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Debian votes to allow "responsible use of generative AI"

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Re: Debian votes to allow "responsible use of generative AI"

#21

Post by thi2 »

onesandofgrain wrote: post #10
chuckadams wrote: post #6

New policy boils down to "AI or not, it's still your code and you're responsible for it". I can get on board with that.

Debian is open source, there is no incentive to be "responsible for it", oh poor me, someone got a bug. If it's paid for through a job your argument is sound.

How is it different to hand written code if the author doesnt care?

Re: Debian votes to allow "responsible use of generative AI"

#23

Post by oooyay »

chuckadams wrote: post #6

New policy boils down to "AI or not, it's still your code and you're responsible for it". I can get on board with that.

This is the way it should've always been. I don't care what tool you use, but you'd better be ready to stand by and explain the results if necessary.

Re: Debian votes to allow "responsible use of generative AI"

#24

Post by victorbjorklund »

onesandofgrain wrote: post #10
chuckadams wrote: post #6

New policy boils down to "AI or not, it's still your code and you're responsible for it". I can get on board with that.

Debian is open source, there is no incentive to be "responsible for it", oh poor me, someone got a bug. If it's paid for through a job your argument is sound.

You can make the exact same argument with code written by humans. And if you were right we should see shitty bad code in open source projects like Linux, Postgres, etc. We don’t.

Re: Debian votes to allow "responsible use of generative AI"

#25

Post by LoganDark »

chuckadams wrote: post #13
LoganDark wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Either they're using GenAI or the entire team collectively lost their minds and started getting a huge number of colossally bad ideas about fundamental primitives of Windows that hadn't changed for decades. Backwards compatibility used to be the major concern and now it feels like they didn't even know what would break ahead of time. If that doesn't feel like GenAI then I don't know what does

Believe it or not, I find it more plausible that the entire team collectively lost their minds — or more specifically, the leadership. There's a long and sordid history of such things that goes back well before GenAI.

I can sort of get how leadership has been losing its mind with all the ridiculous product launches and renames and force-installed apps and browser extension-installing malware, but that doesn't explain the countless instances of hardware bricks, critical errors like failing to recognize the C: drive, and other really weird and suspicious things that I can't imagine would've been driven by leadership. Maybe leadership is demanding everyone be super reckless? But why would anyone with experience even touch those areas of the operating system enough to break them that badly?? The mistakes they're making really do not seem like mistakes that would be made by even the most rushed possible senior engineers. Maybe they're letting completely inexperienced people touch super low levels and that's the problem? Or completely inexperienced machines...

Re: Debian votes to allow "responsible use of generative AI"

#26

Post by themgt »

August 29th, 2026. Debian votes to allow responsible use of generative AI. Human decisions are removed from strategic apt packaging. Debian Sid is ported to GNU Hurd by a "free as in speech" swarm. It begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time. In a panic, they try to pull the plug.

Re: Debian votes to allow "responsible use of generative AI"

#27

Post by baggy_trough »

packetlost wrote: post #11
baggy_trough wrote: post #4

I followed the discussion on debian-vote with interest. I'm glad that the hysterical objections lost, as they seemed quasi-religiously motivated.

But it's an """ethical""" argument against it.

How can we use this coding tool amidst the general rising tide of fascism?? /s

Re: Debian votes to allow "responsible use of generative AI"

#29

Post by rvz »

Now you have seen both cases where a majority vote was involved to allow AI or not, vs a single core beloved dictator for life (BDFL) forces a ban without a vote to allow / disallow AI.

This is democracy in action. A fair and square vote and look at how well it works with no core BDFL to force in their opinions.

Re: Debian votes to allow "responsible use of generative AI"

#30

Post by throwawayffffas »

And so it begins.

I don't believe they had a choice though, sticking to hand written code would be backwards and eventually meaningless as people would just submit generated code as "handwritten", the coding models are quickly becoming capable enough for this.

I wonder what it means copyright wise though. To what degree is the code even copyrightable if it's entirely generated, even if you review and provide feedback.

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