Programming

As you said, it's out of the box/bag. The thing I'll push for is open sourcing all code. Being able to copy opensource code and hide it in proprietary code is to me the biggest problem. Were everything opensource, I doubt anybody would bat an eye. "You copied my code and put it out there publicly, free of charge? Good. Do it again".

Personally, I license everything as restrictively as possible for companies and would love an enforcable opensource license that figures out how to make companies contribute back or pay for use of the code.

Anti Commercial-AI license

Increasing amounts of code running on my computer and in the online services I use will be written by generative AI.

Emphasis added by me.

Thing is, it's not black and white most of the time - usually a developer is using Gen AI as an assistant in some capacity. There are a wide range of ways to do that with really big differences in how firmly their hand remains on the wheel of where things are going. Only in the most extreme "vibe coding" scenario would it be fair to characterize the code as "written by AI".

There reaches a point somewhere on the spectrum of dependency on AI where quality would suffer and developer capacity-building would be stunted. Where that point is, is a more productive question than a binary Yes or No to all AI.

with a long tail of grumpy holdouts who adhere to free software principles

Nothing in the core free software principles - namely, the four freedoms - actually concerns the development process and tools used - or copyright. It's all about what you can do with the software.

The GPL is more of a "hack" that "perverts" copyright to enforce free software principles - because that was the tool available, not because the people who wrote it really liked intellectual property.

The answer is 2.

Cling to known humans who write their own code.

Snake oil salesmen always encourage the public to bet against the experts, with predictable results.

Someday ethically sourced AI can be used responsibly by trustworthy coders.

But the key is choosing to collaborate with trustworthy coders.

I just write in a language few people really knows well. Not like I expect AI to do a great job of basing off my code.