Hi Simon,
On 7/15/26 19:35, Simon Tournier wrote:
Hi Hugo,
On Tue, 14 Jul 2026 at 14:46, Hugo Buddelmeijer via "Development of GNU Guix and the GNU
System distribution." <[email protected]> wrote:
Oleg pointed me to the excellent article by Konrad about "conviviality":
https://blog.khinsen.net/posts/2026/07/06/conviviality.html
It explains so many things, for example why I got drawn to Guix, and why
most of you despise genAI. It does a better job at describing the risks
of genAI than the GCD does; and it is more convincing than Konrad's own
message about the GCD (perhaps because the article is decoupled from any
specific technology).
Please consider my very first comment about GCD 008 was a call for
integrating this term of “conviviality”. Quoting [1]:
Yes I did reread it, and already reflected a bit on why your email (and
Konrad's) did not really help me at the time, and I identified 3 reasons.
Firstly, the term 'conviviality' was new to me, and it is too complex to
explain in an email. E.g., your email was difficult to understand (for
me), and Konrads email simplified the concept too much. The blog post
was the right size (and I could connect to it, having followed that
Python-path to Guix).
Second, I did (and still) do feel that it is possible to use tools like
LLMs without harming conviviality; even enhancing it. Just like most
Dutch cities nowadays are primarily designed for cyclists and
pedestrians while still allowing cars. (Cars being the canonical
example for non-convivial technology it seems.) So the arguments you
and Konrad provided were not convincing to me (at the time).
But most importantly, I now realize that the genAI was not solving the
actual problem at all. Because the primary problem is that we already
in the situation that it only feels feasible to contribute to Guix
through tools like genAI. Using genAI would then only solve the
superficial problem while reinforcing the actual problem.
To clarify: it has literally taken hundreds of hours of churn to get
some of 'my' Python packages in. Most of that time was spend on fixing
otherwise unrelated packages to work with Python 3.12. Like one-off old
bioinformatics packages. We only managed because we have extremely
dedicated people like Oleg, Nicolas, Ricardo and others (thanks again!).
But in a few months, Python 3.12 will be 'too old' again, so the grind
restarts.
In the above situation, genAI is a 'solution', as genAI is extremely
good at writing those compatibility-patches. But a real solution would
be not getting ourself into such an anti-convivial situation to begin
with. I feel we never got the discussion to that level.
Where Illich’s book “Tools for Conviviality” was specifically
referenced, see [3].
I'll read it.
Somehow, I’m happy if Konrad’s post helped you to jump into the
“conviviality” concept. However, I’m a bit sad that this proposal of
wording had been overflowed by all the rest; because it appeared to me
one important knot of the discussion. Anyway. :-)
Indeed, hence me bringing it up again.
Although now I (think I) understand it, I feel we should rewrite the
entire GCD from this conviviality perspective, because if it convinces
me, it might convince others. But let's not change anything now.
Concretely, PyPI or Conda aren’t convivial, they are easy. PyPI isn’t
convivial at all because it’s the “radical monopoly” of Python
ecosystem.
I'm not that pessimistic, but well, I'm here, exactly because I agree.
Well, there is no out-of-the-box solution for reviving “conviviality”.
IMHO, the first thing to read and re-read “Conviviality for Digital
Degrowth” [5], in addition to Konrad’s blog post. And the second thing
is probably to re-think our own personal relationship with computing and
Nooooo ;-). But I'll read it.
automation as a hobby and how such relationship fits into the collective
picture – why do we build Guix all together?
Cheers,
simon
1: Re: Submitting GCD 008: “Standing up for human crafting”
Simon Tournier <[email protected]>
Mon, 18 May 2026 16:12:15 +0200
id:[email protected]
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2026-05
https://yhetil.org/guix/[email protected]
2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_from_Nowhere
3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tools_for_Conviviality
4: https://youtu.be/SxdOUGdseq4
5: https://doi.org/10.4000/16954
6: https://www.gnu.org/gnu/manifesto.en.html
7: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule
