Shepherd, not robot

This project, its code and its substance, have been brought to you by a small but dedicated herd of passionate and possibly stubborn human beings often referred to as “hackers.” This is how it all started more than 20 years ago and it hasn’t changed! I mean, why hack an init system, with a fringe programming language (best of breed, I must say), and with cutting-edge technology if not out of a passion for the good hack? Why make it free, with participation open to all, if not to share that passion with anyone curious enough?

You may have heard of this newfangled stuff: large language models (LLMs), coding agents, vibe coding, all that. At the Shepherdquarters (SHQ), we decided that it’s not to our liking: we want to keep hacking the good hack, we want to keep sharing with fellow human beings (and sheep), we want to preserve our agency. You want to boost your productivity by having someone else’s data center puke plausible code faster than you can read it? Move along—this place is not for you. You can’t be bothered to write it—we won’t bother reading it. And it’s not just code: the same goes for graphics, for translations, and in every case the almighty machine might want to deprive us of our creativity and autonomy.

(As it turns out, there appear to be many additional good reasons to just say “no”! This thing is swallowing more water than billions of sheep, using more energy (largely from fossil fuels!) than trillions of LibreOffice builds, it carries out a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack against the entire Web, and all that for what? To create an extra toll on us maintainers and reviewers and to make us poorer programmers. No no no, no way this gets any closer to the Shepherd’s prairie.)

So that’s it, that’s where we stand. “It’s political”, you say. Yes it is, very much. Like writing free software, like using an LLM, and indeed like most things we do in life.

You want to learn, you want to hack, you want to change the Shepherd to address your needs? By all means, do join us! It’s fun and creative, there’s sweat and tears too, and there’s a herd of humans with whom to share your experience.