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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"

#311

Post by clort »

ipaddr wrote: post #251
2Gkashmiri wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In anonymous systems, where we don't use real names, your "handle" has an "age". That becomes your most prized possession. I have a reddit account thats over 12 years old. I have left the posts/comments open. That means, my "post history" becomes a way to advertise my skills. I can reference comments from a year ago or 6 months ago about a certain topic to show how I handled something. That does have an effect on peo…

No one takes a 12 year old Reddit account seriously either. It's not a platform you can take anyone seriously. The biggest trolls have 12 year old accounts.

the age is not the measure of quality. the GP said they left the posts/comments open. anybody can read that and check if they are or not a serious contributor

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

#312

Post by blm126 »

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #276
oooyay wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"This works for me, but I need help understanding why, because maybe it would help others" is a legitimate position to be in--has been since long before LLMs. I think we miss out on something when we ignore that position. I'm not saying that anybody should be obligated to review large volumes of low confidence code... just that we should not make policies that ignore shades of gray which, with some collaboration, cou…

I think the key thing you are missing here is that most successful open source maintainers don’t lack expertise, they lack time. They are generally capable of improving their projects in any direction they want without help. Mentoring new contributors is basically always a loss in the short term as far as the maintainer is concerned. The project does get improved, but it generally takes longer than if they did it by themselves from scratch, and the improvements might be in an area they don’t much care about. The payoff for the maintainers only ever happened in the long term if the mentorship succeeded and they get a viable independent long term contributor.

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

#313

Post by johnnyApplePRNG »

kccqzy wrote: post #62
jhack wrote: post #14

Good to see the most common sense option winning. Some of the other proposals were so disconnected from reality I'm surprised they were even considered.

This indicates you might be in a bubble. I interact with people with a very wide range of opinions on AI and I’m not surprised by any of the proposals here.

Do any of those people with a "very wide range of opionions on AI" actually use AI for programming at all?

Because it's perfect for that. Basically designed for it.

It's a tool. Like a calculator. Or a shovel.

You use it do get things done for you.

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

#314

Post by vlyan »

zaneyard wrote: post #85
vlyan wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IDEs enable us to not bother memorizing the number and order of arguments, long names beyond the first word or two, etc. the impact is comparable, freeing some of the very limited space in our memory for more important things. sure, students and juniors shoot themselves in the dick if they let LLMs do everything, but they're fucked anyway so it doesn't matter,

With AI people aren't reading, writing, or thinking about the code. I would not say something that helps me remember a function name is comparible.

code didn't matter even before LLMs. we only ever cared about the product of it.

the current pace of LLM advancement only has to keep for five more years for handmade code to be considered a liability. I wouldn't worry about being able to recall obscure APIs or whiteboard leetcode. I'm far more worried about having to change careers at 40.

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

#315

Post by eterm »

dooglius wrote: post #300

The voting seems to have been pretty much linear to how pro-LLM they were. So it's interesting that all of the proposals were essentially anti-LLM and the chosen one was the mostly neutral, only slightly anti-LLM one. The absence of any pro-LLM proposal indicated that proposal writers are not in sync with the voters

What would "pro-LLM" look like to you?

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

#316

Post by NuclearPM »

overfeed wrote: post #235
ls612 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> ngl this is just gatekeeping As a beneficiary of Debian, this is good, you are praising Debian with feint damnation. I wish Debian had done more gatekeeping in the past on specific components.

Did you intentionally write that like an AI as a joke?

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

#317

Post by icantevenhold »

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.

What does this responsibility mean in practice?

Like what are the actual real consequences if it turns out your code is bad or whatever? I assume you get banned from contributing?

I couldn’t immediately find any more information on what this all means in practice

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

#318

Post by kccqzy »

johnnyApplePRNG wrote: post #313
kccqzy wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This indicates you might be in a bubble. I interact with people with a very wide range of opinions on AI and I’m not surprised by any of the proposals here.

Do any of those people with a "very wide range of opionions on AI" actually use AI for programming at all? Because it's perfect for that. Basically designed for it. It's a tool. Like a calculator. Or a shovel. You use it do get things done for you.

A few people certainly refused to use AI at all, but several actually used AI for programming and agreed it was useful, but stopped due to being conscious of the environmental footprint. (That’s very similar to the last proposal in this Debian debate.) I don’t really agree with them, but I concede it’s a valid opinion.

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

#319

Post by asveikau »

bodge5000 wrote: post #182
bigstrat2003 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They cared enough to do good work before, so I don't think that your explanation suffices here. From my observation (not just with their programming but in other interactions), it truly is that using an LLM has made these people less intelligent than they were before.

A friend of mine, really nice guy, is training as a lawyer at the moment. He has zero interest in law or justice, but heard that lawyers make a lot of money. Not too long about, programming went through a very similar phase. To be clear its not that I think programmers or lawyers shouldn't make good money, they absolutely should and it is deserved, its just it has the unfortunate side effect of attracting people who…

> really nice guy, is training as a lawyer at the moment. He has zero interest in law or justice, but heard that lawyers make a lot of money.

Sorry to say this, but he doesn't sound like a nice guy.

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

#320

Post by stillpointlab »

Is anyone tracking how the different distros are coming down on the question?

I was curious how Fedora is moving on this question, but I don't know where to look. And if one wants to hop distro either towards or away from AI, it would be nice to have a place to see the relative adoption.

Linux distros are the perfect place to have a wide marketplace of options to suit every person, from completely anti-AI to completely YOLO vibe-code.

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