The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source - Ken Thompson's keynote, Tabby, The LLama Effect, Codeberg & facing the inevitable (News)

Episode Date: April 10, 2023

Ken Thompson's 75-year-project is a jukebox for the ages, Tabby is a self-hosted AI coding assistant, Codeberg is a collaboration platform and Git hosting for open source software, content and projects, TheSequence explains The LLama Effect & Paul Orlando writes about Ghosts, Guilds and Generative AI.

What up nerds, I'm Jared and this is Changelog News for the week of Monday, April 10th, 2023. We are finally ready to unveil the new name for this Monday News Brief that we're spinning off into its own podcast. Are you ready? It's called... Changelog News! Because, hey, if it ain't broke, right? So what's new then? Well, we did go ahead and create a new home for this show.

It lives at changelog.com slash news, and it has its very own feed, too, at changelog.com slash news slash feed. We are submitting it to Apple, Spotify, etc. So it'll exist standalone pretty much wherever people listen to podcasts. So that's cool. But so many of you reached out to say that you love the news right alongside our interview shows. So we're going to leave it here too. And you won't notice much of a change at all, except for some slightly modified artwork, depending on the episode's format. Now, if you just want the interviews and not the news... You're dead to me. I'm dead to you? You're dead to me, Kyle. Just kidding, I totally get it. We will be creating a new feed with just our

interview episodes in it, and we're working on another new format that we hope you like. More on that later, but I'll tell you right now, it's called Changelog and Friends. Okay, here's the last thing you need to know before we get into it. Changelog News is not only an audio thing anymore, it's now also taking over Changelog Weekly as our newsletter. The email is a companion to this podcast. Big! Big combo! They'll both ship out at the same time, and they'll have complimentary content. Specifically, the newsletter has the top stories we cover here in audio, and more stories, links, repost quotes, and other good stuff that we think is worth covering,

but would make the episodes too long. So if you want in on that, head to changelog.com slash news and pop in your email address. If you are already subscribed to changelog weekly, we migrated you over so there's no action necessary. Okay, this has been far too much navel gazing for my taste. Please do reach out with questions and feedback. We're always trying to improve. All right, let's get into the news. You may have heard that Ken Thompson, the 80-year-old Unix pioneer, gave the closing keynote at this year's Southern California Linux Expo. His topic, the tale of his 75-year project, a jukebox for the ages.

David Castle at the Newstack did a great job summarizing the hour-long talk, which we'll link for you to read. It's a super cool project. Ken also took some Q&A at the end, which I found particularly interesting. Here's one of them. What's your operating system of choice today? I have for most of my life, because I was sort of born into it, run Apple. All right. Now, recently, meaning within the last five years, I've become more and more and more

depressed, and what Apple is doing to something that should allow you to work is just atrocious, but they are taking a lot of space and time to do it, so it's okay. And I have come within the last month or two to say,

even though I've invested a zillion years in Apple, I'm throwing it away, and I'm going to Linux, to Raspbian in particular. Ken, if you're listening, or somebody who knows him, we'd absolutely love to host you here on the ChangeLog. We have some questions of our own that we're just dying to ask. If you listened to LLM's Break the Internet

with Simon Willison last week, you already know that my aha moment during that conversation was realizing language models don't necessarily have to keep getting larger for most use cases, especially once we start providing them tools to find answers on their own. That's promising. In that arena, check out Tabby. It's a self-hosted AI coding assistant, an open-source and on-prem alternative to GitHub Copilot. Tabby is completely self-contained with no need for a database or

cloud service, has a web UI for visualizing and configuring things, and provides an open API interface to easily integrate with existing infra. The AI game is certainly afoot, but it's clearly the first few innings. And if we're lucky, projects like Tabby can move us toward a future that isn't dominated by a few big tech companies. On the topic of open alternatives, Codeburg is worth a gander. It's a collaboration platform and get hosting for open source software, content and projects. Codeburg is not run by a company, but a nonprofit based in Berlin. The service boasts about its community roots and its commitment to privacy. They say your data is not for sale.

All services run on servers under our control. No dependencies on external services. Let's talk about the Lama reads a story with who? With his mama. Hey, mama kisses baby hair. Mama Lama goes all the way downstairs. No, Luda, not that Lama. This is a story about how an accidental leak sparked a series of impressive open source alternatives to chat GPT. Lama, of course, is Meta's language model that they open sourced. I was wondering why they decided to open source it, especially now seeing OpenAI not release any specifics regarding their training of GPT-4. Turns out they open sourced Llama because somebody leaked it on 4chan. You really can't put the toothpaste back in the tube. Thanks to that leak, we've seen a

kingrian explosion of projects that are enumerated in the article. Alpaca, vicuna, koala, colossal chat, freedom GPT, and more. Friend of the log, Paul Orlando has a new piece on his Unintended Consequences blog. This one's titled Ghost Shirts, Guilds, and Generative AI. To kick it off, Paul asks, quote, Are some things inevitable and if something is inevitable what do you do if you don't like it you could fight it indirectly and delay how fast the change happens in that case you will quietly subvert the system you can fight it

directly even though you'll probably lose in that case you are fighting for honor or through a combination of luck and foresight, you could build a system that shields you from the inevitable change taking over your corner of the world. In that case, you need to build and defend a boundary. End quote. He is, of course, talking about the latest AI advancements and the PAWS giant AI experiments letter that was signed by the likes of Steve Wozniak, Elon Musk, and other business leaders and academics. Paul doesn't just give his take, though.

He walks us down history lane and compares AI hesitation to the ghost shirts of 1870s Native Americans and gills of the late 1800s iron industry. Definitely worth a read. That is the news for now. There's more to the story that you can read in our first ever Changelog News companion newsletter. Check your show notes for a link or subscribe to get it delivered directly into your inbox at changelog.com slash news. This week on our interview show, Adam and I are joined by the one and only Corey Doctorow. It's a good one. We discuss interoperability, chokepoint capitalism, and chickenized reverse centaurs. Yeah, you heard me right.

Have a great week. Share changelog news with your friends if you dig it. And we'll talk to you again real soon.