Discussion
Today I learned that #ImageMagick has been slopped for some time. Like many tools, it's been load-bearing infrastructure for decades.
Meanwhile, the #GraphicsMagick fork has been quietly chugging along for 24 years. For most of that time, it's been maintained by a single human being.
Update: in what feels a bit like a cautionary tale, I just learned that gm also contains ai authored commits.
@RussSharek well, that update is depressing...
@RussSharek
> Update: in what feels a bit like a cautionary tale, I just learned that gm also contains ai authored commits.
Fuck.
@RussSharek when did IM get slopped??!
Some time ago, it seems. GraphitMagick is, I just learned, also slopped.
@RussSharek but gm also has been slopped. it has 6 attributions to claude in change log (all related to security).
http://www.graphicsmagick.org/NEWS.html#july-23-2026
https://foss.heptapod.net/search?search=claude&nav_source=navbar&project_id=1318&group_id=16697&search_code=true&repository_ref=branch%2Fdefault
@RussSharek@mastodon.art What do you mean by 'slopped' in this context?
@RussSharek@mastodon.art Any idea if GraphicsMagick is doing the same? The source code is a bit tedious to get.
I have no evidence suggesting the project is compromised. There is a mailing list, if you want to reach out and ask about it.
Well, butts.
I took a look at the possibility of uninstalling ImageMagick on my OpenBSD system, and it turns out that it is a dependency for inkscape.
That's a program we use regularly here at the clown house.
It seems I'm stuck with both for the moment.
Again I say, butts.
@RussSharek I would assume it's just a soft dependency for shelling out to trace weird raster image formats. Forcibly uninstalling it probably leaves inkscape perfectly usable.
@RussSharek @doctormo Uhg. So apparently the fork was over something other than responsible behavior.
It doesn't have to be. It can be compiled without it.
I was just reading about this. I may have to risk poking a packager.
@RussSharek @doctormo The noble mission of avoiding slop out here making bigger nerds of us all… 
@RussSharek Carney knows that the United States is not its event, just the Trump administration, and the administration's trade war will be undermined if an unfriendly Congress is elected in a few months.
I think you got a wire crossed here. I'm talking about command line image manipulation tools.
@RussSharek yes, sorry, put my reply under the wrong post
一个哥们扛了 24 年，这才是真正的开源精神。好多项目都是这种默默续命的状态，等哪天 maintainer 退了，才发现整个行业都靠他在撑。
@RussSharek I cannot find any evidence of #ImageMagick being vibecoded, where did you learn this? The only statement I found is this:
> We will continue to keep humans in the loop. All contributions, whether written by a person, an LLM, or a mix of both, will be reviewed by a maintainer and tested before its committed. What matters is the quality, clarity, and correctness of the contribution, not the tool used to produce it.
https://github.com/ImageMagick/ImageMagick/issues/8614#issuecomment-4058760511
@LinqLover @RussSharek I've seen "slop" used to refer to any kind of LLM code, hence "slopped" but not necessarily "vibecoded".
@ell1e @LinqLover@norden.social @RussSharek yeah, the only people trying to make that distinction are sloppers and slop apologists
"do you have evidence they're slop, they just say" (list of ways they use slop) come the fuck on now
@RussSharek tip for those on debian: the package graphicsmagick-imagemagick-compat says it contains "a set of several executables that is compatible to ImageMagick's interface". I imagine there may be limits to the compatibility but I went ahead and installed it since I am somewhat conversant with IM's command line...
I am curious what the package includes. Is it basically a bunch of symlinks to the old im commands like convert?
@RussSharek @stylus yes, it provides `/usr/bin/convert` as a symlink to `/usr/bin/gm`
identify and mogrify both still work as expected in my workflow to strip and identify exif data
@RussSharek There's also libvips which is much faster than ImageMagick and has a pretty reasonable and anti-slop contribution policy: https://github.com/libvips/libvips/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md#ai-contribution-policy
@xy @RussSharek that's a "permission to use slop" statement, the fuck is that "anti-slop"
It's good to see projects with clear policies.
Do you happen to know if this project has a set of cli tools similar to im/gm?
@RussSharek Yeah it has a `vips` CLI and can also be used as a library in many languages.
For instance to swap an image's green and blue channels and convert to AVIF you would use (in Fish shell syntax): vips recomb in.jpg out.avif (printf "3 3 1 0\n1 0 0\n0 0 1\n0 1 0" | psub)
I am pleased to see it has continued the tradition of incredibly powerful yet wholly inscrutable command line tooling. :)
Jokes aside, thank you for the example. Most clarifying.
@RussSharek Actual fucking link: https://graphicsmagick.sourceforge.io/index.html
The mailing list would seem to be the way to get in touch/get involved: https://sourceforge.net/p/graphicsmagick/mailman/
@RussSharek (I didn't link that one bc my browser does HTTPS-only by default, so it shows a warning page)
It appears up to date, other than the cert issue.
@RussSharek would you know where I can find a list of the kinds of AI built into it now?
https://slopscan.ava.pet/repo/https%3A%2F%2Fgithub%2Ecom%2FImageMagick%2FImageMagick
For me, the answer to the question of "how much slop is ok" is "none" if I have alternatives to try...and if I don't have an option I think that is a concerning problem.
@RussSharek Oh, I see what you mean now. I thought that you were talking about AI image processing; it hadn't occurred to me that it was AI code slop!
Yeah, it's a different kind of not good news.
@RussSharek I wasn't asking about only the slop kinds, though. AI's been around for decades longer than the slop generators.
I'm a sucker for replacing a fusty old wizard with a friendly amphibian.
ImageMagick ... nooooooooo!! :(
It feels like I only just figured out how to shrink image
sizes w/o looking it up :P
Thx for the pointer to the GraphicsMagick one, i'll check that out.
CC: @RussSharek@mastodon.art
ImageMagick has been a part of my personal toolkit for *years*. I'm excited by a tool reported to be more consistent, faster, and made by people.
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