On Tue, 11 Aug 2026 17:18, Marc Haber <[email protected]> wrote:
On Tue, Aug 11, 2026 at 04:10:00PM +0200, Gard Spreemann wrote:
In order to safeguard the project's mutual understanding, trust and
respect, we disallow the output of generative AI as direct contributions
to Debian.
This wording leaves HUGE possibilities of interpretation and will
therefore cause a lot of flamewars.
Claude is not a DD, it therefore cannot contribute directly to Debian.
When I say "Claude, create a Debian package doing foo and set myself as
a Maintainer", is that a direct contribution?
Yes.
Does the direct contribtion become indirect when I fix the Lintian
errors that Claude causes myself?
Yes, but since foo was created with an LLM, this is irrelevant.
Does it stay a direct contribution when I just prompt Claude to fix the
Lintian errors?
As stated in the proposal, "asking" an LLM to take a look at the lintian
warns is fine.
Does that become indirect again when I review the diff?
However, the lintian override must be written manually (for this
proposal). As it should anyway, since an LLM can never "know" what might
be appropriate and what not.
Simple example:
Lintian complaining that a package has no watch file. An LLM might try
to "help" by writing a d/watch file. However, without context, this can
be totally wrong. If the package has no VCS upstream or isn't developed
anymore, a watch file makes no sense. A seasoned contributor will know
that and ignore/override said warning; an LLM can't.
Another example:
An LLM "offering" to override tags which point to underlying package
issues, such as shared libraries not correctly split into their
respective packages. Arguably, a experienced contributor will spot that,
but a new one might believe the machine.
best,
--
Matthias Geiger <werdahias>
Debian Developer -- KiCad Contributor
GPG: ECBEDBB607B9B2BE
