NetBSD seems to be thriving of late: as the Linux world goes pro-AI, some of the AI-averse are turning to this explicitly AI-free project.
The NetBSD project’s Mastodon feed reports that it received a record 120 donations last month, and it has far exceeded its target:
“We received $120,282 USD in total. Naturally, this has completely filled up our donations target bar which was set at $50,000. Time to fund some projects!”
It’s a welcome contrast to the usual stories of under-funded FOSS projects, and it follows a visible uptick in people asking about NetBSD in the FOSS Unix groups we read, ever since Emperor Penguin Torvalds said that Linux was not an anti-AI project back in July, and the following month, the Debian project polled its developers on AI use, and they chose to permit AI-generated contributions.
I tend to agree.
People ship generated without reading it first.
Sure, and people also ship without adequate testing too.
There’s a reason why Linux Torvalds can use the AI to make something run 30x faster, and mainstream businesses can’t change the colour of a button without breaking shit on live, then having to go back and run the ticket through again.
That’s also true.