On Thu, Jun 25, 2026 at 09:07:40AM +0200, λx.x wrote: > [ disclaimer: the foregoing is my opinion alone and does not necessarily > represent other people's opinions, et cetera. ] > > Brendan Tildesley <[email protected]> wrote: > > For 50+ years people have been trying to build the free software system > > of their dreams. If we further burden ourselves with additional, > > orthogonal societal [issues] like carbon emissions [and LLMs], our backs > > will break. > > alternatively, we could just completely ignore the fact that LLMs exist and > have an impact on the society, pull down this GCD, let people submit and > merge PRs of questionable legal provenance that were completely hallucinated > into existence, as contributors and users become alienated by the fact. all > of a sudden LLMs have impact besides environmental: that is, political and > personal. (...)
Before this thread starts trading apocalyptic visions of future societal breakdown caused by LLMs and our eventual turn to cannibalism - lets bear in mind how this process works. The requirement of the GCD system is that all the contributors agree. More specifically it is that no individual contributor disagrees. It's a system that has the impact of only moving forward when all members are agreed on something: or at least (and more likely) that any one voting member doesn't sufficiently disagree to hold everyone else up. That directly negates the possibility of "taking stances" and "stating opinions" which are divisive, controversial and/or that don't achieve consensus. The fact of the matter, is that the GCD system means that if there's a single person who strongly believes an opposing position is allowed to vote against a proposal. It's specifically not majority rules. I've no doubt that you personally strongly believe that LLMs are bad both for society and environmentally. But, we've discussed _at length_ that not everyone agrees on that stance. The GCD system aims for us to have the largest member of contributors to encompass the large set of opinions they have. If there's a subset that disagree then the GCD cannot move forward until/unless we find a position that works for that part of the group. > > I think that effective efforts to deal with greenhouse gasses are > > ultimately ones that push for political change, and Guix developers > > should genuinely just not worry about their relatively insignificant > > computational carbon footprint from LLMs. > > i think this misses the fact that, by using LLMs, you (perhaps > insignificantly) increase their impact, and—this might be a little > dollar-voting—demand for them. even disregarding all the other issues that > LLMs bring, you /should/ worry about the relatively insignificant > environmental (and societal, and personal) impact from using LLMs. after > all, the single raindrop never feels responsible for the flood. > > it is true that the only way to truly combat carbon emissions is political > change, but political change starts with personal change. > First, the writer didn't say they wouldn't be considering those things, they stated that it wasn't something the _project_ should add. It doesn't tell you anything about their personal position on dealing with climate change. Second, if this is about 'political change' then I question what's special about LLMs? Guix doesn't have GCD's that cover use of public transport, cutting down forests or reducing domestic violence against women and girls. Perhaps all good things and all areas that the project _could_ take a stance on. But by doing so, it will _by definition_ reduce how users see the project - because some people will always be in the opposing camp on any political/societal issue. Both, LLMs and other political change don't fall within the definition of Free Software. In fact, software that has licenses that add additional constraints (e.g. don't use in nuclear power) are considered non-free. Political change is not within the remit of Free Software. One of the main arguments from the BSD community has been that Free Software removes freedom. Personally, even though this isn't about licensing, it is impacting/removing freedom from individuals in the "name of Free Software". > if we want Guix to be the best it can be—the software of our dreams, as you > say—we need to take stances, state opinions, and write down decisions that > we can all agree with; We need to take "stances" we all agree on, and I (and the previous writer) do not agree that a Free Software project should be (a) be taking stances on societal topics, (b) constraining freedom of individuals. Steve / Futurile
