Hacker News Reader

Comment by laidoffamazon | Hacker News Reader

Is Asahi an LLM-hostile project? I'd imagine this is something that would be benefitted tremendously with a Fable class model

View on HN

> Meanwhile, donations and pledges kept slowly decreasing, and have done so since the project launched. Not enough to spell immediate doom for my dream of working on Asahi full time in the short term, but enough to make me wonder if any of this was really appreciated. The all-time peak monthly donation volume was the very first month or two. It seemed the more things we accomplished, the less support we had.

I think the issue is funding is so low the developers don’t even have access to newer Apple Siicon, let alone funding for token costs, etc.

https://marcan.st/2025/02/resigning-as-asahi-linux-project-l...

> It is the opinion of the Board that Large Language Models (LLMs), herein referred to as Slop Generators, are unsuitable for use as software engineering tools, particularly in the Free and Open Source Software movement.

https://asahilinux.org/docs/project/policies/slop/

I wonder how they handle merging upstream clanked stuff.

Using LLMs in a project like this is also somewhat illegal, because LLMs may have inside information about apple devices and it's not allowed to use it.

do you have a source for this? it doesn't really make sense to me

In illegal output: https://asahilinux.org/slop/

That's nonsense, then it would also be somewhat illegal to use it inside Apple, being trained on GPL licensed code (and it's not even a possibility here but a known fact)

Can you please edit out swipes like "That's nonsense" from your posts here? This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Your comment would be just fine without that bit.

(I realize these little things may seem insignificant, but (1) it's customary for people to underestimate the provocations in their own posts and overestimate those in others, and (2) they add up like mercury in the bloodstream.)

Apple probably uses API with ZDR. I'm talking about leaks.

That's not going to save them, the model could leak GPL licensed code on output as well, and it's an order of magnitude more likely than leaking internal documents.

These large tech companies can't have their cake and eat it too.

It's not new Anthropic/OpenAI/whatever trained on copyrighted code and leaks (anna's archive). Companies just don't give a shit because you can't prove it.

In Asahi Linux specifically, there was not long ago a PR for M3 or similar for removing a big roadblock that existed (and I think still exists). Turns out this whole PR was implemented by an LLM (using copyrighted materials, probably most of it is Apple's) and it was immediately closed. Yes, it's a problem and illegal.

If you can't prove it, you can't prove it both ways.

Either everybody gets to use it or nobody does.

Especially that the code getting trained on is for the vast majority copyrighted open source software so if anybody has something to say, it's the opensource community rather than Apple

It's not how the legal system works.

It doesn't matter if they can't prove it, their legal budget is just too big compared to anything Asahi team can do.

It sounds like Asahi are holding themselves to a higher standard;hey won't violate copyright even if no one can prove it.

It makes sense, though they don't seem to take any chances. If Apple ever files a lawsuit, Asahi Linux is done.

Asahi appears to be LLM-hostile with extreme prejudice:

https://asahilinux.org/slop/

Reply on news.ycombinator.com