The without disclosure part tells everything you need to know here. If it’s such a benign and maybe even beneficial thing to do then why are you hiding it? What possible reason could you have not to label that? In an open source Community shouldn’t everything like that be known?
There are so many levels of LLM involvement and once you make this distinction you actually have to devote some of your limited resources to define and enforce it. So I think it might not be strictly beneficial, but possibly also have downsides.
Where would you draw the line at which point it counts as LLM involvement? Having one run as some sort of spell/syntax checker? Doing some research (and being influenced by it) before hand coding something? Having it create a working prototype and then reimplementing it by hand? If you use code from somewhere else to solve a problem and ai use has not been disclosed for this code, do you automatically have to assume LLM usage was involved or is there plausible deniability?
I think in the end you’d have to use too many resources check it and debate where the line is drawn, when the real question is how you retain human knowledge and engagement within your community.
Just disclose how you used it.
“Just” like with GDPR, “just” follow the rules for personal data management. In reality, compliance stuff like that is expensive to implement.
So if you are going to require it, don’t pretend it is without cost. Which is exactly what you seem to be doing.
We saw this play out with GMO foods:
If it’s such a benign and maybe even beneficial thing to do then why are you hiding it? What possible reason could you have not to label that?
later:
It’s specifically labelled, therefore it must be bad right? If we didn’t need to worry about it, it wouldn’t be labelled.
In the us anyway the food is labeled as bio-engineered, and everyone still buys it
Conversely… if it’s so benign, why should it have a label?
Not really worth discussing - it’s not benign, and it can be made purposefully not benign by a third party without notification or knowledge. A third party who has already demonstrated a penchant for world domination, both technologically and physically.
I should hope that open source developers are exclusively using open source models that are trained on open source projects.
I mean, I would think, at least. It seems to me that most of the people in charge of big projects are usually FOSS purists.
That’s part of the reason why AI scrapers are breaking the small web. FOSS purists really have no significant defense against it aside from Anubis.
Real DoS protection comes from capacity, which costs serious dollars, especially in this day and age where botfarms can be hired by the hour for rather cheap and record-breaking attacks seem to happen like monthly.
The alternative is using a CDN, but there are none that align with FOSS ideals. And for CDNs to be really effective, you need them to break open TLS and handle the decrypted traffic, which raises privacy concerns on top.
But anyways…most license agreements would make it a requirement that if you’re using an open-source model, that it be properly attributed, right?
I should hope that open source developers are exclusively using open source models that are trained on open source projects.
Most developers who use these tools (even FLOSS developers) appear to be using the corporate owned models that were definitely trained on both proprietary source code and code that is incompatible with the GPL license. Some EU courts have also already judged that LLM code cannot be copyrighted, which also means it cannot be licensed as GPL.
Currently, all code generated with an LLM has a 3 to 10% chance of unknowingly plagiarizing the copyrighted code it was trained on, and any FLOSS project that uses it is making a huge gamble that their codebase won’t be scanned by corporations in the future looking for violations to sue about, shut down rival FLOSS projects, etc.
It would be Useful for doing a retrospective on whether AI is helpful or not
Eye contact is benign for most of us. We still give it a context warning in civilized circles. It costs us almost nothing, and lets people make an informed decision what you engage with.
It’s a good question for the people using it but the point is that you can really verify if someone is using it or not
Respect to Antoine. Having principles that are worth a damn is a rare trait amongst developers these days.
The world needs more people that act on principles and take a stance.
Weird that he didn’t care when Linus Torvalds adopted basically the same policy to the kernel that serves as the foundation of the main Debian distribution. I have an inkling that there is more going on at Debian, not LLM use alone.
didn’t he? have you checked?
the main thing is that it’s an upstream problem. the linux kernel is used in nuclear missiles. if you want to stay on that kernel you have to take what you are given. in your own organisation you can at least try to change things.
Nuclear missiles probably run vxworks or another rtos, not linux
FOSS nukes when?
the linux kernel is used in nuclear missiles
source:
Idk anything about this…but here is my Google results
Don’t think golden dome is actually implemented, though just some trump delusion…but apparently this Redhawk Linux is used in…
I don’t think so. I got no sources or anything, but I think most nuclear missile silos and their software predate the linux kernel. And since we don’t really build nuclear weapons anymore but stick with the ones we already have, I don’t think that the linux kernel is really used in these kinds of sites.
However, that’s me guessing - wouldn’t say that I’m even 50% confident.
If he resigned only now, he didn’t resign before. What is there to check? That is common sense. Linus allowed LLM use and he was fine with Debian building on it. After all, all LLM use is literal fascism in his eyes.
if he commented on it, for one.
He didn’t have the same reaction at that specific point of time. That does not mean he was fine with it, but even if it was, maybe people change? Insane conclusion, I know. Stop with the black and white thinking.
He didn’t leave the Linux-based OS for Linus Torvalds himself stating a similar policy for the Linux kernel before Debian did.
Debian has a history of maintaining ancient kernels. But it’s hard to believe that he assumed Debian to just fork Linux…
The point isn’t so much the quality of the code itself.
The point is that AI is an inefficient power-wasting piece of trash, and the data centres that power it have significant negative impacts on people and the environment, all for the sake of devs being lazy idiots. And you’d have to be an idiot to let AI take away your skills.
The point is also that this is the pre-enshittification version of AI, and any person or system foolish enough to become dependent on it will get exploited to the best of AI companies’ abilities.
If only there were some community of people who valued using free and open source software so we had options that were not dependent on the whims of companies. Then we could have software that we could depend on that isn’t dependent on the whims of corporations.
Throwing out AI because there are AI companies who causing harm is like giving up on Operating Systems because of the plethora of bad acts made by Microsoft.
I agree that everyone should avoid using OpenAI, Anthropic or any of the other companies which were created to spend trillions of dollars buying up all computer hardware on the planet while building fossil fueled datacenters.
That isn’t the same as thinking that the actual machine learning technology itself is somehow inherently bad. There are many open weight models and FOSS projects that lets people use AI without contributing to the capitalist orgy that’s causing all of the secondary harms.
People conflating AI technology and AI companies are failing to diagnose the issue that we’re facing.
And all those AI models where made by requiring these companies and their data centers and their millions of dollars.
And all the cars were made requiring companies with their factories and their millions of dollars. And all the computers. And all the… Everything! WTF is your point?
Open weight != open source.
You can can inspect open source software. You can compile the source into binary. You cannot inspect open binary. Well, you can, but it’s difficult. Can anyone ever inspect the fucking weights in a useful way? They are just bias numbers.
Exactly! Well said. So many idiots here who think that AI=data center.
Yeah, my laptop is totally going to exploit me. I better not get hooked on using it. I’ll just leave it packed up in the box if came in, unplugged from the wall, so it doesn’t get a chance. /s
pre-enshittification?
Then what the hell are the models Windows is relying on if this is the GOOD stuff?
the opposite of “enshittified” isn’t “good.” some stuff sucks for fresh, new reasons before it enshittifies and turns to full on exploitative rent-seeking.
for example, anthropic quietly pulled claude code from their pro subscriptions and made it a separate subscription. that’s enshittification. and stupid AI bros are gonna fall for it every time.
Oh so it just goes from bad to worse? I see then
Usually in the context of profit milking by shareholders influencing that decline.
When did Anthropic make Claude Code a separate subscription? I ask because it is still listed as part of the Pro subscription tier on their website. And because I haven’t seen the shit-storm that would no doubt ensue if they did that
The point isn’t so much the speed and comfort of the commute itself.
The point is that a car is an inefficient power-wasting piece of trash, and the oil rigs that power it have significant negative impacts on people and the environment, all for the sake of commuters being lazy idiots. And you’d have to be an idiot to let a car take away your mobility.
This but unironically
Upvoted with the hope that you’re not trying to be ironic
We should all live in caves again, and wipe our butts with a handful of dry leaves.
Dude, no.
I require a tone indicator.
@ProdigalFrog
> “Pretending to have a “neutral stance” when faced with fascism is not neutrality, it’s active collaboration.”Bars. I’m sure it wasn’t an easy decision, I hope Antoine gets to keep his peace undisturbed.
Fascism is when people can use AI.
Not on its own, but an unfortunate goal of fascism is ruining education so that people have opinions like yours
So you agree with me, that AI is not fascist, but at the same time you say that one of goals of fascism is for people to think that AI is not fascist.
Am I reading it right?
You are, in fact, not reading that right.
Let me spell it for you because you apparently fell victim to the previously mentioned attack on education: AI is a tool. Like any tool it is not inherently evil, but the fascists love to take potentially useful tools and turn them around to cause as much suffering as possible. In this case, AI (more specifically LLMs) is used to make people reliant on it by getting them addicted to outsourcing all their problem solving skills while also reducing the value of art and artists of all types so they can take the money that artists would have made and also control ‘art’ (can’t have any pesky artists drawing pictures of people beating the nazis up) all the while sucking up every single data point about you.
If that’s all too complicated for you to understand, I guess you could over simplify it as “fascism is when AI”
Does that mean internet is fascist? Search engines? Calculators? Writing?
All of those things outsource your congnitive skills.
Almost nobody is saying that AI art generation is a complete subsitute for conventional art.
Even if all of that were true, it wouldn’t make AI fascist, but totalitarian.
Acting as if using an LLM is similar to using a calculator or search engine is a ridiculous comparison and further proves it’s not worth engaging with you further
So Open-Source and FOSS projects collectively decided that they want to jump on half-sunken ship in the middle of the ocean?
Amazing.
Is it a half sunken ship? I’ve been following AI in software for a while now, even though all signs point to failure and a crash, it just keeps going and people adopt it more.
Hot take: LLMs is the best thing has happened to open source movement:
- software copyright is defeated and basically eliminated in practice
- reverse engineering is so accessible that proprietary protocols cannot be hidden and can be reimplemented by AI agents as free software
- open weight LLMs are incredibly competitive and run on general hardware
- linux is de facto winner in all computing and rising in desktop and gaming niches
We’re literally in the golden age of free software
That would be cool and all, but people stopped reading their code. At work if I can not explain every line of my PR, it will get rejected. I use it as a powerful tool but a lot of people just output code and think their trash belongs in production.
@drmoose @Grandwolf319 Assuming you place zero value on quality, yeah this is great.
You’re conflating open source and free software with public domain. Open source software licenses are completely dependent on software copyright. This means that if software copyright were eliminated, open source licenses would become completely unenforceable. We may be headed in this direction anyway, but I just thought I would make the point.
It has been wild to see Linux users hope that the GPL is rendered unenforceable.
Absolutely!
Why? The entire purpose of GPL is to counteract copyright. If there is no copyright we no longer need GPL either.
The GPL gives you the right to access and modify the source code of software you use. A lack of copyrights does not mean that the creators have to share the source code with you. In fact, it means that anyone can take GPL software and turn it into closed source software
Sure but that’s mostly irrelevant in practice now. Gpl was notoriously unenforced so this aspect of “getting source code” almost never yielded to much in practice. FSF did a great job with limited resources it has but as code copyright is basically gone now and reverse engineering is so accessible we can actually empower real free software that is fully transparent and verifiable. If you imply that somehow we’ll start regressing existing tools to proprietary software I don’t see that at all.
@fruitcantfly @drmoose Just. Wrong. Clearly ‘Linux boosted’ is a worthless accolade.
Copyleft exists only because of copyright. If there is no copyright there’s no longer a need for copyleft.
I completely disagree. What’s the main thing the GPL does that is different from public domain or the complete absence of copyright?
It restricts how the code can be used in order to protect the writers and the consumers of the code. Without copyright and copyleft, any company can use any GPL code in any proprietary product they want, without sharing any of their changes and without even crediting the original writers. As an example, Microsoft could adopt the Linux kernel for Windows, heavily modify it, sell it, and stay completely silent about it, without any consequences. That’s what a world without copyright means for copyleft.
Sure but again this is only a problem if copyright exists. Stallman himself invented GPL due to frustrations of copyright. The permisiveness is default human behavior that was corrupted by evil people and terrible systems. The neutrrance of copyright just returns us to this default state of sharing.
That’s not true at all. Like I said, copyleft relies completely on copyright. It was not at all created in opposition to copyright. It was created in opposition to proprietary (i.e., “unfree”) software. Here, from the Wikipedia article on Copyleft (emphasis mine):
The concept of copyleft was described in Richard Stallman’s GNU Manifesto in 1985, where he wrote:[6]
GNU is not in the public domain. Everyone will be permitted to modify and redistribute GNU, but no distributor will be allowed to restrict its further redistribution. That is to say, proprietary modifications will not be allowed. I want to make sure that all versions of GNU remain free.
This is impossible to do without copyright existing. Like I mentioned before, without copyright laws, companies can take any code they wish, with any license, and use it in their proprietary software without sharing their modifications.
Another reference directly from the FSF: “Copyleft is a tool that works within copyright law” (emphasis mine)
Llms have been great for finding and fixing bugs and cranking out code, but the systems that allow for generation of code at a direct cost of dollars as opposed to the overhead of managing and employing programmers aren’t under the intense pressure to not redo old work and so are disincentivized from either creating or contributing to open source projects.
Time to learn HolyC and make your own
forkdenomination of TempleOS xDhalf-sunken ship
If you think the ship is ever sinking I’ve got bad news for you…
I’m not an AI evangelist but I am open-minded. I think Debian’s decision is balanced, and more importantly realistic.
There’s a difference between vibe coding and using AI to improve productivity. I’m a dev and pretty much everyone I know is using AI in some way. Yes they’ll lose contributors initially but Debian would lose more in the long run if they’d outright banned it.
For all those who are saying ‘AI supports fascists’ - the most popular models right now are Chinese. Very oppressive and paranoid government but definitely not fascist.
For all those that say ‘AI causes global warming’ - you’re correct, but unless you’ve got your own solar panels, so does your non-AI gaming rig. And your gas-driven car.
I disagree. You are an AI evangelist and quite closed-minded. Having a “balanced” approach, if there was one, would be to label any AI usage explicitly. If you’re afraid to label your AI usage, you’re a fucking coward.
But, damn, let’s not blame the billion dollar data centers for global warming, guys! It’s the individual decisions you make every day that kills the planet! If you believe this, the AI has fried your brain. It’s not one authoritarian government, it’s a different one! Actual paste-eating behavior. My work has improved with LLM usage! A common saying from people who were not good at their job, and are somehow now worse without them realizing it.
Any decent developer I have found has hated LLMs because they do not work anywhere near as well as people who are shit at things think they do. Personally, I don’t really like smashing the Skinner Box button hoping the output works this time because I like programming, and having Claude rape my codebase seems like a bad idea to me if I ever want to go back in there. But, then again, I like knowing how my code works, so maybe I should just lobotomize myself and I’ll understand why you like it so much.
Wow. You know, it is possible to have a discussion and even disagree with people without being a nasty peice of work?
I don’t have discussions with people that think the problem behind LLMs with high energy and water usage is that people use cars too much. Literally no one wants to subsidize their fucking local data center. Plus, you definitely ALSO use a car, so you’re not even better than the people you are trying to criticize because ChatGPT has rotted that portion of your brain from disuse. Frankly, I’ll be a nasty piece of work if it gets it through your thick fucking skull that AI is shit, most people know it’s shit, and you are likely shittier at everything you do using it. But, sure, complain about my tone, and never my message, because all you AI bros get so fucking butthurt by anyone saying anything bad about AI. Just call me a Luddite already or whatever and then go cry in your AI discord.
I don’t have discussions with people that think the problem behind LLMs with high energy and water usage
I didn’t say I didn’t think that was a problem, I was highlighting the hypocracy around it all.
Plus, you definitely ALSO use a car
Actually I dont. I dont own or use a car. My primary mode of transport is my own two legs.
so you’re not even better than the people you are trying to criticize
I didn’t say I was, you’re drawing conclusions based on what I haven’t said.
Frankly, I’ll be a nasty piece of work if it gets it through your thick fucking skull that AI is shit, most people know it’s shit, and you are likely shittier at everything you do using it.
You seem to think you’re some hero and doing the world a favour but you’re behaving like an opinionated bully. You are by far the vilest person I have encountered on here.
Even if every single fucking person on earth stopped driving their fucking car, global warming wouldn’t fucking stop because the vast majority of it is corporations’ fault, and those data centers are a major contributor to that. But subsidizing your lack of carbon footprint by using an LLM is a weird fucking flex, I guess. You were the one that brought up how using an LLM is like using a car, so sounds like you do care about that. But, sure, highlight the major pollution issues and not the fucking over poor people who have to subsidize your LLMs water and energy usage. My car didn’t make you pay double for your water bill like an asshole.
For all those that say ‘AI causes global warming’ - you’re correct, but unless you’ve got your own solar panels, so does your non-AI gaming rig. And your gas-driven car.
so fucking what? stop trying unless you’re perfect? every bit helps! fuck you
You typed this from a machine you know is causing global warming, hypocrite. That’s what.
That only works if you ignore the difference in scale.
My backyard campfire also adds CO2 to the atmosphere, but that doesn’t make the corporations any less responsible. They account for the supermajority of CO2 greenhouse gas emissions.
so fucking what? stop trying unless you’re perfect? every bit helps! fuck you
Every little bit helps, sure. But maybe it’s just me, wondering why you’re getting so upset at the small contributors on some random Internet forum.
From the outside, you look like you just want to find things to be upset at.
In my experience, you find what you go looking for.
You seem to miss that I just copied and pasted the comment that I was originally replying to. I was highlighting the hypocrisy, and your comment actually applies to the author of the text I copied and pasted. In effect, you have crafted my response for me. Thank you.
what do you expect people to do? go full kaczynski and live in a cabin in the woods? and if that’s not acceptable for the person, they might as well burn down the amazon cause that’s basically the same anyway?
are you okay? are you having some mental issues? there are people that can help you.
this extreme black/white thinking combined with a defeatist attitude can’t be healthy in the long term, for you or the rest of the planet
No, that’s exactly what I’m trying to highlight. This person is criticizing others for using technology/electricity, while doing the exact same thing themselves. It’s hypocritical. There’s nothing that can be done until the system itself changes. Criticizing others does nothing but highlight the fact that you’re an idiot who is falling for the propaganda to keep people fighting amongst themselves, rather than targeting the system itself.
you’re doing a horrible job, might wanna rethink your methods
No one is paying me for this job, and it’s doomed to fail. It’s like yelling into the void. Whether I do it at one decibel level or another, the outcome is identical.
Oh go suck some fucking Billionaires dick some more. Maybe one day you’ll be good enough and get that trickle down.
Moron. Can’t tell the difference between a laptop and a data center.
You’re vegan too, I presume, since animal agriculture is one of the largest contributors to global warming?
open fire, he’s reaching!
no i’m not, but i have been reducing my meat intake a lot, because of global warming and ethical issues.
I think it’s helpful to separate the problems of the technology itself from all the BS that big tech companies engage in when developing and pushing it.
Say you only use small, open-weight models that are hosted locally in a data center that is conscientious, environmentally clean, has strict data privacy policies and doesn’t pull the bullshit big-tech do.
You use them minimally and responsibly, you don’t over-rely on them. Is there a problem in that case?
You use them minimally and responsibly, you don’t over-rely on them. Is there a problem in that case?
Responsibly is the key word there. I.e. vibe-coding an entire project full of security risks without understanding the architecture or languages used. Vs. using LLMs to error check code, brainstorm a project, write code you feel confident you can review yourself.
Also, like you say, hosting locally. Or using a provider like Mistral that is European, not evil, uses France’s abundant nuclear power…
There is no such thing as Responsibly if there is no disclosure.
I sort-of agree, but what are you disclosing?
If a project on github was 100% vibe coded with no (initial) human review - I’d want to know that.
If a project was 60% hand coded, 40% vibes but reviewed by a human … yeah in the interests of openness it doesn’t hurt to disclose that.
If a project was 100% hand cranked but checked by an LLM? If its open source I’m not sure I need to know that.
If a project was 100% hand cranked and human-reviewed, is open source but the dev used an LLM to keep a to do list of tasks… no I don’t need to know that.
And like someone else pointed out - how exactly do you verify that AI was not used at all for any part of a project?
Also, you know Microsoft will be vibe-coding its products. Would that stop you using Windows, Xbox, M365 etc?
Re: your last point, I am definitely moving away from Microsoft products for that very reason. We were discussing Linux here, right? It’s become a headache to find a distro I feel ethical and safe about using.
Also, a ban without control isn’t a ban. And making sure that not a single line of code was writen with the help of some AI seems more than complicated… is it just possible?
And how much working time would it take to audit all packages to make sure it is 100% wrote by some human?
It seems more realistic (and more honnest) to allow the part that would not be found by a reasonable audit of the code.
Who said 100% was the goal? We don’t ever have 100% guaranteed exploit free code, or 100% guaranteed spyware free code, etc. The point is you send a message and try your best if you think those are worthwhile goals to attain.
The people saying “but we can’t possibly stop all usage, so why try” aren’t being pragmatic; imo they’re giving up. My assumption is because they don’t want to confront the nasty externalities of their own ai use.
The same could be said of a lot of technologies that enable greater corporate capture at the expense of the environment and overall human wellbeing—and we should be doing something about those as well.
I agree with you, and from my understanding (which could be inaccurate) the position of debian is to avoid a part of the use of that technology they judge both wrong and avoidable.
My own nasty use of AI is mostly to find back the name or syntaxe of functions I seldom use, and sometimes to explain me some theorical points. I admit it is wrong and only spares me only a few hours a week at most compared to stack overflow and online tutorials.
And my laziness would probably make me accept the existance of one model that would be a public property democraticaly controled ; which would consume less ressources than having many concurrents, and avoid the profit-oriented and corporate mindsets (I imagine them being the main source of threat)…
Oh I’m not perfect so everything bad is OK argument. Like we need at this time to be burning more fossil fuels.
deleted by creator
Right? We should all shut off our computers at once, and never turn them on again. That will fix it!
i understand there are a lot of facist AI companies, but how can an entire technology be facist?
That’s like saying space travel is facist because pretty much all of it was built on work by literal nazi scientists.
Do we throw out all the related advances too? Satellite communications, GPS, etc.?
tools shape our perception of the world, and in turn us. neutrality is tacit approval. when a fascist company develops a technology, and some people say “we don’t want technology developed by fascists”, the “compromise” position is “you could have some technology developed by fascists”
if you look into operation paperclip and all the politics following that, you’ll see that there was a ton of pushback. the german scientists were literal nazis, but in the worst way; they were the compromising kind. only that the compromise was between “kill people” and “don’t kill people”, so the result was “kill some people”. and living in that environment changes your perception of the world. as the song goes, “once the rockets go up, who cares where they come down? that’s not my department” says wehrner von braun
“The essence of technology is by no means anything technological.”
Over the past 5 years or so, I have really come to despise the phrase “just a tool”.
Honestly “just a tool” is the same as “guns don’t kill people, people kill people”. The phrase frames the context as if EVERY tool can have plenty of reasonable non-destructive purposes.
One argument is that those who make LLMs have a high amount of control their output. It’s giving a lot of control of open source to the whims of those companies to become reliant on LLMs
Think about the potential for providers to add plausibly deniable backdoors, general lower quality code, etc. when they think you are working on a project they care about. The precedent is there with Anthropic publicly stating that Fable was built to intentional sabotage quality when they think you are working on AI research related tasks or distillation. That kind of stuff can be subtly baked into open models as well
Go fuck yourself with your tired, “bUt WhAt aBoUt VaCciNeS,” argument.
Search up on TESCREAL!
Why would I of you’re not even impressed or shocked or whatever by it to tell us what it is or why we would want to
i understand there are a lot of facist AI companies, but how can an entire technology be facist?
AI companies and governments are spreading anti-ai propaganda to push for regulations that will benefit them and limit the usage people can do of the technology.
Good, someone with morals
If they had those, they wouldn’t be wasting electricity by being on the Internet. Causing global warming with their use of technology. They’d be sitting in a cave, meditating to reduce the harm they cause to the environment.
Yet you use a computer, curious! I am very intelligent.
You, too? Nice! That makes two intelligent people.
Want to do something really intelligent together? Like try to enforce a ban on AI even though it’s use is undetectable and fundamentally it’s just math?
you not being able to detect LLM use is not our problem
🤣
You not being able to detect the eye color of someone over the phone is not anyone else’s problem.
That’s a false equivalence. And besides they polute on massivelly different scales
It’s not a false equivalence. You can’t applaud someone ruining the environment to condemn someone ruining the environment. It’s ludicrous.
It’s also not inherently massively different scales. For all you know they posted from a super computer connected to a coal generator, to complain about AI being operated on a Raspberry Pi powered by solar.
Then you clearly have no idea what a false equivalence is
That’s a false equivalence.
Well Debian has been a fun ride for the last 20 years or so… Wonder what’s next…
Ask the people who were shouting about forking systemd… I’m sure they’ve created their techno-utopia fork world by now.
People really underestimate the amount of free labor provided by these FOSS groups. There is a reason that these flash in the pan outrage topics evaporate as quickly as they appear. The people who spend their lives arguing online are not the people who have the capability to replace all of the things that they’re attempting to destroy.
FreeBSD
And here I was suspecting myself of looking for elitism for my thoughts of switching to some *BSD system
Yeah, I just heard the results of the vote yesterday (been traveling), so I plan on trying to replace Debian with NetBSD on my laptop as soon as I catch up post-vacation.
the distro you like is enshitifying so you’re switching to an OS with an even more permissive, business-friendly license, huh? why not find another GPL OS instead?
Project is permissive. Company takes it and distributes binary. Nerds don’t use it and look for the og, since the license forces the company to disclose that they just did that in a way or another. The end.
Project is copyleft. Company takes it and distributes source via GitHub file uploading a zip named after a date or some dumb shit. The original maintainer is now bullied into adapting the code. Sooner or later, the company now has influence over the project. Which is how we ended up with that Debian decision the top post is about, and with completely undocumented drivers right inside of the official Linux tree.
because I am not switching. another Linux project gives out some suspicious sounds, so I find myself thinking that moving to another OS altogether might turn out a good idea after all, besides the fun of learning something new
Is there another GPL OS instead? I am a fan of the GNU Hurd, but sadly I cannot run it on my hardware. The team of devs is really small, and it is amazing what they have done in all these years.
there is Gloire OS based on the Iron Clad kernel, partially formal proofed written mostly in Ada, their git repositories can be found in Codeberg, there is Genode OS which follows Qt style GPL with caveats, where one corporate entity sells commericial licenses, and holds full copyright through CLA
Are these usable on hardware, and daily drivable?
I don’t know, never tried them even in a vms myself
Well what would the disclosure requirement improve? It’s unenforceable and it just gets in the way of evaluating the code based on quality. Every code should have high standards. Bad llm code is just as bad as bad human code.
If a project allows llm contributions then disclosing it will only make people wary of the wrong things. Putting a badge on it is not helpful anymore if it’s allowed. I have seen good llm code and bad human code.
Code is a liability. The only thing that balances it out is people who understand the code. The people are the asset.
If you contribute LLM-generated code but not your understanding, you’ve essentially taken out a loan in the maintainers’ names.
Building tech debt you never pay down is the way you kill open source projects.
Not only the contributor has to understand code. There have always been flyby contributers that just add their code and that’s it. So if a PR adds code that cannot be maintained by others it can’t be added. That is part of the review process. That is part of evaluating based on quality. It’s unimportant if a human or an llm wrote something unmaintainable.
Bad llm code is just as bad as bad human code.
Bad LLM code is worse than bad human code. LLMs sanitize out markers that humans use to catch and correct mistakes.
I have experienced both.
The Free Software Foundation of Europe recently published an article detailing why it’s legally quite important for developers to disclose and carefully catalog which code was created by LLMs.
https://fsfe.org/news/2026/news-20260825-01.html
Recommendations for AI usage in Free Software contributions
With these issues in mind, the recently published Recommendations When Using LLM-Backed Generative AI Systems for FOSS Contributions by the SFC outlines some of the legal difficulties for copyright and licensing that generative systems have created for software developers who wish to write, maintain, or contribute to Free Software projects.
Notably for the purposes of this article, the SFC recommends the full recording and disclosure of how and when an AI tool was used to assist in the creation of a contribution. As stated by the SFC:
“FOSS project leaders cannot make good decisions about LLM-gen-AI policy if they cannot survey which contributions were assisted, and how much they are assisted. Part of the contribution process should (at least) include a disclosure of what LLM-gen-AI system was used, its version (as these system change over time), and a brief description of how the system assisted the contributor. This information should be included in a machine-readable format in commit logs."
Indeed, such disclosure can be an important foundational step to allow for the accurate assessment of the copyrightability of code that has been assisted or generated by AI tools, in order to assess their licensability into Free Software. Open and clear disclosure is a helpful step for the Free Software community to maintain a healthy licensing ecosystem, which is currently threatened by the legal uncertainties that come with the advent of generative AI.
Additionally, it is worthwhile for developers to document in some capacity the extent of human work that they have done in their software projects, whether it be the writing of code, the selection and arrangement of components within the project, or the extent of human modification of machine generated content.
IANAL but from my naive perspective it might make more sense to not disclose this because no one can prove that something was written by AI if no one discloses it. That means for me that any claims that a certain part cannot be copyrighted are hard or even impossible to make.
FYI it’s wary. Weary means you’re tired. Wary is to beware of something.
What wrong things?
What’s Devuan’s position on this? They already forked after the SystemD switch. Here’s to hoping they also flip the bird to AI.
Doesn’t really matter because they still use the Linux kernel, which AFAIK allows LLM contributions.
I doubt Devuan will stop basing their distro on Debian. Or at least I hope they don’t. I specifically use Devuan because it’s basically just OG Debian.
My main issue is that the packages are really behind though. Even more so than Debian.
I wish there was a good in-between. Ubuntu was a good sweet spot, but I can’t stand how they keep forcing their technology on their users anymore.
Yeah it can be a bit annoying at times. I started out using Debian-based distros before systemd implementation, so Devuan with sysvinit just works for me. I’m not the sort of user who needs the latest updates on anything, so it’s mostly fine. I considered checking out Slackware since it also uses sysvinit, but it’s in a similar boat with updates and, frankly, I don’t want to deal with its package manager lol.
AFAIK they do not yet have an official stance on AI/LLM use within the project.
Not yet. I suppose it shouldn’t be long…
Personally i find debian change of policies to include proprietary firmwares by default worst than this
They Ubuntud themselves )_)
They should have offered two sets of ISO images.
