1w ago

New Rule Forbids GNOME Shell Extensions Made Using AI Generated Code

www.phoronix.com New Rule Forbids GNOME Shell Extensions Made Using AI Generated Code

The GNOME.org Extensions hosting for GNOME Shell extensions will no longer accept new contributions with AI-generated code. A new rule has been added to their review guidelines to forbid AI-generated code.
Due to the growing number of GNOME Shell extensions looking to appear on extensions.gnome.org that were generated using AI, it's now prohibited. The new rule in their guidelines note that AI-generated code will be explicitly rejected

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109 comments

You know, GNOME does some stupid stuff, but I can respect them for this.
- Why? If the code works the code works, and a person had to make it work. If they generated some functions who cares? If they let the computer handle the boilerplate, who cares? "Oh no the style is inconsistent..." Who cares?
  
  @uncouple9831
  That person debugging that stuff, that’s who cares.
  
  This is Gnome we're talking about here, they don't GAF if extensions work or not. They'll break them tomorrow if they feel like it.
  
  Contrary to uninformed opinions, they do try their best: https://gjs.guide/extensions/overview/updates-and-breakage.html
  
  they say they do is not the same as they do. Find me someone who isn't them who says the same thing
  
  You're literally looking at a post that is a result of that effort... The human review process exists to try and reduce GNOME Shell extensions that could potentially break the shell. The link I posted details other steps as well, but of course you didn't bother reading that. And again, it's impossible to never break extensions because extensions are just scripts that monkey-patch the GNOME Shell process. Trying their best is all they can do.
  With how Reddit and Lemmy react to GNOME, you would think GNOME killed their dog or something.
  
  extensions are just scripts that monke patch == there is no extension mechanism
  
  Yeah basically. It's just called Extensions. As I said in another comment, it's honestly a misnomer.
  
  uninformed
  I've used Gnome on and off for about a quarter century. There have been devs with very popular extensions that have sworn off Gnome because of their attitude towards breaking extensions. So if they've suddenly become concerned about breaking things people rely on to make Gnome marginally usable after Gnome itself has removed popular features, then that's a recent trend. So pull the other one.
  
  Of course there are extension devs who left GNOME due to the lack of a stable API. But they were all looking for something that was inherently not possible with how extensions work in GNOME. I can't blame them, "extensions" is a misnomer in this case after all. It's actually more like userscripts being applied on a web page in a browser.
  If possible, take the time to read the link in my earlier comment, it should clear up a lot of misunderstandings about "GNOME devs intentionally breaking extensions" as most people seem to think of it as.
  Given how extensions work (monkey-patching), it's actually really impressive that most extensions haven't really broken since GNOME 45 and the steps taken by GNOME to that end are impressive. Even the human review being discussed here is part of that, it's exactly because an extension can literally bring down a user's shell (also similar to how a web page can crash due to a userscript), so they're trying to reduce the chances of that happening.
  GNOME has always had a bit of a communication problem. They're working on it. But I promise you, they're all wonderful folks trying their best, even if they fail to convey that well sometimes.
  
  Oh come on, Gnome 45 was only 2 years ago. I guess we'll see how extensions go then, but I'm not holding my breath. I wouldn't waste my time on building anything for Gnome at this point. I abandoned Gnome at the garbage-collector BS where they blamed extension devs for the memory leak then used the big hammer solution.
  In the meantime:
  Mar 2024: https://felipec.wordpress.com/2024/03/18/stupid-gnome-developers/
  May 2025: https://medium.com/@fulalas/gnome-the-insanity-never-ends-f84a77ec3e13
  
  The medium post is mostly about bugs (it's software, that happens, report them or patch them) and distribution packaging issues (they seem to use Manjaro, so makes sense). Then it talks about design inconsistencies and all, which basically every Linux desktop is worse than GNOME with. Then it uses lines of code as a metric? Then it uses memory and compares GNOME to less capable desktops and ignores that KDE's memory usage is not too far away. I'm sure there's a lot of legacy code everywhere though.
  I don't know what to say about Felipe's issue since he wants a behavioral change in a library and he's mad that the GNOME devs aren't making that change.
  That said, all these desktops rely on GNOME components, so idk why they have such an attitude specifically towards GNOME. It's just software, don't get too heated over it.
  
  But if we talking about extensions, no one will debug your code. There like, 5 extensions that used consistently and others have 5-10 downloads. We have like, 5 extensions to hide top bar, cause each time developer just give up, so I don't really understand this "rule" and reasons behind it.
  
  Why would that be anyone other than the original author? This sounds like a hosting service is refusing to host things based on what tool was used in creation. "Anyone using emacs can't upload code to GitHub anymore" seems equivalently valid.
  
  GNOME manually reviews every extension, and they understandably don't want to review AI generated code.
  
  Oh...an actually human response. How refreshing. At least one person here got their rabies shot.
  Do they actually review it or is it like how android and apple "review" apps? And why would they be reviewing the code rather than putting it through some test suite/virus scanning suite or something? That is, this shit isn't going away any time soon even if the bubble pops, so why not find a way to avoid the work rather than ban people who make the work "too hard"?
  
  Jeez. Calm down.
  
  I'm calm, but since you need to hear it: nobody has ever in the history of the human race received the command to "calm down" and had it make them calmer. So chill out broski.
  
  Then do whatever you need to do to stop freaking out about other peoples' right to choose to not deal with LLMs.
  
  Can you point to the freak-out? How do you define freak out?
  
  Oh…an actually human response. How refreshing. At least one person here got their rabies shot.
  
  Yes they actually review the extensions, you'll find more information on the blogpost from last week.
  
  Oof this just makes it so much worse. It sounds like they have two complaints:
  There are more extensions being made now. Good. If you can't keep up, charge money to review them or something. Even charging 10 cents will drop submissions instantly.
  The extensions have unnecessary try/catch blocks. And it's not just any try catch blocks that aren't necessary..it's only the ai-generated unnecessary try catch blocks. Human-generated unnecessary try/catch blocks are fine. This is dumb and a dumb example because it's a structure whose behavior is well understood and well defined. I add unnecessary try/catch blocks to my code all the time if I don't feel like digging in at the moment to figure out all of the failure modes of some function. It's only when a LLM does it that it upsets the poster. Ridiculous.
  
  @uncouple9831 @imecth Because they care. Quaint old concept, I know...
  
  Why are you atting us? Replies show up for us anyway.
  Regardless, I don't know how your statement addresses anything I said.
  
  @uncouple9831 That's how my Mastodon client works. You asked, "Why would they be reviewing code?" I gave you the answer.
  
  There was more to that sentence. Caring doesn't mean accomplishing a goal in the highest effort way.
  
  @uncouple9831 If you really care about quality, it does.
  
  in the case of ai generated code, that is almost always the case. People say "but I review all my pet neural network's code!" but they don't. If they did, the job would actuallydtake longer. Reading and understanding code takes longer than writing it.
  
  I don't think this is in response to my message. If that was the intent, I think you need to define what "that" is, which is always the case.
  
  "why would that be anyone but the original author?"
  That is what i was replying to, and I replied to the intended comment
  
  So we agree, it's almost always the case that the original author is the one fixing the code?
  
  no, the opposite. The problem with ai pull requests is that in most cases whoever submits them does not understand the code and expects someone else to review it for them (that's if they are even aware of the concept of code reviews in the first place).
  
  Who said pull requests? That isn't the topic of this thread.
  Over and over again this thread's ai hate brigade seems to want to apply some bad experience you had at work to this completely different scenario. It's not the same. Sorry, but I have zero interest in being your therapist and you're not going to convince me by drumming up bad examples.
  
  Yes it would be someone else. If the code looks good then it might last a long time, and it could even be expanded upon. One key point of FOSS is that anyone can change it, and if it's good, people will.
  
  Great, so then it's someone reading new code either way, so it shouldn't matter if it's in the LLM style or random human A's style, it's still something you have to read and learn.
  But also I wonder if there's an analysis of how many of these extensions has ever been touched by more than a single human, ever. I don't know, but I sure wouldn't be surprised if the answer is 80%.
  
  @uncouple9831
  That would be any person trying to audit that barely functioning pile of poorly structured code someone left behind after finishing their contract or being fired, for example.
  
  And is that something that happens regularly with gnome extensions? My recollection is they are a barely functioning collection of random trash code. Were they all written by contractors who got fired?
  
  you shouldn't be able to tell if someone used ai to write something. if you can then it is bad code. they're not talking about getting completion on a fn, they're talking about letting an agent go and write chunks of the project.
  
  So then the policy doesn't make sense and should focus on what specific issues are associated with llm-generated code that are problematic. For example, I've seen llms generate fairly unreadable loops because it uses weird variable names. That's a valid offense to criticize.
  However I've also read C code before so I've seen an obscene amount of human generated code with shitty variable names that don't mean anything. So why is the shitty human C code ok but shitty LLM code is not? And if no shitty code is accepted (it's gnome so I doubt that), then why does anyone need a new rule?
  
  i'd love to review some of the code that you personally wrote.
  
  That's cool, but why? I tend to use longer variable names that are mostly self-explanatory because, well, intellisense exists so I don't really need to make them short.
  
  did you read their statement? they do.
  
  Yes, it says there was an unnecessary try/catch, that's pretty weak if that's the only reason.
  
  read their text again, the problem is that people submit code that they don't understand. and this will grow the more people decide to stay stupid / employ LLMs.
  
  Well that's an assertion they are claiming, maybe. I see people on lemmy claim that all of the time about people who use LLM tools but thinking a thing doesn't make it fact.
  Edit: I just reread the blog and actually see zero mention of that claim. So I'm not sure where you're reading that I'm not seeing.
  
  It's always some definition of works. The code never works in all cases, which works lead to people being annoyed with gnome for allowing the extension in the first place
  
  How is that different from most gnome extensions? Or gnome extensions right after a gnome update that breaks them all? Isn't being broken the default state of gnome extensions?
  
  Isn't being broken the default state of gnome extensions?
  No
  
  Oh

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