Julian is not making this policy. He is saying how it applies *to him*.

On Thu, Jul 16, 2026 at 1:49 AM Moritz Angermann via ghc-devs <
[email protected]> wrote:

> Julian,
>
> What I've been trying to illustrate multiple times now is that the
> incentives you are creating through this policy are not protecting you, but
> to the contrary make people think twice if they want to be honest with you
> and declare LLM use (however tiny that might have been, or not).  You are
> even opening a game of "lets. see if I can use LLMs, not declare them, and
> have Julian review them without noticing." What kind of incentive is this?
>
> If all you want to be protected is a labeling, the policy should simply
> read:
>
> *We prefer contributions with non-trivial LLM assistance to be labeled
> LLM-assisted.*
>
> If you really wanted to you could even add a fairly neutral: It helps
> reviewers set expectations.
>
> This above wouldn't be enough for me though, as it does not say that we
> discourage drive-by-llm-contributions, and expect people to fully own their
> contributions. That however is completely irrelevant to you, as you don't
> want to interact with any of those, and as such will disregard them as soon
> as they are LLM-assisted labeled.
>
> And there is zero need for any form of judgement in either direction.  You
> can at your discretion just not review PRs that have the LLM assisted
> label.  If someone explicitly asks you to review a patch that has
> LLM-assisted, you can let them know that you'd prefer them to find another
> reviewer.  Again, what I said before, there is *no right to review*.
>
> If you goal is to make sure people disclose their LLM use honestly, let's
> not have a policy that is outright stigmatizing people who use LLMs
> (because they did not share the "we strongly prefer hand crafted bytes"
> sentiment). If on the other hand you want GHC to be a project that actively
> pushes away (or makes people question if their contribution is welcome if
> they use LLMs -- even a hint of doubt is enough to discourage people, It's
> the UD part of FUD) a certain class of contributors with integrity, honesty
> but also occasional LLM use, write a policy that not only states LLM
> labeling, but also comes with a judgement call.
>
> Hence, and why I keep coming back to this, I don't see this as a
> compromise, even though I can understand why you see it as such. I see this
> as a judgement (and classification) of people, which is what I reject.
>
> What is most perplexing to me is, that you multiple times say you want
> more collaboration, but the incentives you seem to lay out, seem to
> contradict this. The incentives seem to push people away, make them
> question whether or not they are truly welcome or just tolerated.  Maybe
> I'm fundamentally misunderstanding what you consider collaboration.  To me
> this is fundamentally building trust between people.  Throwing code over
> the wall, however conceived, is not that.  Entering into a discussion,
> while providing contributions is closer to that.  However putting up
> incentives to make contributors start out in the defensive is not that,
> insinuating distrust is not that, it all just leads to a corrupted
> interaction, not collaboration.  If one party always has to assume they
> could at any point be accused of something, that they simply can not prove
> to be incorrect, we create a hostile environment.  There is a reason why we
> generally follow in dubio pro reo and assume good-faith.  This policy moves
> us from good-faith not outright to bad-faith, but into that direction; I
> object to _that_.
>
> Best,
>  Moritz
>
> On Thu, 16 Jul 2026 at 12:00, Julian Ospald via ghc-devs <
> [email protected]> wrote:
>
>> > You clearly state that LLM usage for you is a signal of distrust.
>>
>> Yes, I personally distrust patches with heavy LLM assistance and I do not
>> believe people who say "but I know what I am doing".
>>
>> This also means that I don't want to spend my free time interacting with
>> such works. So who is protecting me?
>>
>> The disclosure does that: it allows me to just walk away and have someone
>> else look at the patch. And it definitely does protect you, because my
>> negative bias won't be able to drive decisions (unlike in my own projects,
>> where I outright reject such patches).
>>
>> I'm confused why you don't see that this is literally the only compromise
>> that is possible. I won't be contributing to projects, where people do not
>> want to disclose their LLM use, even if it's "well, I use it all the time".
>> That helps me set the expectations.
>> _______________________________________________
>> ghc-devs mailing list -- [email protected]
>> To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected]
>>
> _______________________________________________
> ghc-devs mailing list -- [email protected]
> To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected]
>


-- 
brandon s allbery kf8nh
[email protected]
_______________________________________________
ghc-devs mailing list -- [email protected]
To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected]

Reply via email to