintainer paid?

My bad, I meant profession.

Same issue there. A profession is an occupation that you get paid for doing.

AFAIK the rsync maintainer does it for free. And he mainly seems to be getting abuse in return for that service.

> Same issue there. A profession is an occupation that you get paid for doing.

Wrong, a profession is an occupation that requires specialized training or qualifications. This means one can have a profession and still not get paid.

> And he mainly seems to be getting abuse in return for that service.

What abuse you are referring to?

If you want to go down that semantic route, then being an open source maintainer clearly isn't a profession, as it requires neither specialized training nor qualifications!

In terms of abuse, I was thinking of this issue thread: https://github.com/RsyncProject/rsync/issues/929

> If you want to go down that semantic route, then being an open source maintainer clearly isn't a profession, as it requires neither specialized training nor qualifications!

Open source software maintenance without qualifications? I hope you understand how disastrous it would be for serious software like rsync.

I should think most open source software is maintained by people without any special training or qualifications. And would you expect to obtain the services of, say, a highly qualified plumber or electrician for free?

It might be more useful if qualifications were required before people were allowed to complain about open source software on internet message boards. That’ll be the day!

Before, there was a chance to spot it (and things like XZ Utils backdoor were rare), now it will be well hidden in the ocean of slop PRs.

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