I have been using Linux for over 8 months now, and my primary distribution of choice was Debian.
Debian recently conducted a community vote on allowing AI contributions, and it ended up allowing responsible AI contributions.
What is this responsible? How can AI commits be responsible? There are thousands of reasons to not use AI, and the primary reason is AI is a thief.
How did you react to Debian’s decision? Did you switch distros? Which one was your option, and why?
Also, when the Linux kernel itself allows AI commits, is there any practicality in a Linux distribution strictly limiting or restricting AI commits?
I have no serious usability issue with Debian now but am concerned about the use of AI even in my Linux distribution. Should I keep going with Debian or consider any other distribution, as I only have 8+ months of experience as a daily Linux user? I tried almost all Linux distros and am comfortable with everything except Void Linux and highly complex ones like Gentoo.
AI is a tool. You already trust the developers to build an operating system with the tools available.
From the Debian announcement
It’s quite clear they don’t allow vibe coding. As you say, the kernal itself allows AI contributions in a similar way.
If you’re worried about the ethical aspects of AI then you’ll probably have to move to NetBSD. If you’re only worried about quality this is a non issue.
Trust is 3 parts; authenticity, competance and empathy. Trust is broken if any of those are insufficient.
If others believe AI creation and AI use hurts people then leaving that unaddressed makes one appear to lack empathy.
“Quality of code” ultimately boils down to judging how it may effect people (reading it, changing it, using the software it compiles to). To worry about code quality is only to care about people. Only caring sometimes is inconsistent - it questions their character.
You make good points however you can’t stop a person doing something because it goes against your beliefs.
In this case the Debian developers had a vote and the majority agreed that using AI was ok.
I’ve read the post and they still have a code of conduct, they still have standards that they will keep. That’s good enough for me to continue trusting the devs.
Didn’t every single option in that ‘vote’ include using ai though?
And didn’t they all seem like very deliberately long winded options, designed knowing that the majority of users would only read the titles?
There are 2 tools to stop someone from harming others: words or violence. If people disagree an action is harmful to others then we aught to use our words to discover who’s belief better represents reality.
I think using AI to write software could be okay but the AI in use today isn’t. AI makers circumvent our social licenses and redistribute our code covertly through a mathematical blender. Debian OS authors agreed that there are legal unknowns regarding the copyrightability of generated code and didn’t say AI was okay or bad one way or the other. Debain should already know today’s AI spits at our faces.
I’m not disputing that AI has severe issues. I think it’s more appropriate for governments to focus on effective regulation than open source developers disallowing useful tools.
The majority of governments are at least partially at the mercy of the usa government in this respect though, easily one of the most absurd, and corrupt governments on the planet.
It might be a tool, but it is naïve not take all of its externalities into account.
From tante’s piece:
Edit: a good source of said externalities: https://codeberg.org/ethical-foss/open-slopware/src/branch/main/why_not_llms.md
Is using AI as bad as child labour?
I don’t believe so. But i don’t believe in copyright laws either. If a developer chooses to use AI it’s their choice.
Obviously best case scenario is they use a local open weights model. I believe this will be more commonplace in a few years.
I think a skilled developer using AI to improve open source software is a case of the ends justifying the means.
Edit: the link you provided highlights the problems with large capitalist corporations owning the compute power and generic AI use by the untrained population more than the issue of skilled developers contributing to open source software.
While these things are a problem i don’t believe a distro should stop contributions just because a developer consulted an LLM.
Analogies are comparisons of structure, not intensity. There are a lot of things that are “not as bad” as child labour, that doesn’t make them OK.
GPL is a response to copyright laws. If there were no copyright laws we wouldn’t need GPL.
Prohibiton doesn’t work. Regulations need to passed by government bodies not open source developers.
You do realise that even if copyright were abolished, large, powerful corporations would continue to exist and even manage to use the absence of copyright to their advantage?
Without the GPL being enforced, a company like Microsoft could finally start digging a moat around Linux without constraints.
“Copyright” was made to empower and protect large corpos like microsoft.
If you think copyright “protects” linux in any way, you’re a fool.