Crossposted from https://fedia.io/m/updates@kbin.melroy.org/t/4475005

As you all might know it, Mbin is a rather small project with a small team. In fact the current size of the team is 1.5 developers (0.5 for the ones which only have partially time). While our active devs do what they can in their free time, this leads to slow feature and security updates, sometimes slow support and increasing stress for the remaining devs.

That’s why I ask everyone who likes this project, has time of their own to donate and knows how to program with PHP (or is willing to learn it) to consider helping this project move forward.
You can start with simpler features and submit them as PRs or even just help review existing PRs if full commitment to maintaining the codebase is currently too much. We are aware that parts of our codebase contains more spagett than some Italian restaurants, but we will help every newcomer to find their way through the sources.
Every bit of support helps, as it also shows that we have a passionate userbase which does not want Mbin to wither away.

Well … as I’m not very good at writing motivational texts, just comment anything which comes to mind for this issue :D If you have ideas how to improve the chances that this post reach the right people, I would also love to hear it.

At the same time I want to bring up another topic, as transparency is important for any public project.

Some of our devs use AI assistants for generating code for PRs and also to assist with PR reviews. Simply because without it, they would not have time to continue contributing to Mbin (which would bring our devs down to 1, making it impossible to merge new PRs). On thing here is important to know: I will not call it slop nor vibe-coding, as they are a competent developer capable of understanding and managing the outputs of the agents. Still, I am very aware of the issues of AI and the general opinion on it in the Fediverse. That is why I would like to know your constructive opinions on this matter.
Also, I guarantee you that every PR is reviewed by at least one human pair of eyes.

    • geekwithsoul@piefed.socialEnglish
      11·
      4 hours ago

      AI isn’t a “tool” - it’s a set of subroutines built on the stolen labor and property of others using exploitative amounts of energy and resources to confidently make up something that’s wrong.

      That’s a tool in the same way a hammer is a tool - if you stole it from your neighbor, it was coin-operated and gas-powered, and it often turned into a screwdriver or a halibut midswing and then obsequiously apologized.

      GIGO was true pre-GenAI, but is no longer. You can take good data, train a model on it with the greatest care, do a well-structured prompt, and still get garbage out. Honestly, a lot of boomers and older GenX embrace GenAI because they still think GIGO applies without realizing what a broken assumption that is.