I feel the initial message is pretty close on something sensible.
-----
For me - The core would be:
* Core Utils - basic tools for daily and regular DOS operations
* Kernel - The heart of the OS
* Standard Console - The entry point of the FreeDOS environment
* Standard Library, Compilers, and Linkers - Centered around what would
be used to develop FreeDOS Kernel + Other Core Items. Being able to
build the software is as important to me as running the software itself
* Standard Drivers limited to officially supported hardware -
Understandably should not have every driver under the sun to be
considered core. I'm sure there's around 5+ good computers we can hold
as clear models for a perfect target environment which FreeDOS should be
designed to be run in.
* Memory Management - Extending memory past 1mb is a common part of DOS,
I consider it to be a core part of the DOS experience.
-----
Core items should definitely be coded by hand by people for people
-----
An extra idea I had in mind
AI.txt -
Projects that are friendly to AI use should have boilerplate text in the
base of the project dir to state that AI is acceptable in the project,
otherwise it should be assumed the project is not AI friendly. At the
bottom of the boilerplate, it could list by bulletpoint the things AI
can do to help with the project
Example:
"""
* Documentation - AI can provide grammar and spelling edits for the
project (link to project wiki)
* Translation - AI can provide translations of this project
* Bug Reports - AI can provide bug reports to this repository
...
* Etc - other items here
"""
~ ilobmirt
https://gitlab.com/ilobmirt
On 5/24/26 6:30 PM, Jim Hall via Freedos-devel wrote:
Hi everyone
Like many of you, I'm concerned about AI creeping into open source
projects. I've added a few other issues at the end [1] that expand on
this.
So there are reasons not to allow AI in the core parts of FreeDOS. I
thought I'd try to capture the consensus of the email list into an AI
policy that I can post on the website.
I've tried to keep this high level. I think this matches the
conversations we've had here, whenever AI has come up:
*Scope: Any package that gets installed as part of a “plain DOS”
installation.
*
/Packages in Games or Devel or Edit or Util (out others) are not
“core” to FreeDOS.I'm less sensitive to stuff in the other package groups.
But I'm being careful with my wording here. It's not just Base, but
any program that gets included in a “plain DOS” install. That's where
I draw a solid line.
/
*Code: Do not allow AI for code generation.
*
/It's ok to use AI to summarize a contribution (like analyze a PR), or
to use AI to help identify bugs. But the code must be 100% written by
a human.
Again, this is only for programs in a “plain DOS” install. If you want
to use AI to “vibe code” a game, or a new text editor or word
processor, or something else, that's up to you.
/
*Documentation: Not sure where to draw the line.
*
/I don't want to read AI-generated bs, I have to do that as part of my
day job (university) and I don't like it.
But I know not everyone is comfortable with writing docs. You might
not be good at grammar or spelling, or even the writing process itself.
Some might prefer to use AI “assisted” tools like Grammarly that can
rewrite sections of text to meet a target, or Scribe that can “watch”
what you do and write a how-to for you.
For me, I prefer to read human-written stuff-- but does it really
“break” a program if AI helped write the docs?
In the end, it should be arguably “written by a human” but “AI
assisted” for docs is ok for me.
If it's your docs, you “own” what's there. If it's wrong, you need to
fix it. If something is plagiarized, you need to take it out.
Or should we not allow AI-written docs at all, for programs in a
“plain DOS” install?
/
*Translation: AI can be used for translating spoken languages.
*
/This has been done for years (and not really “AI” but “maching
learning”//) such as Google Translate. While “machine” translation
isn't perfect, it can usually be “good enough” until someone can
provide a human-generated translation.
Note that quality can vary when translating to/from different
languages. For example, I find translations from Spanish to English,
or French to English, are usually quite good. Translations from German
to English, or Russian to English, can be pretty rough.
This isn't “translating between programming languages.” See ‘Code’ above.
/
Did I miss anything?
__
[1] I'm sure AI is a neat tool for some, but using AI in an open
source project can turn off a lot of contributors. For myself, I work
on open source projects because it's fun, and AI is not “fun” for me.
There's also a very strong legal reason; US courts find that AI
generated content is not eligible for copyright protection.
I've also seen examples where AI “vibe coding” regurgitated some of my
code. That was a personal experiment for a “niche” topic where I asked
copilot to write a version of nroff; the AI cited an article I wrote
in its summary about “here's how this works” and I recognized my own
code in the generated output. This is dangerous because in the online
article it pulled from, I wrote about how this isn't a safe way to
write this (doesn't catch edge cases, etc) but it was an easy way to
show it to non-programmers. But copilot didn't add that caveat to the
code it generated for me.
_______________________________________________
Freedos-devel mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
_______________________________________________
Freedos-devel mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
