On Thu, 23 Jul 2026 00:03:35 +0200, Matthias Geiger wrote:
This text looks quite garbled, both in my MUA and on <https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2026/07/msg00000.html>.What follows is a GR proposal to ban LLM contributions.Could you please post it again in a readable way?Hi, right, sorry. Wrapped at 80 chars below :)
Thanks for your effort, but his doesn't really look better.Cf. <https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2026/07/msg00023.html> or some parts quoted below.
Rationale ===========Debian has a well-earned reputation for stability. This stability is crucial to Debian's position in the free software ecosystem. It is our belief that widespread LLM usage comes from the "move fast, and break things" attitude that, while common in many parts of this industry, is contrary to what makes Debian Debian, and is inappropriate for Debian contributors.In practical terms, LLM usage raises the following concerns:1. Copyright LLM output has very unclear legal status: it may be possible to copyright on its own merits, or not; it may be affected by all of the licenses and copyrights in the training data, or not. Debian Policy and the DFSG require absolute clarity for licensing and copyright[1][2]. Software and other contributions written conventionally by humans with unclear copyright or license status are not allowed in Debian;LLM output should not have a special exception to this.2. Quality LLM output has many well-known problems with accuracy.[3][4][5] A LLM can never "know" if its output is correct since it merely produces syntactically likely combinations of the training data.In some environments this is good enough. In Debian, it is not.For instance, in packaging, each Debian source package is unique. Since packaging syntax and best practices have changed over time, a LLM-produced package will have a mixture of contents spanning the age of the archive, with watch files that do not work, overrides out of context, imaginary copyright, and will generally be unfit for upload. A seasoned Debian contributor with packaging expertise may find some limited usefulness here, but a new contributor cannot, and would not know how to fix it. These same quality and accuracy concerns apply clearly to all of the areas listed in the scope of this proposal above.If Debian were a closed organization comprising only domain experts who never leave, this might not be an issue; however,3. Community Debian is a project that is more than just code: it is a community built on shared interests in free software and solving technical problems. Debian intentionally grows this community through many means, and new contributors are always encouraged to join. Allowing LLM contributions breaks this. New contributors submitting LLM output for review places an unnecessary strain on the reviewer, which can lead to burnout. Furthermore, LLM-dependent new contributors do not actually learn and understand the details of Debian packaging or processes, so they cannot come to replace a former burned out DD.
… Cheers, gregor -- .''`. https://info.comodo.priv.at -- Debian Developer https://www.debian.org : :' : OpenPGP fingerprint D1E1 316E 93A7 60A8 104D 85FA BB3A 6801 8649 AA06 `. `' Member VIBE!AT & SPI Inc. -- Supporter Free Software Foundation Europe`-
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