Wait what, you can't use a *code* editor when you're under 18 now? 🤔

I’m tired

RE: https://mastodon.online/@marekfort/116164253291515471

@marekfort such ageist terms are often an attempt by corpos to cover their asses against “don’t harvest minors’ personal data” regulation

safe to assume they definitely plan on harvesting and exploiting users’ personal data

@marekfort “you own your AI-generated output” wheeze

@marekfort @Gargron I think it’s probably more that you can’t enter into a legal agreement like new ToS unless you’re 18 (in the US, at least…)

Lawyers ruin everything.

@jimmylittle @marekfort @Gargron ...why do you need a Terms of Service agreement for *A TEXT EDITOR*

@techokami @marekfort @Gargron I repeat…

Lawyers ruin everything. 🫠

@jimmylittle @marekfort @Gargron take a step back and reassess the question.
*Why* does *A TEXT EDITOR* require a ToS? What is the text editor *DOING* that makes this something that is even needed in the first place?

I looked into it, and apparently it's because this editor is filled to the brim with AI generative bullshit.

Why does such a thing need to exist?

@marekfort Those kids have to use neovim and become gay... it's too late now...

@marekfort Honestly, I wouldn't be opposed to making everything that contains an LLM 18+... or 180+ for that matter, as long as shoving that stuff into absolutely everything becomes less and less attractive.

@dfyx @marekfort yeah and it's probably only a matter of time til the IDE starts doing kinky roleplay with users

Probably so they can say this without lying through their teeth. They collect all kinds of info, only some of which is actually made public because their page which says the telemetry data they take is down.

@marekfort yup same shit as when Audacity went corporate

@marekfort Maybe their jurisdiction considers using LLMs to be gambling, since the usage is so similar. That would explain why people under a certain age can't use it.

@marekfort Well, you could use an editor to write porn games. I wrote porn games as a teenager...

@marekfort why does an open-source non-networked ide have a tos anyways?

@marekfort

this is from their blog:

Age requirement. You must be 18 or older to use Zed’s AI-enabled software-as-a-service offering (the “Service”).

@techokami @jimmylittle @marekfort And telemetry. Why does a text editor need telemetry? *Excellent question!*

@sekomi @marekfort quite curious how it’s not a code editor but an “AI-enabled software-as-a-service offering”. sibs think they microslop

yea no to hell with it

don’t use zed

@JeremiahFieldhaven @techokami @marekfort Telemetry is in basically every piece of software. Is there a "Report Bug" button? Probably sends telemetry data. Crash reports? Telemetry. Product research on which features are used the most/least? Telemetry.

It can be used for nefarious purposes, tracking, and data theft. But it's also used for very important software quality metrics.

@jimmylittle @JeremiahFieldhaven @techokami @marekfort That is an extremely unserious take. No these are not "very important software quality metrics". Nobody needs metrics on that. It's explicitly invading people's privacy to avoid having to pay testers/QA or having to know how to ask questions and get feedback to be able to reproduce and debug an issue.

@dalias @JeremiahFieldhaven @techokami @marekfort Some of the products I work on have tens of millions of users. There’s no “asking questions to reproduce” at that scale, especially when we’re forbidden by COPPA from collecting any personal information. Anonymized telemetry, metrics, and crash logs make our products better.

@jimmylittle @JeremiahFieldhaven @techokami @marekfort You don't ask questions at scale. You let users report bugs, and then you engage with them to fix the bug, or hand off figuring out how to reproduce the bugs reported to QA/testing staff. You don't rummage through users' computers and their private data that happened to be in the core dumps or whatever without their knowledge or consent.

@dalias @JeremiahFieldhaven @techokami @marekfort Do you know what stopped thousands of bug reports (some legit, some just user error or confusion) coming in from tens of millions of users?

Fixing the bugs preemptively because it was reported to us by the software before the user noticed.

@jimmylittle @JeremiahFieldhaven @techokami @marekfort Yes, invading user privacy as a cost-cutting shortcut is how capitalism misbehaves.

@dalias @JeremiahFieldhaven @techokami @marekfort It’s not about cost cutting, it’s about providing better products.

Most people don’t give a shit about working with a dev to fix a bug or improve a product. They want their thing to work without thinking about it.

And some of us do it all without even tracking what city a user is in, let alone who they are individually.

Not all telemetry is bad.

@marekfort why is every ai code thing named so uncreatively ?

zed, monday.com, ai.com, cursor

@marekfort This should be a wake up call to all those who naively brush off "ethico-socio-political concerns" as unnecessary. Your program, your code, doesn't live in a vacuum. It exists in a particular society, under a particular state that believes in a particular ideology and is thus licensed as such within the arena of the political ideologies. If you don't take it seriously, then those who wish to oppress your freedom will surely do so.

You know what you can do? Choose an editor that actually cares about your freedom, practically and politically. #GNU #Emacs is such an editor. But if for whatever reason you can't choose Emacs, choose an editor and in general your software that is licensed with strong copyleft and loudly rejects such nasty restrictions.

From what I can understand Zed's AI SaaS is done through the infamous SaaS loophole in AGPL. If there are any licensing/law people here from @fsf @conservancy who can help bring clarity on this situation, that would be good. All strong copyleft software must reject such egregious restrictions on users.

@divyaranjan @marekfort @fsf @conservancy

Emacs is such a wonderful editor. But it has a huge advantage and a problem at the same time.

It is highly efficient and highly intuitive for those proficient with it. But need time to practice and highly UNintuitive for those starting to use Emacs.

Many people need editor which can be used fast.

#Emacs #Zed #VSCode

@restorante @divyaranjan @marekfort @fsf @conservancy "highly unintuitive", no it is not.

@restorante Not sure what you mean by "can be used fast", contrary to popular myths, emacs is not slow at all, very usable.

@tusharhero

If a software is intuitive enough, new users can use it after a little bit of practice.

Sorry for my bad English.

@hearts @marekfort Because it isn't non-networked, it has AI services on the backend.

@techokami @marekfort @Gargron Every commercial piece of software has terms.

Even open source. That MIT license? It’s the legal terms that govern your use of the software.

Especially considering software that is hooked to an LLM is no longer just *A TEXT EDITOR*. It's connected to the internet. It can send your data elsewhere. It can receive data. All of that stuff requires legal approval.

I totally respect if someone doesn't want AI all up in their business. If that's you, don't use a text editor with AI features. We all have options.

@jimmylittle @techokami @marekfort @Gargron Um, no. No open source software has *terms*. It has one-way *grants* of rights to do things that the law might otherwise forbid you from doing (like copying and making derivative works), possibly subject to conditions. But you never have to "agree" to any "terms" in order to use it.

@marekfort I recently looked at Zed and immediately dumped it because they prioritized using AI over editing in their documentation:

@unattributed @marekfort Same. I tried it knowing it had a big AI push but that all the AI stuff could be disabled, but even after disabling it I couldn't get the AI UX to go away, *and* there were a bunch of important things missing from the UX for humans (like being able to have multiple editor windows that you can drag tabs between) and it didn't feel any better than my beloved, permanently-licensed Sublime Text 3.

@marekfort I remember when piracy was how young people got their first code editors.

We've worked hard to end that barrier to new coders. Shame to see this sort of thing. Coding is for everyone.

@hearts the TOS and the restrictions are for AI features and collaboration, so it is networked

@dalias @techokami @marekfort @Gargron Sure you do. MIT, GPL, Apache are all open source agreements you tacitly “accept” by using it. The permission is granted “provided the user” follows certain guidelines.

Sure, there’s usually no checkbox to use open source software, but accepting the grant of license is usually legally regarded as accepting the restrictions (or _terms_) of the agreement.

It’s a difference without a distinction.

@jimmylittle @techokami @marekfort @Gargron No. GPL, in its ideological purity, is VERY VERY EXPLICIT (in v2 paragraph 5; in v3 paragraph 9) that you are not required to accept it. Anyone exercising their rights under the GPL has an obligation to ensure that recipients know they are not obligated to accept any "license agreement" or other terms as a condition for receiving or using the software.

Other licenses do not make a point of this because it's obvious. If you legally received a copy of the software, you own that and have every right to use it. The purpose of the license is only to tell you that, in addition to the right you have to use it, you can freely copy it for others, prepare derivative works, etc.

@dalias @techokami @marekfort @Gargron GPL is certainly the most permissive that I’m aware of (and I’m no expert, for sure), including passing the license on to derivative works.

But, let’s say you take GPL-licensed code and make something that you put a different license on – that is a violation of your GPL “grant”, right?

You can break the “terms” of open-source by the simple act of building closed software with it.

@jimmylittle @techokami @marekfort @Gargron That's not use. It's copying and preparing derivative works and it's illegal because copyright law says so. Not because of some terms you "agreed" to.

@marekfort if one of your editor's bugs is that it might talk you into suicide then age restrictions might not be a terrible idea

@tmcfarlane @marekfort

I'm not sure, if I liked an #editor that talks people into #suicide who already have attained full age.

Instead of #ageRestriction, I'ld prefer a talking-into-suicide restriction.

Btw. #Emacs never tried to talk me into suicide, not even M-x doctor.

@debacle @marekfort valid point, vim has tried a few times, but I've yet to succumb

@tmcfarlane @debacle @marekfort Of course it did, it's evil.

@marekfort lol that's new

@kelset @marekfort it's got "AI" in it, so it harvests users' data. And even though Instagram makes it look easy, harvesting kids' data is legally tricky.

@amberage @kelset yeah, which is fair enough. I think their email used unfortunate wording where it doesn't specify just a part of Zed is 18+. Their blog post does a better job: "Age requirement. You must be 18 or older to use Zed’s AI-enabled software-as-a-service offering (the “Service")."

https://zed.dev/blog/terms-update

@marekfort @amberage @kelset But the e-mail better reflects the wording of the ToS:

> By agreeing to these Terms, Customer represents and warrants to Zed that: (a) Customer is at least 18 years old

"these Terms" are the terms you have to agree to in order to download the editor. It's in the section of the ToS pertaining to the Service, but I can't find a way to read it that doesn't affect the whole ToS.

@mort Zed is under a FOSS license. It doesn’t matter what they wrote in the ToS. You can use Zed the editor under its license(s) - apparently AGPLv3/GPLv3/Apache-2.0.

Besides… (emphasis mine, quotes from the current (March 7th, 2026) ToS with links to the exact positions - i don't know what browsers these work in)

“and related subscription service (the “Service”). These Terms of Service are a legally binding contract between you and Zed regarding your use of the Service” (https://zed.dev/terms#:~:text=and%20related%20subscription)

"Subject to these Terms, Zed will permit Customer to access and use Zed’s AI-enabled software-as-a-service offering (the “Service”), which enables certain additional features and functionality (including artificial intelligence and collaboration features) in Zed’s open source code editing software (“Software”)." (https://zed.dev/terms#:~:text=Subject%20to%20these%20Terms)

“Customer must be at least 18 years old to use the Service” (https://zed.dev/terms#:~:text=Customer%C2%A0must%20be-,at%20least%2018%20years%20old,-to%20use%20the)

to reiterate: “Service” is referring to their subscription service. the terms only apply at all when using it, and the 18 years old clause reiterates on that. if just using the editor, nothing here applies.

disclaimer that i’m not a native English speaker and definitely not a lawyer, but this seems quite explicit. feel free to dispute my points if the reader has a different understanding of the terms.

@marekfort @amberage @kelset