Ekaitz Zarraga <[email protected]> writes: > Your fantastic argument, which in the root I agree with, has only one > flaw in my opinion.
i am glad to hear that. even if we might disagree on some things, we are in agreement overall. > Guix can only decide on the things it does. The stance on binary blobs > is that Guix does not share them. It does not prevent the users from > using them (in fact, I do use binary blobs). That is also freedom, the > freedom for people to take their own decisions, regardless if they are > good or bad. i agree with this, almost completely, which i will address below. > The LLM does not demand anything from Guix like the "binary blob" > stance you mention. They might make the review process harder or other > things we can discuss, but that's not Guix itself having to change to > accommodate or include them. It's not the actions of Guix we are > discussing, but the actions of individuals that we are discussing if > we limit or we don't. i bring up binary blobs because it is a case where guix is rejecting something because of its perceived effects on overall user freedom. a place where we already have a concrete stance on something. i bring it up to show that we can, and indeed have already, taken difficult stances where it was deemed important. it's not about the blobs themselves, they're just a convenient example. > In practical terms, I would just don't do anything and wait to see if > LLMs are actually a concern in the project. They might never be > (mostly because those who take part in GNU projects do care about > software and freedom), and we are here discussing for nothing. to me, the time to fight is now, before things are more entrenched. this fight only gets harder the longer it goes unchallenged. > Whatever a > person does in the intimacy of their computer is none of my business. i want to address this specifically. we live in an interconnected world where, in spite of our best efforts, our actions impact each other. the idea that what someone does on their own computer isn't anyone else's business is a fiction. it serves to simplify the world into domains that don't interact. but that's not reality. everything touches everything else. for the most part, there's no compelling reason outside of philosophy books to pierce that fiction, and that fiction serves a great purpose in allowing us to live our lives without having to constantly weigh everything against everything in an irreducibly complex world. i *support* this fiction. it is a good thing almost all the time. but when someone uses their computer to write software to guide missiles into hospitals, well… obviously that's no longer a private matter. so there are limits to the fiction that we can hopefully agree on. the use of llms, for me, and i hope many others, crosses that line. it contributes, actively, monetarily to a system that is, as fast as it possibly can, destroying our freedoms. to me, it is not a private matter any more because it impacts so many people's lives in so many ways, the vast majority of which are harmful. guix cannot, and should not, police that. but guix is a community, as much, or more, than it is a software project. as a community we can encourage and discourage behavior. we can ask our members to abide by the rules we see fit to govern ourselves by, and we can enforce those rules if necessary. what i am suggesting is that we adopt, as a community, an anti-llm stance, and wear it proudly. we will not catch all llm-assembled patches, we don't need to. we need to encourage good behavior and do our best to enforce our rules as best we can. guix is one of the best communities i've ever had the pleasure to be a part of, without question. and it is like that not because we enforce licenses (though we do), or keep binary blobs out (though we do), but because we care about each other and about our impact on the world at large. licenses and blobs and llms and reproducibility and full source and everything else is in service to that one, primary goal: how can we use our talents to make the world more free? -bjc
