I support
> Dear team members,
>
> This message announces the start of the deliberation period on GCD 008,
> entitled:
>
> Commitments and policy on the use of “generative artificial intelligence”
>
> The final version of the document is attached and can also be viewed here:
>
>
> https://codeberg.org/guix/guix-consensus-documents/src/commit/a24520c4147ffd67bb696c71f15ed4fb8521a791/008-genai.md
>
> The history of discussions is available at the following places:
>
> https://codeberg.org/guix/guix-consensus-documents/pulls/13
> https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/ (May, June, and July)
>
> Excerpt from GCD 001, which specifies the process:
>
> Once the final version is published, team members have 14 days to send one
> of the following replies on the patch-tracking entry of the GCD:
>
> - “I support”, meaning that one supports the proposal;
> - “I accept”, meaning that one consents to the implementation of the
> proposal;
> - “I disapprove”, meaning that one opposes the implementation of the
> proposal. A team member sending this reply should have made constructive
> comments during the discussion period.
>
> To avoid ambiguity, replies from team members will be accepted until:
>
> Monday, July 27th, 2026, 23:59 AoE (anywhere on earth)
>
> Replies are accepted both on the Codeberg pull request given above and
> on the [email protected] mailing list.
>
> Many thanks to everyone who participated so far!
>
> Ludo’.
>
> title: Commitments and policy on the use of “generative artificial
> intelligence”
> id: 008
> status: submitted
> discussion: https://codeberg.org/guix/guix-consensus-documents/pulls/13
> authors: Ludovic Courtès
> sponsors: Janneke Nieuwenhuizen, Noé Lopez, Sharlatan Hellseher, Cayetano
> Santos, Tobias Geerinckx-Rice
> date: 2026-05-17
> draft-date: 2026-05-15
> discussion-date: 2026-05-17
> deliberation-date: 2026-07-13
> SPDX-License-Identifier: CC-BY-SA-4.0 OR GFDL-1.3-no-invariants-or-later
> ---
>
> # Summary
>
> Guix is a free software project; it is made by people for people, with
> knowledge sharing and empowerment as some of its core values. This
> document proposes commitments and a policy to support this vision.
>
> # Motivation
>
> Since large language models (LLMs) and “generative artificial
> intelligence” (thereafter “genAI”) became available for the general
> public a couple of years ago, they have been having a significant impact
> on software development.
>
> In the Guix community, genAI is viewed by some as an opportunity, in
> particular as a way to help maintain and grow the package collection, at
> a time where package updates are labor-intensive and often lagging
> behind. People reported experience using genAI for packaging-related
> tasks both with commercial services and with locally-running pre-trained
> models (Apertus, Qwen).
>
> Others in Guix and in the broader free software community point out
> immediate and longer-term risks associated with genAI that can be
> broadly categorized as follows:
>
> - **Legal issues.** The copyright status of LLM output is unsettled
> worldwide, including [in the
>
> EU](https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/STUD/2025/774095/IUST_STU(2025)774095_EN.pdf)
> and [in the USA](https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/LSB10922).
> GenAI can also [regurgitate training
> data](https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.02671) thereby exposing their users
> to a risk of copyright infringement.
> - **Ethical issues.** The leading commercial genAI services run
> non-free software and are to some extent “service as a software
> substitute” (SaaSS). Other ethical concerns include the [unlawful
> extraction of
> content](https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/pol40/0996/2026/en/)
> for training purposes for most models (also putting infrastructure
> [such as that of
> Guix](https://codeberg.org/guix/maintenance/issues/10) under high
> stress), and the [material, water, and
>
> energy](https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/05/20/1116327/ai-energy-usage-climate-footprint-big-tech/)
> consumption of the genAI industry.
> - **Social issues.** In many free software projects, genAI has led to
> an influx of low-effort contributions [putting an extra toll on
> maintainers and
>
> reviewers](https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/blob/main/llvm/docs/AIToolPolicy.md#extractive-contributions),
> leading those projects to regulate genAI use. Other concerns
> include the risk of [growing cognitive
> debt](https://simonwillison.net/2026/Feb/15/cognitive-debt/) in
> projects where genAI plays an important role in code (co-)authoring,
> the risk of [weakening social ties as people look for guidance from
> chatbots instead of from other users and
>
> contributors](https://blog.stdlib.io/ai-and-the-invisible-newcomer-in-open-source/),
> the risk of [competition for financial resources between humans and
> genAI vendors](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2601.15494), and the risk of
> exclusion of people who cannot afford genAI or are prevented from
> using it for geopolitical reasons.
> - **Technical issues.** Reproducibility is a core property of Guix but
> genAI, whose process is non-deterministic, puts the reproducibility
> of development workflows at risk. Another concern is code rot:
> should genAI be widely used in Guix, existing automation tools not
> indispensable to LLM agents, such as `guix import`, `guix refresh`,
> and `guix style`, are at risk of becoming unmaintained, resulting in
> a loss of autonomy for the project and its contributors.
>
> This proposal aims to address some of these concerns through the
> adoption of commitments and a policy as precautionary measures to
> safeguard our production from a legal standpoint as well as the social
> fabric built over almost 15 years around the project.
>
> # Detailed Design
>
> In a context where genAI is already widely used and is often hard to
> escape, we propose the adoption of commitments and of a policy on behalf of
> the project,
> with the following goals:
>
> - Safeguarding the project’s main assets—its community and its code—by
> following the *precautionary principle* considering irreversible
> changes that unregulated genAI adoption may cause, socially and
> technically.
> - Questioning the reasons that make genAI feel necessary for people
> using Guix, and finding ways to fill the gap.
> - Strengthening support for craftspeople the project interacts
> with—translators, artists, developers, and so on.
> - Contributing to the public debate on these matters and creating ties
> with like-minded organizations and grassroots movements.
>
> ## Project Commitments
>
> We propose the following project commitments:
>
> 1. The project members (defined as maintainers, team members, and anyone
> with
> write access to a Guix repository or to Guix
> resources such as the build farm) **will not use
> genAI** to author code or packages, to interact with other
> participants (e.g., to explain code changes or to review code), to
> produce artwork, or any other artifact.
> 2. The project will keep working to **provide people of all levels of
> experience with the resources to use Guix and to contribute to
> Guix** without feeling the need to resort to genAI:
> - by facilitating access to documentation and improving it to
> better suit the needs to people with different levels of
> experience—newcomers discovering free software, people with prior
> exposure to GNU/Linux, developers;
> - by developing and improving tools that make it easier to get
> started such as [Guix
> Packager](https://guix-hpc.gitlabpages.inria.fr/guix-packager/)
> and `guix import`;
> - by improving diagnostics to make our tools more approachable;
> - by providing communication channels anyone can use to look for
> help or to offer support, where all and everyone can feel safe to
> participate;
> - by improving tools for mechanical translation, refactoring, and
> updates such as `guix import`, `guix style`, and `guix refresh`,
> so that tedious packaging tasks can be automated in a way that is
> transparent, deterministic, and maintains the project’s
> sovereignty.
> 3. We acknowledge that the project’s sustainability depends on
> automation for all the mechanical, labor-intensive tasks such as
> package updates. We will keep **improving hackable tools and services
> to
> automate some of the package collection maintenance work**.
>
> The Guix project will publicize these commitments, by referring to it in its
> contribution guidelines, by making it easy to find, by presenting it in
> blog posts, and through any other communication deemed appropriate.
>
> ## Policy for Contributions
>
> We propose that contributions to Guix be subject to the following
> policy:
>
> 1. **GenAI use.** Contributors who are *not project members* (as
> defined above) MAY use genAI to assist in their authoring process
> for some contributions, subject to these restrictions:
> 1. **GenAI use disclosure.** Contributors using genAI to assist them
> in their authoring process MUST disclose its use and how they used
> it. This includes cases where the contribution was produced by
> genAI or where the contribution derives from changes produced by
> genAI.
> 2. **Contribution acceptance.** Changes produced by genAI or deriving
> from genAI output that can be viewed as “creative”, and [could thus
> fall under
> copyright](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_of_originality),
> MUST be rejected to avoid any risk of copyright infringement.
> Conversely, when reviewers consider a genAI-produced change
> “non-creative”, and thus not falling under copyright, the change
> MAY be accepted. Examples of non-creative changes include
> mechanical conversions of package metadata from other repositories
> similar to those made by `guix import`, mechanical changes similar
> to those made by `guix refresh` or `guix style`, changes that
> merely follow suggestions made by `guix lint`, integration of
> upstream patches, changes of a package’s `#:configure-flags`, and
> similar package definition adjustments that are arguably below the
> [threshold of
> originality](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_of_originality).
> 2. **Interaction.** Contributors and project members MUST NOT use genAI for
> direct
> interaction with other participants. Examples of prohibited uses
> include: letting
> an agent comment in pull requests, issues, or mailing list threads;
> copying text provided by genAI as answers or explanations in a
> discussion; more generally, removing the human from the loop.
> 3. **Exploratory analysis.** Contributors and project members are free to
> use genAI
> as part of their exploratory process as long their final contribution
> respects the above rules. For instance, use of genAI to identify
> the cause of a bug or the reason for a package build failure is
> permitted.
>
> The Guix project will make this policy visible to contributors: as a
> file in the main repository, by adding it to the “Contributing” chapter
> of the manual, or in any other way deemed appropriate.
>
> ## Related Work
>
> A number of free software projects have adopted a policy with respect to
> genAI, revealing different sensibilities and choices. Here are some of
> those we looked at:
>
> * Asahi Linux
> https://asahilinux.org/docs/project/policies/slop/
> * Debian
> https://lwn.net/Articles/1020968/ (May 2025)
> https://lwn.net/Articles/1061544/ (March 2026)
> * FreeBSD
> https://www.freebsd.org/status/report-2025-04-2025-06/
> * Gentoo
> https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:Council/AI_policy
> * GCC (work in progress)
> https://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/working-group-ai-policy
> * GNOME (individual packages)
> https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-calendar/-/merge_requests/725
>
> https://discourse.gnome.org/t/loupe-no-longer-allows-generative-ai-contributions/27327
>
> https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/libadwaita/-/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md#use-of-generative-ai
> * GNU Binutils
> https://sourceware.org/binutils/wiki/LLM_Generated_Content
> * GNU Gnulib
> https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnulib/2026-02/msg00064.html
> * Linux
>
> https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/Documentation/process/generated-content.rst
> https://lwn.net/Articles/1032612/
> https://docs.kernel.org/process/coding-assistants.html
> * LLVM
> https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/blob/main/llvm/docs/AIToolPolicy.md
> * Mastodon
> https://github.com/mastodon/.github/blob/main/AI_POLICY.md
> * NetBSD
> https://www.netbsd.org/developers/commit-guidelines.html
> * NixOS
> https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/514587
>
> https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md#automationai-policy
> * NLnet Labs
> https://nlnetlabs.nl/llm-policy/
> * Pepper & Carrot (comics)
>
> https://www.peppercarrot.com/en/documentation/409_Code_of_Conduct.html#use-of-generative-ai
> * Servo
>
> https://web.archive.org/web/20260311122512/https://book.servo.org/contributing/getting-started.html#ai-contributions
> * Software Freedom Conservancy (recommendations)
>
> https://sfconservancy.org/llm-gen-ai/llm-backed-generative-ai-recommendations.html
> * Zig
> https://ziglang.org/code-of-conduct/#strict-no-llm-no-ai-policy
>
> Software package lists:
>
> * "No AI" list
> https://noai.starlightnet.work/list.html
> * software projects that accept LLM contributions
> https://codeberg.org/small-hack/open-slopware
>
> ## Cost of Reverting
>
> A new GCD could propose a different set of commitments, a different
> policy, or abandoning both altogether; should consensus be found on such
> a proposal, it would override the decisions of this GCD.
>
> What would be costly to revert is the *lack* of any form of regulation
> on genAI use in Guix.
>
> # Drawbacks and Open Issues
>
> This proposal has seen significant changes since the initial version
> that was submitted; it is the result of discussions among people
> covering a wide spectrum of opinions on the subject. As such, it might
> feel “too weak” to some and “too restrictive” to others. Yet, it is
> hopefully a good reflection of where we stand today as a community.
