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 AI/LLM usage in popular open-source software. Provided below is an informed set of AI-free alternatives for users and developers to consider should their ethical boundaries be crossed or tolerance for risk be exceeded. This list is not a resource to be used for the harassment of other open-source developers. If you wish to advocate for the cessation of use and/or removal of AI-generated code from another project, we 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
    • Desktop Browsers
    • Mobile 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
    • Python
    • 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
• License

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

Desktop Browsers

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

Note

On Desktop Browser Alternatives

• Epiphany (by GNOME, WebKit based) does not currently have a stance, but GNOME developers as a whole show aware anti-"AI" sentiments and roll out wide reaching rules against it.
• LibreWolf (Firefox fork) has made statements and efforts to remove Mozilla's push for "AI". They also acknowledge that the notion of "apolitical" technology is a futile one.
• Servo (New engine, formerly owned by Mozilla, now by a co-op) is not yet daily driver ready, but has strong protections for when it is some time in the future.

Mobile Browsers

Name	Alternatives	Evidence	Notes
Firefox	IronFox	Blog post collecting details

Note

On Mobile Browser Alternatives

• IronFox For Android, while not officially related to LibreWolf, some of the same developers work on it.

Command-Line Shells

Name	Alternative(s)	Evidence	Notes
nushell	elvish 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"
Kitty	See above	Contains multiple commits from Copilot (e.g. 1, 2, 3, 4)

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 implementation	Lists an MCP server in its User Manual.
oh-my-posh		AGENTS.md file in main repository
oh-my-bash		All PRs are reviewed with "Qodo" Example PR
ohmyzsh		Added Claude and Grok as search engines; explicitly allows LLMs; contains commits from Claude and Copilot
Starship		Contains commit from Claude
Taskfile	A Make implementation	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	An older version of Python (w/ appropriate scientific libraries)	AGENTS.md in main repository, PRs "written by Claude"
Python	Older version of Python; Lua	Contains code from Claude
Typescript	Normal JavaScript; Lua	Contains Copilot instructions and multiple commits from Copilot (e.g. 1, 2, 3, 4)

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.

Editors

Name	Alternative(s)	Evidence	Notes
Zed	Lapce, Gram (removes AI integration, codebase may still contain AI code), other popular editors like 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 March 20th 2024, build v9.1.0190 or commit 8950bf7f8b85c1287d4e696965d88091fcc60594.	Thread on Hachyderm.io where screenshots show that the lead maintainer, chrisbra, uses Claude for VIm including commits featuring Claude in the VIm repo and other potential LLM code from a contributor as early as March 2024.	This also affects neovim and many other forks.

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
Glitchtip		AI policy states Glitchtip is written with plenty of AI assistance

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/1millibyte/rust-slopdb.

Python

Note that Python is itself tainted; see the Programming Languages section.

Name	Alternative(s)	Evidence	Notes
Requests	urllib.request in Python Standard Library	Contains commits from Claude
Chardet	An older version	Core developer used Claude to launder LGPL-licensed code to Expat/MIT license

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
Gitea	Forgejo (self-hosted) or Codeberg (hosted)	Include AGENTS.md and CLAUDE.md; Include AI contribution policy; Some blog post images are AI generated
somafm_tui	soma-player	Commits from QwenCoder & Claude
Bludit CMS	See below	Coding with Claude and reviewing by Code Rabbit
Hugo	See below	Include AGENTS.md, Claude.md, Commits made with Claude
Zola	See below	Include .claude

Note

Static site generators alternatives

• Jekyll maybe? No signs of AI in the repo but also no clear statement provided
• Pelican

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
PeerTube		Includes copilot instructions

Messaging

Name	Alternative(s)	Evidence	Notes
Mattermost	Delta Chat, matrix	Distributes an "agents" plugin, with several LLM features, core developers commit LLM-generated code
Telegram	Delta Chat, matrix	.cursor folder in repository
Zulip	Delta Chat, matrix	Integrated an LLM "topic summary" feature
Sharkord	Delta Chat, matrix	GitHub Copilot is mentioned in the .gitignore, maintainer mentions using AI

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)
• Amazon calls engineers for a “deep dive” internal meeting to discuss “GenAI”-related outages
• GitClear has released reports in 2024 and 2025 indicating a worsening of key code quality metrics correlating with increased LLM adoption.

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
• In a study evalulating over 500k code samples, LLM-generated code was found to contain more high-risk security vulnerabilities than human-generated code
• LLMs make up package names, making them vulnerable to incorporating malicious code in "slopsquatting" attacks (Arxiv study)

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

LLM use has also been linked to new-onset psychosis.

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)

Deskilling

There is increasing evidence to show that LLMs negatively impact developers' coding abilities:

• Brains show less activity when completing tasks with LLMs compared to completing tasks with search or completing tasks without digital help.
• Developers who use early-2025 LLMs reported higher subjective performance, but were measured to have lower objective performance. This gap between subjective and objective performance was considered notable.
• In an Anthropic study, learners using LLMs demonstrated lower learning rates on average compared to learners not using LLMs.
• A recent study uses the term "cognitive surrender" to describe the way humans tend to offload key critical thinking skills onto LLMs, even when the output is wrong.
• There are anecdotal reports of LLM users forgetting how to code.

License

This repository is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 4.0 International license. Please see LICENSE.txt for more information.