Open Slopware

Free/Open Source Software tainted by LLM developers/developed by genAI boosters, along with alternatives.

The intention of this list is to raise awareness of this technology's usage in popular software, as well as give people informed alternatives that they can reach for when they want to make decisions for themselves. This is not a list created so you can go and give these projects trouble for their decision. If you want to file a complaint about it with them, we consider that acceptable but ask that it be done respectfully and constructively.

For more information on why we think this list matters, please see Why not LLMs?.

To Contribute, checkout our CONTRIBUTING.md.

Note

This is a fork of a repo by the same name maintained by the @gen-ai-transparency org on Codeberg. If they make their repo available again, we will contribute back.

• Definitions
• Tainted Software
  • Browsers
  • Command-Line Shells
  • Computer Graphics
    • Photography
  • Terminal Emulators
  • Developer Tools
  • Programming Languages
    • Note on alternative languages
  • Editors
  • Accessibility Tools
  • Microcontroller Tools and Libraries
  • Service Monitoring
  • Libraries
    • C
    • Rust
    • CSS
  • Game Engines
  • Services and Utilities
    • File Storage
    • Password Management
    • Social Media
    • Messaging
    • Budgeting
    • VPN Software
  • System Services and Daemons
  • Operating Systems
• Why not LLMs?
  • Legal Ramifications
    • Stolen Training Data
  • Environmental Impact
  • Poor Code Quality
    • Infosec Risks
    • Healthy and Safety
    • Maintainer Fatigue

Definitions

Term	Definition
LLM	Large Language Model, a language model trained on vast amounts of text (often entire websites without the website owner's permission)
slop	Anything generated by AI, typically code, books, articles, or images.
sloperator	A person who uses AI prompts to generate anything, typically code or images.
slopshop	Company, Organization, or Group of sloperators working together to use AI to generate content.

Tainted Software

Browsers

Name	Alternatives	Evidence	Notes
Chromium/Blink engine	WebKit?	Presence of .claude, .gemini and .agents
Firefox	LibreWolf, several other forks	Blog post collecting details
Ladybird		President of company/core developer discussing Rust language adaption using AI agents. Associated blog post

Command-Line Shells

Name	Alternative(s)	Evidence	Notes
nushell	elvish shell, fish shell	Integrated MCP server, core developer sets Claude as a co-author
yash	dash shell, but there are no other major shells fully targeting POSIX	Assigns and auto-reviews MRs with LLMs

Computer Graphics

Photography

Name	Alternative(s)	Evidence
RapidRAW		From the README: "with the support from Google Gemini." Roadmap includes adding GenAI.
RawTherapee	Stick to version 5.12	Use Copilot for review PR7518, PR 7435, PR 7378 and code changes commit c4b0400

Terminal Emulators

Name	Alternative(s)	Evidence	Notes
Ghostty	gnome terminal, konsole, xfce4, cosmic, mate, deepin, alacritty (or the fork with sixel support), wezterm, foot, ...	AI_POLICY.md states "AI is Welcome Here"

Developer Tools

Name	Alternative(s)	Evidence
atuin	Built-in shell history	AI command generation, LLM PRs accepted
cargo-nextest	Just use cargo test	CLAUDE.md and AGENTS.md in repository
jujutsu	continue using git itself	A core dev occasionally uses Claude to generate local test cases., (Discord link)
just	a Make impl	Lists an MCP server in its User Manual.
oh-my-posh	Starship	AGENTS.md file in main repository
oh-my-bash	Starship	All PRs are reviewed with "Qodo" Example PR
ohmyzsh	Starship	Added Claude and Grok as search engines
Taskfile	a Make impl	Uses Copilot for PRs

Note

On task runners and make(1) implementations:

A lot of Make implementations exist that are very fit to replace other task runners. In fact so many were produced, that one can just look up "GNU Make alternative" and find >10 results to pick the one they like the best. Also see: wikipedia/Make Here are some Make implementation suggestions:

• GNU Make --- the most complete one, extra extensions, guile scripting, exports, etc.,
• NetBSD make --- Make used to build NetBSD ports tree
• Jam --- OSS rewrite by Perforce.

Programming Languages

Name	Alternative(s)	Evidence	Notes
.NET	See below	.NET Runtime PRs, .NET SDK PRs
Julia	Python (w/ appropriate scientific libraries)	AGENTS.md in main repository, PRs "written by Claude"

Note

On alternative languages:

Suggestions for alternative programming languages are necessarily more complex than many other categories considered here, as that's one of the core technical choices to be made when starting a new software development project.

Depending on your needs and technical concerns, you may find any number of different alternative languages useful. For example, when considering alternatives to .NET, Java or Scala may be interesting candidates from the perspective of being similar VM-based frameworks, while Python or Rust may be interesting alternatives in other ways.

Editors

Name	Alternative(s)	Evidence	Notes
Zed	Lapce, other popular editors like neovim, emacs, etc	They prominently advertise genAI features as a core part of their product. See their website.	There's a killswitch to disable genAI features entirely, but it's likely the code itself is still heavily LLM-authored.
VS Code	VS Codium* removes the AI features from VS Code	It's literally their main advertising tagline, and they publicly use LLMs in their public repository. Most AI "features" are enabled by default, and some cannot be disabled.	*VS Codium is still written with LLMs since Microsoft owns it
VIm	emacs, EVi and other forks of VIm prior to January 9th 2026, build v9.1.2073 or commit fc00006777594f969ba8fcff676e6ca1bcb43546.	Thread on Hachyderm.io where screenshots show that the lead maintainer, chrisbra, uses Claude for VIm including commits featuring Claude in the VIm repo.	This also affects neovim.

Accessibility Tools

Name	Alternative(s)	Evidence	Notes
espeak-ng	flite	Dev uses copilot for review and is setting up copilot instructions	espeak still exists, but is heavily outdated and very bad from a modern standpoint, so it cannot be considered as an alternative. flite users may also wish to install speech-dispatcher-flite.

Microcontroller Tools and Libraries

Name	Alternative(s)	Evidence	Notes
FastLED		.claude and .cursor folders in main repository

Service Monitoring

Name	Alternative(s)	Evidence
Uptime Kuma	Gatus	Dev uses copilot for review

Libraries

C

Name	Alternative(s)	Evidence	Notes
harfbuzz	Not realistically replaceable currently, use earlier version.	Core developer enthusiastically discloses LLM usage

Rust

Name	Alternative(s)	Evidence	Notes
facet	Use more specific deserialization libraries and avoid macros that slow things down anyway. serde itself is tainted by its Palantir-defending author. nanoserde could be suitable for certain use cases.	Core developer openly uses LLMs for library dev
ratatui	iocraft and cursive. console and its family of libraries may also be enough for some use cases.	Core developer has stated their use of AI for rust code

Also, there is an advistory database of Rust slopware crates, which you can use in tools like cargo-deny: https://codeberg.org/erin/rust-slopdb.

CSS

Name	Alternative(s)	Evidence	Notes
tailwindcss	twind	Sponsorship page states explicitly that the founder uses AI to write code and even sells access to his "Cursor/Claude/AGENTS.md rules"

Game Engines

Name	Alternative(s)	Evidence
UPBGE 0.5	UPBGE 0.36.1 seems to be slop-free, Godot	0.5 release notes state the use of AI in plain language

Services and Utilities

Name	Alternative(s)	Evidence
Calibre 8.16.2	BookLore Clbre, a Calibre fork without AI Arcalibre, a Calibre hard-fork from before AI features	Added "Discuss selected book(s) with AI" feature
Ghost	WriteFreely	Include configurations for Claude and cursor; images on website seem generated
Wagtail CMS	WriteFreely	Include AGENTS.md; Wagtail AI
WordPress	WriteFreely	Include AGENTS.md; has Copilot PRs
Bludit CMS	Jekyll maybe? No signs of AI in the repo but also no clear statement provided	Coding with Claude and reviewing by Code Rabbit

File Storage

Name	Alternative(s)	Evidence
MinIO	Garage	Advertises AI as their primary focus on their website.
Nextcloud	seafile for file storage and syncing only (not a complete worksuite replacement)	✨ Nextcloud Assistant (can be disabled) Nextcloud Desktop has AGENTS.md
SeaweedFS	Garage for S3 api + JuiceFS for the NFS mounts and K8s CSI driver Rook/Ceph	Using Gemini and coderabbitai in PRs.

Password Management

Name	Alternative(s)	Evidence
Bitwarden	vaultwarden	Include CLAUDE.md
KeepassXC	Use official KeePass 2. It is a .NET application, but Mono or Wine can be used for Linux, MacOS, BSD, ... KeePassXC 2.7.9 was released before the statement, and was awarded 3 year security Visa by the French National Cybersecurity Agency (ANSSI) for a First-level Security Certification (CSPN), valid in France and Germany, under report No. ANSSI-CSPN-2025/16 (archive.org, certificate).	Explicitly stated in official blog post. Use Copilot to generate PRs: Example 1, Example 2, Example 3.

Social Media

This is for both social media websites and apps.

Name	Alternative(s)	Evidence
Bluesky	Mastodon, GoToSocial	CTO discusses using Claude in development
IceCubesApp for iOS	Feditext, an iOS fediverse app in beta	Project uses Claude

Messaging

Name	Alternative(s)	Evidence
Telegram		.cursor folder in repository

Budgeting

Name	Alternative(s)	Evidence
Actual		Include AGENTS.md; Used Open Collective funds for Cursor subscription
Firefly III		Include agents.md

VPN Software

Name	Alternative(s)	Evidence
Headscale	netbird, nebula	AGENTS.md and .claude/agents added to repo, commits/PRs include "assisted by claude" notes (example, there are plenty more)

System Services and Daemons

Name	Alternative(s)	Evidence
framework-system	BIOS settings, UI widgets, /proc	CLAUDE file, Claude usage by maintainer
rsyslog	syslog-ng	Explicitly stated in the documentation

Operating Systems

Name	Alternative(s)	Evidence
Linux Kernel	BSD? Honestly this one's tough	Maintainers are explicitly trying out the technology and considering LLM-based reviews

Why not LLMs?

Could use some help writing this with concrete receipts on environmental, social, political, and economic/labor harms.

Legal Ramifications

LLMs are often trained on, and thus prone to, regurgitate either completely, or in-part, chunks of code that are licensed under terms which have specific legal requirements that a sloperator may not understand or even be aware of when making a contribution. Regardless of this ignorance, it falls to the repo's owner to comply with the terms of any and all licensed code integrated into their project.

Legal, copyright and ethic problems arise especially with copyleft licenses such as (A/L)GPL. With the "help" of AI the copyleft code may be "license-washed" very easily.

There are ongoing problems with AI "license-washing" in the FOSS world:

• chardet --- switched from LGPL to MIT license without asking all contributors (which itself is a violation of GPL)
  • relicensed release: https://github.com/chardet/chardet/releases/tag/7.0.0
  • original author's concerns: https://github.com/chardet/chardet/issues/327
  • "consumer's" concerns: https://github.com/chardet/chardet/issues/331

Stolen Training Data

AI companies use data from across the web for training their models, most often without the website owners' and users' consent. Big tech companies like Google and Meta are scraping data from the users of major FOSS projects, such as Mastodon, WordPress, and other AcitivityPub-powered and self-hosted software.

• In 2023, the Washington Post published a list of sources in Google's C4 data set. A multitude of fediverse instances and personal sites were included. The fediverse is known for its userbase being major proponents of privacy and opt-in consent, making this especially jarring for those who have chosen to use decentralized social media for control over their data.
• In 2025, a similar leak of Meta's sources was published. Meta's list demonstrates how their integration of ActivityPub into their Threads software has enhanced their ability to mine content without authorization. Threads is widely blocked in some parts of the fediverse, but their scraping of server CDNs has allowed them to get around that. Notably, both the CDN domains of the managed hosting services masto.host and fedi.monster are included in the list; large servers like mastodon.art, which is hosted by the former and has many artists who've left sites like DeviantArt and others due to their AI scraping of user content, had media unknowingly scraped.

FOSS projects listed in this repo are using tooling that blatantly disregards licensing and violates even the most basic of Code of Conducts, making said tools antithetical to FOSS' purpose.

See also:

• copilot litigations, IEEE article explaining how we go here
• broader lawsuits against AI companies tracker

Environmental Impact

To start learning a bit more, you can checkout the wikipedia page on Environmental impact of artificial intelligence. We're very open to people contributing other explanations, links, and resources to learn more about this.

Poor Code Quality

Vibe coding / agentic workflows result in poorer code quality, and relaxed oversight practices. These effects may be compounded by the common practice of using additional LLM-based tooling to provide code-reviews.

• How I Dropped Our Production Database and Now Pay 10% More for AWS
• Claude Tested Everything Except the One Thing That Mattered (Ai agent refuses to follow explicit instructions to test createPost() in increasingly erratic ways)

Infosec risks

This also often results in massive security holes.

• Meta Security Researcher's AI Agent Accidentally Deleted Her Emails
• Moltbook’s ‘vibe-coded’ breach is the future of security failures

Healthy and Safety

There's been a number of high profile incidents that have resulted in endangerment or death. Here's some examples:

• AI Toy Exposed 50,000 Logs of Its Chats With Kids to Anyone With a Gmail Account

• Content Warning: Suicide

  • Wikipedia: Deaths linked to chatbots
  • AI chatbot pushed a teen to kill himself, a lawsuit against its creator alleges

Maintainer Fatigue

Having to deal with the onslaught of many LLM written pull requests and issues, causes real maintainer burnout that stagnates projects as maintainers become overwhelmed with half baked, poorly written, insecure code. Here's some examples:

• Overrun with AI slop, cURL scraps bug bounties to ensure “intact mental health”
• Godot maintainers struggle with 'draining and demoralizing' AI slop submissions
• An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me (matplotlib)