Hi Harlan, On 18/02/26 at 17:48 -0600, Harlan Lieberman-Berg wrote: > On Wed, Feb 18, 2026 at 4:38 PM Lucas Nussbaum <[email protected]> wrote: > > > Based on recent discussions, it sounds like we probably need a > > discussion in the framework of a GR to understand where we stand > > regarding AI-assisted contributions to Debian. > > > Hello Lucas, all, > > With all due respect to your work on drafting this, Lucas, I strongly urge > us not to go through with a GR on this topic yet. This is something which > both us and the larger free software community is still actively debating, > and a GR is a tool for when a decision is ready to be made. Having a GR on > this matter now is premature and will be extremely divisive -- even > schismatic. > > As someone with personally strong feelings about AI, I still believe that > we are better off with the current status quo where we can still discuss, > rather than vote and decide.
I disagree. First, several major organizations and projects have established policies or guidelines about AI-assisted contributions. Some examples: https://www.apache.org/legal/generative-tooling.html https://www.linuxfoundation.org/legal/generative-ai https://www.eclipse.org/projects/handbook/#genai https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/contributing/ai-coding.html https://openinfra.org/legal/ai-policy/ https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/council/policy/ai-contribution-policy/ https://discourse.llvm.org/t/rfc-llvm-ai-tool-policy-human-in-the-loop/89159 Second, the current status quo within Debian is that there are many people who experimented with AI tools, concluded that they could help them with their Debian work somehow, are probably already using them for Debian work. But they prefer to stay mostly silent in the discussions and only express support in private because there's a group of people that vehemently rejects AI and attacks people that admit using it. What I'm seeking with this GR proposal is a middle ground that allows us to respectfully move forward, accommodating both the people who want to use AI tools in the context of Debian and share their experiences, and the people who want to limit their exposure to AI. I do not want anyone to quit Debian as a result of this discussion, so I tried to write down a proposal that goes quite far into accommodating both groups, and we could probably go further or have other options in both directions. But, as I wrote elsewhere, I view the current discussions about AI like discussions about politics (or VI vs Emacs, or programming languages). People approach these topics with vastly different backgrounds; there is little hope of fundamentally changing someone's core opinion. Consequently, while these debates are interesting, they are also exhausting. I believe we should focus on what is desirable specifically for the Debian project. We should agree to disagree on AI in general, and instead focus on how we can work together despite that disagreement. I don't want to rush things, but I also don't think that it's useful to spend a lot of time rehashing arguments. Lucas
