The vibe coding got the project attention and it looks like he's going to get the help he needed.
However the "outrage", if you even call it that, wasn't entirely misplaced when pretty basic bugs were introduced by this, such as:
Can't use rsync with absolute paths:
https://github.com/RsyncProject/rsync/issues/922
Links mode is broken:
https://github.com/RsyncProject/rsync/issues/915
The scale of the commits, and rewriting the entire testing framework was pretty big for a "bugfix" revision.
Neither of the bugs you link are currently traced back to a commit that used AI.
I don’t think AI assisted code is bad, but I really question tridge’s approach here. His post in response to to the dogpiling isn’t good (https://medium.com/@tridge60/rsync-and-outrage-d9849599e5a0). I appreciate his sense of duty to maintain rsync, but I get the very strong vibe from his response that he really doesn’t want to do this anymore and the use of AI is a way to make it easier on himself. He goes through some pretty lame arguments (aren’t humans just stochastic parrots‽ We don’t know!) and confesses he’d much rather stay retired and be sailing most of the time.
I think his heart is in the right place, but this is no longer a labor of love and it shows. Also, I think another point is that, given the criticality of rsync to so many businesses maybe they could fund development and maintenance of it? What a novel idea.
> the use of AI is a way to make it easier on himself.
I don't see what's wrong with either this or his response in that post.
> I don’t think AI assisted code is bad, but I really question tridge’s approach here.
What specifically is the part you're questioning?
You could argue that he should've bumped the version more and should've done a longer beta test, but on the other hand, these were mostly security fixes, and I can understand he wanted to get them out there rather sooner than later (also "doing a beta test" is easier said than done - how do you get people to run a test version of rsync?).
I guess vibecoding certain software is now the new way of "instead of asking for help, write the wrong solution instead".
This does once again feel like a case of https://xkcd.com/2347/
I do wonder about “The world of software engineering has changed dramatically in the last few months”. Has it really? I’ve been hearing that for a few years now.
> The world of software engineering has changed dramatically in the last few months
I disagree, but I guess we shall see how this is going to pan out. We've all introduced schoolboy errors in our time regardless of how long we've been developers. Messing up absolute paths because you only tested on relative happens to the best of us, but generally we say "woops" and try to fix it.
Doubling down and blaming users for your fuck up rarely ends well.
A lie travels around the globe while the truth is putting on its shoes. Do better, HN.
People are (correctly) not going to be held to some kind of lower standard just because they "used AI" and "were fixing security issues".
If there had been the same regressions but no AI, do you think there would be a 300 post issue full of people complaining? People are holding the update to a higher standard just because they used AI.
5am here in the UK, midnight Eastern US on a Tuesday night? I can see why it wouldn't have gained much traction yet.
> A lie travels around the globe while the truth is putting on its shoes. Do better, HN.
Stop baiting.
Rsync 3.4.3 has hundreds of Claude commits - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48334021 - May 2026 (81 comments)
It indeed has. I now review code written by machines that sucks the life of me, read reports written by a machine, and overall have a miserable life as a software engineer. The pay is good so I'll keep on it for the time being, but you are damn right it changed, for the worse.
Interestingly enough, I see the trend of people with decades of experience using AI more and more often. I'm in the 20 years club myself, and I do AI-assisted coding every day. It does help, and I'm grateful to have a tool like this to quickly try new ideas and throw them away if they suck. Shaming the author for using AI to help with the CI stuff is baffling to me. Are we witnessing just another ideology-driven tribal reaction on the rise?
Then step down as maintainer if you don't want to do it properly.
Please Do Not Vibe Fuck Up This Software
And this has nothing to do with AI. It seems to me that a significant amount of people in IT disconnected from reality.
Go throw a couple potatoes in the ground and see them grow or whatever. Your opinion most likely wont matter nor make any difference.
