What if the code happens to be ripped of a proprietary software whose code leaked ? You won’t know it until someone sues you. (Edit: oops,@Ljuba basically said the same thing a few posts above)
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Let’s be clear: if something is not copyrighted, it cannot be licensed at all. It’s not about the GPL or not, it’s about whether there is any copyright (and thus licensability) at all.
Obviously, in the context of Ardour, all the code we rely on is GPL’ed (or LGPL’ed), but that’s a slightly different question.
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Yes. Just one more thing. Licenses may become somewhat irrelevant in the near future since it is now almost too easy to just tell AI to write a fresh unencumbered implementation of any code that is under any license / copyright.
This is why I think open source will be the big winner here.
I understand this topic raises strong feelings, but that comparison is a bit too harsh. Let’s keep the discussion objective.
Objectively, it’s just like good old wild west 
.
We need a damn strong sheriff and no one is stepping up.
I trust @paul and @x42 wholeheartedly but there are just too many questions connected with this seemingly technical topic.
I’m still curious whether you feel your approach addresses any of the other ills you state at the top (other than legal), or if you consider them sufficently outweighed by speed of development and ability to do those 16k line patches?
There were some comments above regarding a more long-term strategy using local LMMs for instance. From my point of view, thay would go some way (but not all the way) to address some of those points. Have you given any thought to such a “wait and see”-scenario?
Nothing about the possible approach I outlined addresses those other questions.
As with many things, and certainly all technologies, there are always pros and cons, and our job as humans, both individually and collectively, is to weigh both the pros and the cons when evaluating them.
I just had an extended mastodon thread/chat about this: PaulDavisTheFirst: "@distractal@hachyderm.io our post did not annoucn…" - Fosstodon
Wait-n-see could be fine. It could also (maybe/possibly) lead to one of the vibe-coded DAWs becoming so compelling that continued development of Ardour becomes more challenging. If the “people are important” perspective is true and significant, there’s less chance of this. If it’s just technical capacity, I think it could be a genuine issue.
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I understand your position completely.
You know, after using FilmCraft for a few times, i genuinely could see it replacing all the open source NLEs in short future…even it’s role-model , Premiere itself. Aldo i didn’t like where Adobe was heading with it’s subscription model, i still wonder why on Earth should something like FilmCraft be legal? At least, Adobe suite was made by some hard-working coders&designers. These times are just too weird right now. It’s like everyone want everything for free, and everyone wants to make a ton of money at the same time. I don’t get what’s in people’s heads.
Yeah, I agree that the pros and cons must be weighed appropriately. I tend to land very firmly in the “against”-camp because I find the cons (which you outline well in your intro) to far outweigh the pros. I think there’s an inherent asymmetry obstructing a good evaluation of the pros and cons: the pros are very in-your-face (like your 16k line example, an obvious benefit you wouldn’t otherwise have achieved), while the cons are mostly abstract, often future problems where there’s no clear-cut way to assign the individual user’s portion of the “blame” for those ills.
I believe the “people are important” is correct, at least in the long-term. Will you have existing users trying out and perhaps become enamored with new vibe-coded DAWs? Possibly, or even probably. But I think this is much truer for the large proprietary DAWs, because your user base presumably contains many who consider FOSS ideals to be important. As I stated above, I also think plenty of these alternatives will be quickly abandoned by the originators (I am hesitant to say “devs”), leaving the “defectors” exhausted from switching costs.
LibreOffice apparently received a boost in downloads after their “No AI”-stance. It is written about here, though I am unsure of the trustworthiness of this particular source (I couldn’t find back to the more trusted source I first read it at): https://cybernews.com/tech/libreoffice-no-ai-two-million-downloads-record/
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Right. Count me in, i consider FLOSS ideals very important.
The asymmetry is a very good point.
Looking at LibreOffice, it seems that the popularity came from “no AI features”, not “no use of LLMs for development” (though many people probably think those are equivalent, alas).
Note that all the vibe-coded DAWs I’ve seen so far have all been released under an open-source license. It’s quite interesting to see the Rust ones because they generally use an entirely different technology stack, something which is “doubled” by choosing to use the MIT license rather than the GPL.
The same way you can make a plugin that emulates a piece of hardware. So long as you’re not directly copying something that is under patent, it is generally legal.
You could argue that FilmCraft violates Adobe’s copyrights by directly copying Premiere’s user interface, but for functionality IP protection isn’t nearly as strong, especially once the patent (if there is one) expires.
And honestly, legal or not, someone needs to stick it to Adobe. For too long they have had way too much dominance over their market segments, and have used those near-monopolies to screw over their customers. Companies like Adobe are why I firmly believe that open-source is the only software licensing model that is truly consumer-friendly.
I am more than willing to pay for the tools I use. That’s why I subscribe both to Ardour and the Airwindows Patreon. But part of the reason I am willing to use and pay for those tools is that they are open-source. If they were proprietary, I wouldn’t use them because I wouldn’t trust their devs to not screw me over.
This is why I refuse to use Reaper. It seems like a great piece of software, and Justin Frankel seems like he cares about his customers. But as long as the source code isn’t available to me, I have no control over the program and can’t trust it. If Reaper went subscription-only tomorrow, or stopped supporting Linux, I’d be screwed. I can’t trust the literal heart of my studio to such a precarious model.
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I respect you position and I understand the difficulty. It’s hard to comment on the feasibility of the 16K LOC requirement without knowing any details, but let me ask: if the LLM revolution did not happen 5 years ago, would Ardour be doomed as a project? It seems like you are using this specific example a lot, because it’s a single very potent example of a task that an LLM can improve on dramatically, but I find it hard to believe that it would be impossible to do in a different, more ethical way. Could more developers be engaged, to split the work? Forgive me if this is ignorant, I have no clue how many developers consistently work on Ardour aside from you and Robin.
I think the worry of many is that once you allow any LLM code in, somehow the floodgates will be opened for more such contributions in the future, because Ardour will lose the ability to call itself an AI-free product. That is very silly from a logical standpoint, because one deviation from a rule does not make an entire policy meaningless. Maybe if there was a way to ensure that LLM code will not just start being greenlit into the code base arbitrarily, the users would be more accepting?
For example, I would be okay letting in the 16K lines written by an LLM, as long as its exact purpose and rationale for why this cannot be done ethically is disclosed. And since you’ve explained that it is GUI code and it is totally isolated and Ardour can be built without it, maybe that’s okay.
However, I feel much less positive about allowing AI code in general to be accepted. Maybe Ardour could dedicate a page towards “no-LLM code exceptions” and, whenever something like the 16K problem occurs, let the community know that there is demand for more? This additional friction would ensure that no one is committing poorly written code haphazardly, and that AI is being used as a tool of last resort in really hopeless, contained scenarios. Maybe this is dumb, but just a thought.
As always, thank you so much for your work on Ardour and for opening up this discussion.
From my POV, there are two distinctions worth making:
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is the code in question isolated (either completely, or almost completely) from the rest of the program? Could it be excluded via build-time flags?
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was the code created
byunder the direction of someone who knows and understands the architecture, design and “ways” of Ardour?
For the 16K LOC example that I’ve mentioned, the answer to #1 is “yes, absolutely”. It exists in a single folder and Ardour could trivially be built without it.
The reason for #2 is precisely to avoid the sorts of scenarios that you’re describing: random people (probably users) using an LLM to cook up some significant new feature that touches code and design assumptions all over the place. We don’t want that (even if we did decide to allow some use of LLMs that didn’t violate this). Obviously, it’s a subjective assessment, but no more so than when we provide write access to the canonical repository.
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There is also the question whether to reject a nuanced distinction of genAI (vibe coding) vs. AI assisted coding (auto-complete on stereoids).
Personally I am worried about the overall quality of Ardour. Having seen some AI generated pull-requests, lead to the conclusion that if we accept LLM generated code, the LLM must be directed by someone who knows the architecture and design of Ardour. Usually those who have contributed to Ardour in the past. This would also alleviate copyright concerns.
I also still enjoy writing code, so I’m not tempted to use an LLM, but I could also imagine delegating some grunt work.
As for the big picture: There is the user’s freedom to be considered: Just as someone can use Ardour to record a satanic metal song and someone else a christian hymn. Why should we not allow someone to use AI if they so choose? EDIT: I was thinking AI-assisted mixing, not code contributions. Sorry for getting OT.
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I get it all. But still…
Would you take a program, proprietary or open source, and make an exact copy of it and then call it your own (free or not)? I’m not okay with that concept. It’s somehow childish, bratty. I can’t imagine myself doing something like that.
Realistically, I think the answer is “because many people, especially FOSS-oriented, are genuinely repulsed by anything that brands itself as AI”. If guitar NAMs (Neural Amp Modelers) coined themselves as “AI amps”, I’d take a guess that about 50% of the enthusiasm around the technology would be gone, even though it is undoubtedly “AI”. And I don’t really blame these people, I’m one of them :')
It has a lot to do with the presentation of new features. And with resemblance to other tools which are associated with AI slop.
The problem in Adobe’s case is that they had so much control over their market that prior to ArtCraft Suite you more or less had to use their products if you were in a line of work that depended on them, especially if you were a graphic designer. Alternatives existed, but they were not directly compatible with Adobe’s file formats, meaning that you either had to use their products or risk losing work.
I consider it neither childish or bratty for someone to create an open-source alternative to Adobe’s products, even if it’s an exact copy. If it breaks Adobe’s stranglehold on their industry, then I’m all for it. I feel no sympathy whatsoever for a company that has abused its market dominance for the past 30+ years.
I’d do the same thing if I depended on a certain software for my work, and didn’t want to put up with the vendor’s terms and conditions. If the vendor doesn’t like it, then they need to stop screwing me over as a customer.
Look…it’s stange for me as a punk rocker to defend Adobe in this case but …
If someone builds it’s company year by year, develops new technologies, pays programmers, pays ui designers, marketing experts, testers etc, and no one on the damn market can compete, win customers over, stir things up… don’t you think Adobe didn’t exactly deserve that much hate? What they did deserve is to lose in court in case concerning concealing full subscription termination terms, which they did.
Nobody is stopping developers and angry designers to team up, make a real effort and create better tools than Adobe. But that is really hard, isn’t it? That’s why i just can’t admire this plagiarism. It’s great as a joke on Adobe, but only if it really was intended to be a joke…but it is not. You know…what bugs me is that i’m looking at the whole picture - Adobe is just a company in this whole world that functions basicaly the same as they do. If you’re gonna blame them, you must blame everything and everyone, otherwise it’s not fair.
Adobe deserves credit for innovating, especially in the early days. They do not, however, deserve credit for their business practices. They deserve every bit of hate they get for those practices, regardless of how innovative they were at one point.
Concealing subscription terms is not the only problematic thing that they did. They also mandated subscriptions, refused to support Linux, and established a near-monopoly in their market. The last one is not entirely their fault, but it’s still a point of criticism if you want to work in design but don’t want to use Adobe products.
It is hard, which is why the logical solution is to model the open-source alternative on the successful commercial product. Imitate then innovate. Even developers of commercial alternatives to Adobe products do that, though perhaps not to the same level as ArtCraft.
I blame any company that acts like Adobe. I blame Avid for making Pro Tools subscription-only. I blame Apple for only developing software for their hardware, and making it nearly impossible to repair said hardware when it breaks. I blame OpenAI for refusing to release ChatGPT’s source code, despite the fact that it was originally founded to develop open-source models.
I could go on, but I think I’ve made my point. Adobe is just one company that engages in this kind of predatory behavior, but I believe any company that acts like that deserves the ArtCraft treatment. I’m not going to shed crocodile tears over a company that screws over its customers, and then gets its product cloned by an AI. That’s what they get when they treat customers as their personal ATM machine, and it’s what they deserve.
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