That has been the sentement for a while, programming is not considered "creative work" so has no value in their eyes
He clearly states that for him, abandoning Linux is ‘not possible right now’. Which makes sense, because GNU/Linux has been the free user-friendly alternative. What else do people expect him to do? Jump ship to BSD or GNU/Hurd and expect his entire workflow to work perfectly on day one? Start painting using pencil and paper, completely changing the nature of his work from day to day?
Moreover, if Linux, Ubuntu, or Debian (I’m not quite up to date on that) have accepted AI contributions, it’s because their maintainers have decided to accept them. It’s not like David has been vibecoding his tools to replace human-made software; he just can’t be expected to flawlessly work around everyone else who decides to do that. Contrasting him exercising control over his own work to stifle AI and choosing to (at least temporarily) tolerate others not doing the same with theirs (that he in turn makes use of) as some kind of hypocrisy is in extremely bad taste.
By his own standards then, I can say “Well I’m ok to use ComfyUI because its developers have explicitly said it’s fine to use with common AI models”. Like his Linux argument, it completely ignores what IP those models were trained on.
He takes the position: “My art is released Creative Commons except for AI”. I expect many open source programmers feel the same way, but he’s quite happy not to even discuss that and instead take the position that the maintainers said it’s fine.
By his standards, as I understand them, AI should respect and preserve the copyright of the data it’s trained on. Since that is not the current practice, he doesn’t want AI training on his works or generating derivative art, and prefers to avoid AI-generated works in general (including software). I don’t see any discrepancy or hypocrisy in that, nor do I see how your ComfyUI example relates. A clarification would be much appreciated!
> he’s quite happy not to even discuss that and instead take the position that the maintainers said it’s fine.
Where does he take that position?
Not a great philosophy when you realize that the set of things we all love is probably empty. Well, maybe it contains kittens.