Don't misinterpret this link as representing a final decision. It's actually three separate proposals which will be debated and then voted on.

Proposal A is "expressly forbid any contributions to Debian written with the use or assistance of large language models (LLMs) or other generative AI tools."

Proposal B is "The Debian project allows AI-assisted contributions (partially or fully generated by an LLM), provided the following conditions are met [...]"

Proposal C is "request that all contributors to Debian avoid the use of LLMs in their Debian work" without an outright ban.

> A LLM (...) merely produces syntactically likely combinations of the training data

While doesn't matter much in the rest of the policy, this is a common misconception among AI skeptics. It is not the case for a long time (since RL is used heavily in the training) and a LLM may go beyond its training data.

Gentoo chose to ban LLMs two years ago. They seem to be doing well.

I might su combining Proposal A (but only for contributions (to Debian) that actually involve the output of LLMs/generative-AI or that blindly trust their results) with Proposal C (for everything else).

However, in the case of item 4 of Proposal C, there are multiple kind of "assistance" that is possible; not all of them involve contributing the output of LLMs (e.g. the assistance might be to check for a mistake such as if a paragraph seems to be redundant or is incomplete or something like that; the result from the LLM might be incorrect but you will have to decide by yourself what (if anything) to do about it when writing your message). Even if some kind of assistance should not be banned entirely, it should still be discouraged (like the rest of Proposal C says). (Also, there are other programs that can sometimes be used for the assistance; e.g. sometimes ordinary spelling/grammar checking will do (although that won't find that an incorrect word that is spelled like a correct word in the correct grammar).)

I do not use LLM/generative-AI for any purpose, and would not accept contributions including their output into my projects, and would discourage other uses. (This seems to be similar to Proposal A and Proposal C.)

  > Documentation and translations added by Debian contributors

Debian should completely avoid AI slop.

Let the Salesforces and the Atlassians of the world destroy themselves with poor quality vibecode driven teams.

Using LLM to scan for security holes is another issue altogether.

What comprises “assistance?” Getting Claude Code to find bugs, suggest a fix, but a human actually editing the source files and testing the result - is that assistance? Perhaps this policy is as it says: a guiding principle that the community is expected to follow.

I certainly hope they'll choose C.

This is ridiculos, think about that, will Debian project survive without a Linux kernel written with the help of LLM tools?

I find it ironic that so many OSS projects are or are considering banning LLM usage. After all, without OSS, LLMs would never have been this good at coding.

Shouldn't OSS be the first to benefit? Or should OSS be a bedrock of carefully curated code untouched by AI slop?

Be interesting to see what happens when it becomes a serious hacker target.

i think the line is: expressing that you reputationally certify its correct and its worth the time

"Look at this. Look at what they make you give." - The Professor from The Bourne Identity (2002)

How can they even tell code was written by AI instead of a human?

Curious what the "use" or "assistance" of LLM models means. I mostly use Gemini as a front-end to search Google without getting ads or SEO garbage, would that be forbidden?

I think when we're talking about mature software, LLMs aren't the problem. It's the lack of discussion justifying the change. LLMs don't necessarily lower code quality. They put a spotlight on people "just going through the motions".

When the changes are small and properly reviewed, there's no point in caring how it was done. It should be trivial to write, but difficult to approve and merge.

Projects as significant as Debian should own the fact that they are indeed a bureaucracy and take inspiration from what has always worked long before LLMs.

Proposal D, currently enacted: Use LLMs but don't tell anyone

looks like the best proposal is the just the least bad

Interesting that this makes no distinction from using LLM output and using LLM assistance. An overly strict policy is better than no policy, but I wonder if using llm for conversation and analysis, but not code/config generation, was discussed.

Proposal A

Using LLM encourages data theft or unethical acts.

The whole anti-LLM crusade feels like developers trying to gatekeep their own relevance. They know the tool can automate parts if not all of what gave them status, so instead of adapting, they want to declare its use illegitimate and keep themselves as mandatory middlemen. Which is already ironic enough. If Proposal A passes and is somehow enforceable, every distro that embraces AI while Debian moralizes about it will lap them within a few years. You do not stop technological displacement by banning the tools everyone else is using. You just volunteer to be displaced first.

Elementary, Redox and Gentoo already banned it. Nix and Fedora allow it with disclosure. Now Debian and Arch are debating whether to adapt or seal their fate alongside Gentoo. Nix and Fedora got it right. Debian and Arch are deciding whether they want to remain relevant or fade into irrelevance.

I suspect the debate shouldn't be LLMs or no LLMs, but rather what level of human accountability is required.

We've accepted compilers, static analyzers, and code generators because the maintainer is still responsible for the final result. The interesting question is whether LLMs fundamentally change that responsibility, or just change the kinds of mistakes reviewers need to look for

Proposals like these are arrogant and obnoxious. You aren’t going to tell me what tools I can use.

Proposal A is the end of debian for non-english speakers. For those who don't speak english which is most of the world, using an LLM has become vital, because technical information is not available in their language or is extremely basic. Arch Linux is far more lenient with this.

Good so Debian will die soon or later.

This set of proposals, are (sorry) just stupid. It's like saying to someone, you are not allowed to saw wood using an electric saw, you must do it by hand. What are we doing here?! LLM(s) are just a tool. Use it as such. You should own the work anyway.

Debian Airport is debating whether to allow aircraft to land on autopilot. On the one hand it’s nice that autopilot gives more people the chance to fly, and it lets experienced pilots fly more often. On the other hand, Debian Airport has, to date, been run by a carefully curated club of “stick and rudder” pilots. It’s a club where the air safety is backed up by nothing more than the name and reputation of the pilot coming in to land.

What if Claude goes down on approach? Or you run out of OpenAI tokens just before touchdown? What’s the point of having a named pilot if the control of the aircraft is in someone else’s hands, in part or in whole?

With actual pilots you have to take an exam and pass a practical test to prove you are competent. It’s a part of the analogy that could apply well to the real world Debian project.