this post was submitted on 31 May 2026
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Fuck AI

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AI, in this case, refers to LLMs, GPT technology, and anything listed as "AI" meant to increase market valuations.

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228
The Rsync maintainer, Andrew Tridgell, used Claude Opus to add a Discord link to the README in one of his recent commits (files.catbox.moe)
submitted 3 weeks ago by mudkip to c/fuck_ai@lemmy.world
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[–] gnufuu@infosec.pub 198 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (8 children)

For those who've never heard of him, Andrew Tridgell is not just some kid cosplaying as a programmer, he's an open source legend. Apart from rsync he created Samba. Oh, and apparently he annoyed Linus Torvalds into inventing git lmao

Sure, it looks like he's made a blunder or two but let's not dogpile on him please. This is Fuck AI, not Fuck People.

[–] ooterness@lemmy.world 30 points 3 weeks ago

Doing absolutely nothing would be better than the current travesty.

[–] stormeuh@lemmy.world 23 points 3 weeks ago

"Be ruthless to systems, and kind to individuals" ~ Michael Brooks

[–] ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org 14 points 3 weeks ago

Looks like he's having a dark chapter in his life. I don't know what caused the burnout initially but AI is part of the doom cycle. He could use mental healthcare.

[–] redsand@infosec.pub 11 points 3 weeks ago (6 children)

Don't coddle him either. He should feel shame and embarrassment. Otherwise he'll keep on with this crap until he starts losing push privileges

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[–] kerthale@lemmy.world 120 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Seems like the real story here is one guy maintaining a critical infrastructure begging for volunteers to help out and nobody steps up. So yeah, I really don’t like what he does. And also the OSS community is failing him.

[–] Kirk@startrek.website 82 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

It wouldn’t surprise me if one day it comes out that these harassment campaigns against crucial FOSS infrastructure/chokepoint maintainers were funded by Thiel.

[–] very_well_lost@lemmy.world 98 points 3 weeks ago

Think bigger.

Remember the XZ hack a few years ago? That whole mess started with a targeted harassment campaign towards the project's lone maintainer. Eventually the sock puppet accounts wore him down and he was convinced to bring on a second maintainer to help with the project... who also turned out to be a sock puppet and who introduced the critical backdoor into XZ.

A lot of research has been done into this event since it happened, and the current consensus seems to be that both the harassment campaign and the malware creation were done on behalf of the Russian government.

So we're now in the era where FOSS maintainers have become the targets of literal nation-states.

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[–] Itdidnttrickledown@lemmy.world 17 points 3 weeks ago

That was my take on it. It isn't the only case.

[–] victorz@lemmy.world 59 points 3 weeks ago (12 children)

Sounds like they've now become completely dependent on AI to make the simplest, smallest changes. 😬

[–] Itdidnttrickledown@lemmy.world 22 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Yeah, even when he has a huge staff of himself to do everything.

[–] victorz@lemmy.world 19 points 3 weeks ago (7 children)

🤷‍♂️ I'm the sole developer at my project at work and I don't use AI. 👍 Especially not for editing a markdown file. I know how to paste links and phrase sentences and I don't intend to dull that skill by using AI.

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[–] tempest@lemmy.ca 4 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

While that is definitely a risk one Claude commit in what might have been a larger MR doesn't really tell you much.

It could have been a single item in a long list the agent just put it in its own commit.

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[–] vapeloki@lemmy.world 51 points 3 weeks ago

I know, this is about AI, but can we stop for a minute and rage about the fact that fucking open source projects use a fucking spyware as a service that collects massive amounts of user data?

[–] hexagonwin@lemmy.today 49 points 3 weeks ago

to me it feels like this guy has burnt out, and is in desperate need of new contributors.. quite sad

[–] halcyoncmdr@piefed.social 40 points 3 weeks ago

Gallons of water and who knows how much power to add a discord link on a text document?

Even more egregious waste of resources than most uses of the hallucination machines.

[–] dr_robotBones@reddthat.com 35 points 3 weeks ago

LLM usage has been shown to have a negative impact on cognition and in my experience it can really destroy a dev's confidence and coding ability. If he's being forced to use LLMs at work by idiots with business degrees then that could be effecting his work on rsync, amplified by the burn out.

[–] halfapage@lemmy.world 19 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I get the hate, but I wonder if the guy is just tired of the work.. Would explain the need for crutches.

[–] thedeadwalking4242@lemmy.world 29 points 3 weeks ago

That's a big vibe I get from a lot of heavy LLM users. They are burnt out on actually coding

[–] Kirk@startrek.website 17 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (4 children)

I'm no fan of vibe coded apps but rsync is literally free software with a free licence... forking it seems like less work than harrassing the guy who maintains in the hope that he capitulates.

[–] tempest@lemmy.ca 37 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

OSS maintenance is a thankless job for the most part and the reaction in this thread proves the point.

[–] Kirk@startrek.website 22 points 3 weeks ago

It honestly sucks that the #1 requirement to being an effective FOSS maintainer (above even coding talent) is the skill of enforcing healthy emotional boundaries.

[–] T156@lemmy.world 4 points 3 weeks ago

After the XZ debacle, it would only be harder, because they can't trust that anyone volunteering to step up is doing so with the best of intentions, and vetting someone would be adding a lot to the workload.

[–] GamingChairModel@lemmy.world 35 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

The current maintainer, Andrew Tridgell, is one of the two original authors, and was dragged back into maintaining this in 2024 because rsync is so important and nobody else was stepping up to replace Wayne Davison, who was the primary maintainer from 2002 to 2024.

If this project had people eager to fork it, that probably wouldn't have happened in 2024.

[–] Kirk@startrek.website 15 points 3 weeks ago (19 children)

you're absolutely right the only solution remaining is to harass the dev harder🙄

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[–] cypherpunks@lemmy.ml 21 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (4 children)

literally free software with a free licence… just fork it

maintaining a fork is a lot of work and currently there is nobody even helping review commits in the mainline version.

i am also disgusted by the use of discord but i recommend reading tridge's messages yesterday in this log of the rsync discord for some context about recent events.

tldr: it isn't that he just decided to start changing things using claude and broke a bunch of stuff; the bugs he introduced recently are side effects of security fixes for the onslaught of security vulnerabilities which other people are finding using LLMs.

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[–] unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de 14 points 3 weeks ago (17 children)

We dont have the capacity to replace like 50% of all open source devs. We just have to hope that they get their shit together again.

[–] boonhet@sopuli.xyz 15 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

It's up to them how they develop their completely free software. If you're not happy with it and can't stop using it, you can fork it. If you can't do it yourself, you pay someone else to. If it suddenly seems like paying for 50% of your FOSS is too much, then consider that the FOSS devs themselves pay for most of it with their largely uncompensated free time and probably want to have a bit more of said free time back.

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[–] deliriousdreams@fedia.io 11 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

I mean. What they need is help. Other people who can code who are willing to contribute time to the help maintain the project.

Burnout is real and I don't think "getting their shit together" actually fixes anything. The next time they burn out we wash rinse repeat?

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[–] aarch0x40@piefed.social 15 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

Guess it’s time to seek out rsync alternatives

[–] JoMiran@lemmy.ml 28 points 3 weeks ago

Or maybe the corporations that heavily depend on rsync (ie, all of them) can donate some of their developers' time to help the maintainer out.

[–] JetpackJackson@feddit.org 12 points 3 weeks ago

Openrsync from openbsd (disclaimer: have not tried it)

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[–] red_bull_of_juarez@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 3 weeks ago (5 children)

I wonder when they will add layers of abstraction. Using one AI model to tell another AI model what to do.

[–] OfCourseNot@fedia.io 33 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

My sweet child.. that's exactly what the 'agentic' shit is about, llms spinning up more instances and going back and forth between them... and that's why you read those stories about the monthly bills shooting up like crazy

[–] red_bull_of_juarez@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 3 weeks ago

I should not be surprised, but this level of stupid still manages to surprise me.

[–] WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world 13 points 3 weeks ago

Half the devs using AI have handed their critical thought over to it, so they're already basically an AI model telling another AI model what to do.

[–] antifa_ceo@lemmy.ml 13 points 3 weeks ago

This is already how subagent workflows work

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