Noting the impacts of slop
2026-02-03 23:21:46.789854+01 by Dan Lyke 0 comments
Red Monk: AI Slopageddon and the OSS Maintainers
AI slop is ripping up the social contract between maintainers and contributors essential to open source development. Practitioners have been repeatedly assured that AI would supercharge their communities, but so far that hasnt been the case. Just look at what happened last month. Mitchell Hashimotos Ghostty implemented a zero-tolerance policy where submitting bad AI-generated code gets you permanently banned. Steve Ruiz, Founder of tldraw, announced he would auto-close all external pull requests. Meanwhile cURL, the humble command-line tool that quietly powers approximately everything on the internet, just shut down its bug bounty program. After six years and $86,000 in payouts, Daniel Stenberg, founder and lead developer of cURL, pulled the plug. The reason? An AI onslop (pun fully intended).
The AI Dirty List — Ensuring those who choose to bathe in AI slop will never be washed clean.