Yes, no AI is now a feature - TDF Community Blog
blog.documentfoundation.org
One of the comments on the announcement of LibreOffice 26.8 was a simple question: “So, no AI is now a feature?” LibreOffice does not reject artificial intelligence out of hand, but an office suite used by tens of millions of people – in schools, hospitals, public bodies, law firms and thousands of other organisations – will not add a feature to its default configuration until that feature can be delivered under the conditions defined by the project in accordance with its principles. User-controlled execution. The user must be able to choose where inference takes place: on the local computer, on an infrastructure directly controlled by the user, or on a service chosen independently by the user. A default setting that silently redirects to a single provider is not a choice. No content may leave the computer without authorisation. The content of documents is a user’s asset and, in many implementations, is also legally protected material: medical records, case files, tender documents and student data. Transmission must be the result of a user’s decision and not behaviour carried out in the background by the application. No telemetry of any kind. LibreOffice does not collect usage data, and this must also apply

TDF employs good reasoning and applies high standards that other open-source projects should emulate. I’d recommend reading the full article but I particularly liked

No telemetry of any kind. LibreOffice does not collect usage data, and this must also apply to AI features.

And (emphasis mine)

It must be installable , removable, and absent from the user interface for those who do not wish to use it, including administrators deploying the software across thousands of workstations

I don’t think shots were intended to be fired at the Mozilla corporation, who can’t stop talking about their default, opt-out AI, but it paints a stark picture of the difference between a company that preaches privacy and choice, versus a company that actually provides those things.

  • kbal@fedia.io
    46·
    30 days ago

    You’d think that “no AI” would be an easy feature to implement, and it’s much in demand. Strange that it seems to be beyond the abilities of so many software developers.

    • TehPers@beehaw.orgEnglish
      20·
      30 days ago

      It’s mostly just management dictating from the top-down. I’ve heard everything from “it’s our company’s direction” to “investors are only funding AI expenses” and nothing actually grounded on (B2C) customer feedback.

      • SeductiveTortoise@piefed.socialEnglish
        2·
        3 hours ago

        Colleagues in my last company are measured by their token consumption. Not how little they use, but if they use up all their budget in a month. If not, they’re obviously bad for whatever they’re measuring.

        I was a software tester ages ago and I was measured by the amount of bugs I found. Didn’t matter if it was a typo or some complicated crash that only occurred when all the stars aligned. I thought it was peak idiocy back then. But this new thinking beats that by far.

        • TehPers@beehaw.orgEnglish
          2·
          2 hours ago

          Yep, tokenmaxxing is a thing at some companies now. It often aligns with the same people competing to see who can generate the most lines of slop code (losc, which is different than sloc of course).

          It wasn’t long ago where people understood that every line of code you write is a line of code that could have a bug in it. The good devs still know this, but many are also being forced to generate shitty code just to appease their shitty management now.

          As an aside, I have yet to see a case where tokenmaxxing generates a profit for either the consumer or the provider. It just reeks of the same “market capture at all costs” mindset that have plagued SV startups for so long.

          • SeductiveTortoise@piefed.socialEnglish
            1·
            2 hours ago

            What has been maxxing for me is reviews. And if you send me one PR with 20,000 lines of code changed, I will tell you to get fucked and break it up.

            I’m so glad my position allows me to do that 😂

      • stravanasu@lemmy.ca
        7·
        30 days ago

        With the important reminder that top-management people typically have the IQ of a beetle, or less.

    • Ooops@feddit.org
      8·
      30 days ago

      You would be surprised how much “We need AI to take over the world completely or there is no chance in hell to ever get our insane investments back” motivates people to push bullshit on you.

    • luciole (he/him)@beehaw.org
      6·
      29 days ago

      It’s more a question of agency than ability. Take this excerpt from the announcement:

      For a company that sells subscriptions, an AI assistant justifies a price increase and strengthens the case for keeping all documents within its own infrastructure. The functionality and the business model reinforce each other, so integration is not only attractive but almost mandatory.

      Anyone employed in such a company will have a hard time resisting. There’s a mix of unrest and despair in the discipline right now. I’ve met colleagues drastically change careers over this. Sick leaves over mental health too.

  • WaterWaiver@aussie.zoneEnglish
    14·
    30 days ago

    I don’t think shots were intended to be fired at the Mozilla corporation, who can’t stop talking about their default, opt-out AI, but it paints a stark picture of the difference between a company that preaches privacy and choice, versus a company that actually provides those things.

    I think they’re also taking shots on telemetry. Firefox uses telemetry as evidence to support their decisions in ways that sometimes seem contrived or statistically incorrect (similar to only x% of people turned this default feature off, therefore it is good), making me feel as a user that contributing my telemetry to them is actually a bad thing that is encouraging their behaviour. Meanwhile TDF makes great software that follows what the community wants and needs without any telemetry collection.

  • Julio Eusebio@lemmus.orgBannedEnglish
    2·
    29 days ago

    Interesting perspective. As AI becomes more common in software development, choosing when not to use AI could become just as important as choosing when to use it