alt Hacker NewsI don't think it really is - drive-by changes have been a net burden on maintainers long before LLMs started writing code. Someone who wants to put in the work to become a repeat contributor to a project is a different story.
Replies
How to differentiate between a drive-by contribution and a first contribution from a potentially long-time contrubutor.
And I would say especially for operating systems if it gets any adoption irregular contributions are pretty legit. E.g. when someone wants just one specific piece of hardware supported that no one else has or needs without being employed by the vendor.
Hard disagree. Drive by's were the easiest to deal with, and the most welcome. Especially when the community tilted more to the side of non-amateurs and passionate people.
I can understand drive-by features can be a net burden, but what is wrong with a drive-by bugfix?
how in the heck do you disambiguate a first time long term contributor and a first time drive by contributor?
I've gotta disagree with you here - it's not uncommon for me to be diving into a library I'm using at work, find a small issue or something that could be improved (measurably, not stylistically), and open a PR to fix it. No big rewrites or anything crazy, but it would definitely fit the definition of "drive by change" that _thus far_ has been welcomed.