Debian is polling its developers on whether to permit or ban "AI" contributions.
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Debian is polling its developers on whether to permit or ban "AI" contributions.
https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2026/08/msg00002.html
Thorvald says LLM is allowed to be used for the kernel. Then LLM use is banned by Debian.
Is the Kernel then banned?
In biology and medicine they use AI to detect cancer cells. Is this also banned then? Or are these type of programs allowed then?
What is with Computer Scientists developing free LLM tools. Also banned?
This kind of approach isn‘t realistic.
The overall issue is a quality problem. And needs tools to maintain quality. A ban is simply symbolic politics.
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@lproven Given how Debian went for a both-sides approach when it came to systemd, which is now a de facto hard requirement even if Debian technically supports other init systems, one doesn't need a crystal ball to know how this vote will play out.
I also assume the ban will happen. But I give that ban one year. Then it will be released again. Because the ban will not solve the quality problems.
The true problem is that tests have no real
Meaning anymore, if LLMs can modify them. Tests coild to be separate repositories, which cannot be touched vy everyone. Or we could invent tools which check the grade of code modifications? -
@lproven Given how Debian went for a both-sides approach when it came to systemd, which is now a de facto hard requirement even if Debian technically supports other init systems, one doesn't need a crystal ball to know how this vote will play out.
A tool like a linter which detects LLM code smells could be introduced. Which checks if SOLID and DRY was violated badly. This can never be perfect. But why can’t we find a way to automatically scan code upfront with abstract constraints.
Even humans can write really ugly code. Gosh, how often have I seen ugly code of beginners.
There must be a scientific way of maintaining the quality. Instead of „politics“ and „feelings“.
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Debian is polling its developers on whether to permit or ban "AI" contributions.
https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2026/08/msg00002.html
BAN.
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Thorvald says LLM is allowed to be used for the kernel. Then LLM use is banned by Debian.
Is the Kernel then banned?
In biology and medicine they use AI to detect cancer cells. Is this also banned then? Or are these type of programs allowed then?
What is with Computer Scientists developing free LLM tools. Also banned?
This kind of approach isn‘t realistic.
The overall issue is a quality problem. And needs tools to maintain quality. A ban is simply symbolic politics.
@jackpearse You may find that reading the different proposals up for vote will help in answering your questions @lproven
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„trust“ is no answer to this question. An LLM ban can only wirk if there is first a presumption of innocence of some kind. And, above all, there must be criteria. These must be formulated in abstract terms. Otherwise, it becomes arbitrary and a matter of personal belief.
Once a hand made pull request of mine was rejected because of a „feeling“. This is fucked up.
A ban also needs abstract criteria.
Otherwise contributions will die out.@jackpearse @pelle @lproven A ban will:
1. Make people stop bragging about their use of ”AI” in connection with the project.
2. Make people unable to blame their faulty contributions on ”AI”.
3. Make people unable to blame ripped off code on ”AI”.
4. Make incontrovertible evidence of ”AI” use grounds for banning them. -
„trust“ is no answer to this question. An LLM ban can only wirk if there is first a presumption of innocence of some kind. And, above all, there must be criteria. These must be formulated in abstract terms. Otherwise, it becomes arbitrary and a matter of personal belief.
Once a hand made pull request of mine was rejected because of a „feeling“. This is fucked up.
A ban also needs abstract criteria.
Otherwise contributions will die out.@jackpearse
> Once a hand made pull request of mine was rejected because of a „feeling“.that's really sad.
a great anti-AI cartoonist (who posts on fedi) is also being labelled by instagram as »likely to be AI«.
yes, you have to assume the best from others!
but that is made difficult, because those who share AI slop often deliberatly don't disclose it (whether code, images, websites or videos, ...) making everyone suspicious.
perhaps doing a few openly anti-genAI posts on masto should help others know where you're at?
if we compare again with veganism: it would be difficult to be vegan if every kitchen deliberately lied about putting animals into food! but, also, vegans either eat at venues that are clearly labelled vegan — or they ask about the ingredients three-four times to make sure.
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@lproven @ferrix @joe RedHat (or IBM, however you wish to look at it) is so incredibly all-in on LLMs it's not even funny.
https://www.redhat.com/en/about/press-releases/red-hat-launches-llm-d-community-powering-distributed-gen-ai-inference-scale
https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/accelerating-open-source-development-ai
"Red Hat believes that AI offers tremendous opportunities for open source projects and contributors. " -
@lproven debian has a ban on contributions in general, I have a few cool little command line utilities and programs I wanted to contribute and found out it would take a 3 year certification process where I had to travel around the world exchanging usb keys to be allowed to and would only succeed if , after it all, one of them was willing to 'bless' me.
I honestly have no idea how ANY of the packages in debian got there, but I can TOTALLY understand when projects host there own packages.
@RueNahcMohr @lproven The trouble with LLM code in a project like debian is simple, deep, and obvious.
If someone is using an LLM instead of learning, providing official feedback to the LLM instead of growing, and providing the LLM's reply to the feedback instead of engaging...
You're not training the next generation of developers. You're training a model.
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@RueNahcMohr @lproven The trouble with LLM code in a project like debian is simple, deep, and obvious.
If someone is using an LLM instead of learning, providing official feedback to the LLM instead of growing, and providing the LLM's reply to the feedback instead of engaging...
You're not training the next generation of developers. You're training a model.
oh there are tonnes of issues, mostly that AI code is being accepted into the kernel debian is using. I dont know if thats better or worse than all the sabature coders who have been pushing exploits and garbage into the OSS community for over 10 years.
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I am asking myself what happens to the past LLM contribs. And cintribs which indirectly contain LLM code.
I personally find this debate hysteric. Because people will silently use offline LLMs for this and that and lie about the usage.
From my point of view the new situation is asking on how to do quality management in future. It’s asking about us needing new tools for admins. Better classifiers. Code Quality Scores.
How do you want guarantee a ban? This is just theory.
@jackpearse @lproven Jaded a tad?
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@jackpearse @lproven Jaded a tad?
@mildpeach @jackpearse @lproven He had one PR rejected as a false positive (which is unfortunate) and now has to reply to everyone at once, complete with the old "what about this completely different thing also called 'AI'?" saw.
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@lproven @ferrix @joe RedHat (or IBM, however you wish to look at it) is so incredibly all-in on LLMs it's not even funny.
https://www.redhat.com/en/about/press-releases/red-hat-launches-llm-d-community-powering-distributed-gen-ai-inference-scale
https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/accelerating-open-source-development-ai
"Red Hat believes that AI offers tremendous opportunities for open source projects and contributors. "I'm aware. I wrote an article about it:
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P pelle@veganism.social shared this topic
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@jackpearse
> Once a hand made pull request of mine was rejected because of a „feeling“.that's really sad.
a great anti-AI cartoonist (who posts on fedi) is also being labelled by instagram as »likely to be AI«.
yes, you have to assume the best from others!
but that is made difficult, because those who share AI slop often deliberatly don't disclose it (whether code, images, websites or videos, ...) making everyone suspicious.
perhaps doing a few openly anti-genAI posts on masto should help others know where you're at?
if we compare again with veganism: it would be difficult to be vegan if every kitchen deliberately lied about putting animals into food! but, also, vegans either eat at venues that are clearly labelled vegan — or they ask about the ingredients three-four times to make sure.
But that is not the issue here. In open source it was always about trusting the conteibutors. And it is commn sense, that the scen does not want it. And still the amoint of contributions now is so highe that it seems to be a problem.
Even when you oficially ban it, it will not chnage the situation. LLMs made it possible for non developers to contribute code. Even to people who don’t even understand the code. A highly educated group of people was extended by strangers1/2
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@jackpearse
> Once a hand made pull request of mine was rejected because of a „feeling“.that's really sad.
a great anti-AI cartoonist (who posts on fedi) is also being labelled by instagram as »likely to be AI«.
yes, you have to assume the best from others!
but that is made difficult, because those who share AI slop often deliberatly don't disclose it (whether code, images, websites or videos, ...) making everyone suspicious.
perhaps doing a few openly anti-genAI posts on masto should help others know where you're at?
if we compare again with veganism: it would be difficult to be vegan if every kitchen deliberately lied about putting animals into food! but, also, vegans either eat at venues that are clearly labelled vegan — or they ask about the ingredients three-four times to make sure.
@pelle If you create a ban, people will will lie more. Places where LLM constributuons are not banned, they are marked as LLM content. And then the team can talk about it. And wether that contribution is worth commiting or not.
I think the ban will not solve the issue. I am sure it will worsen the situation. It will male a lot of people to lie. And it will create a taboo to talk about LLM use. Even indirectly. And hiding it will not make it better.
We need new admin tools!
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@jackpearse
> Once a hand made pull request of mine was rejected because of a „feeling“.that's really sad.
a great anti-AI cartoonist (who posts on fedi) is also being labelled by instagram as »likely to be AI«.
yes, you have to assume the best from others!
but that is made difficult, because those who share AI slop often deliberatly don't disclose it (whether code, images, websites or videos, ...) making everyone suspicious.
perhaps doing a few openly anti-genAI posts on masto should help others know where you're at?
if we compare again with veganism: it would be difficult to be vegan if every kitchen deliberately lied about putting animals into food! but, also, vegans either eat at venues that are clearly labelled vegan — or they ask about the ingredients three-four times to make sure.
I think you also cannot compare code with vegan. And meat wirh AI.
AI is more like Drugs. That would be the more appropriate comparison. And we all know from drug politics, that, if you forbid to consume it, it becomes illegal and moves to the undergroud. And becomes a worse problem.
Where drugs are legal, controlled and treated with a good health support, drug use became less.
I am sure AI use is like a drug. And becomes worse the more you ban it.
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I think you also cannot compare code with vegan. And meat wirh AI.
AI is more like Drugs. That would be the more appropriate comparison. And we all know from drug politics, that, if you forbid to consume it, it becomes illegal and moves to the undergroud. And becomes a worse problem.
Where drugs are legal, controlled and treated with a good health support, drug use became less.
I am sure AI use is like a drug. And becomes worse the more you ban it.
@pelle And if you see AI like a drug, you need to ban the meth lab. Not the user. Baning LLM use is like a social media ban for young people. Or chat control. It never helped if users were banned.
The problem is the vendors who provide the AI services. And I am very convinced that the only way to nail this is a very strong and powerful tool which can strongly support admins and maintainers with low overhead to spot ugly code.
Then only usefuls candidates need review.
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