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PostmarketOS in 2026-02: generic kernels, bans use of generative AI

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Re: PostmarketOS in 2026-02: generic kernels, bans use of generative AI

#41

Post by hu3 »

imadr wrote: post #33
hu3 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not parent commenter but this is bound to happen. And I highly doubt iOS and Android are free from LLM assisted code at this point.

Yes and? Let's suppose your statement is 100% true, I genuinely don't see the point of these kinds of comments. Why every time some person/group of people enact an anti-LLM policy in their project, other people feel the personal need to stress how useful LLMs are and how that project is bound to fail if they don't use it? Postmarketos clearly exists and works, EVEN if LLMs were absolutely perfect for speeding up deve…

I'm pointing out that their expectation of AI-free OS is pointless.

Because AI-assisted code is most probably already present in devices they use.

And I dare say that even for PostmarktOS:

1) There's no way they can prevent AI-assisted code to reach their codebase.

2) They will most probably change this policy in the future lest other forks/projects outpace them in terms of utility and they get reduced to a carriage in a car world.

Re: PostmarketOS in 2026-02: generic kernels, bans use of generative AI

#42

Post by hu3 »

mpol wrote: post #31
hu3 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not parent commenter but this is bound to happen. And I highly doubt iOS and Android are free from LLM assisted code at this point.

Could AI write a highly specific camera driver or GPU driver, without any documentation at all?

Probably not and why would it need such constraint?

Not even humans can do that. Documentation needs to at least be reverse-engineered and understood before implementation.

Re: PostmarketOS in 2026-02: generic kernels, bans use of generative AI

#43

Post by kunai »

egorfine wrote: post #38

> Submitting contributions fully or in part created by generative AI tools to postmarketOS. So, autocomplete done by deterministic algorithms in IDEs are okay but autocomplete done by LLM algorithms - no, that's banned? Ok, surely everybody agrees with that, it's policy after all. How it is possible to distinguish between the two in the vast majority of cases where the hand written code and autocompleted code is byte…

> So, autocomplete done by deterministic algorithms in IDEs are okay but autocomplete done by LLM algorithms - no, that's banned? Ok, surely everybody agrees with that, it's policy after all.

Because autocomplete still requires heavy user input and a SWE at the top of the decision making tree. You could argue that using Claude or Codex enables you to do the same thing, but there's no guarantee someone isn't vibecoding and then not testing adequately to ensure, firstly, that everything can be debugged, and secondly, that it fits in with the broader codebase before they try to merge or PR.

Plenty of people use Claude like an autocomplete or to bounce ideas off of, which I think is a great use case. But besides that, using a tool like that in more extreme ways is becoming increasingly normalized and probably not something you want in your codebase if you care about code quality and avoiding pointless bugs.

Every time I see a post on HN about some miracle work Claude did it's always been very underwhelming. Wow, it coded a kernel driver for out of date hardware! That doesn't do anything except turn a display on... great. Claude could probably help you write a driver in less time, but it'll only really work well, again, if you're at the top of the hierarchy of decision making and are manually reviewing code. No guarantees of that in the FOSS world because we don't have keyloggers installed on everybody's machine.

Re: PostmarketOS in 2026-02: generic kernels, bans use of generative AI

#44

Post by GaryBluto »

jonathrg wrote: post #3

Very happy to see PostmarketOS take an uncompromising stance and also providing justification for it.

You say "uncompromising stance" with "justification", I say stubborn prejudice. They simply state the same weak, nonsensical complaints that apply to many other technologies that they undoubtedly don't have issues with and are happy with the use of.

Re: PostmarketOS in 2026-02: generic kernels, bans use of generative AI

#45

Post by baq »

> bans use of generative AI

that ship has sailed with codex 5.3 in 90% SWE jobs, unfortunately. I expect the next 9% won't survive the following 12 months and the last 1% is done within 5 years.

it isn't even about principles - projects not using gen AI will become basically irrelevant, the pace of gen AI allowed competitors will be too great.

Re: PostmarketOS in 2026-02: generic kernels, bans use of generative AI

#46

Post by raincole »

hu3 wrote: post #41
imadr wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and? Let's suppose your statement is 100% true, I genuinely don't see the point of these kinds of comments. Why every time some person/group of people enact an anti-LLM policy in their project, other people feel the personal need to stress how useful LLMs are and how that project is bound to fail if they don't use it? Postmarketos clearly exists and works, EVEN if LLMs were absolutely perfect for speeding up deve…

I'm pointing out that their expectation of AI-free OS is pointless. Because AI-assisted code is most probably already present in devices they use. And I dare say that even for PostmarktOS: 1) There's no way they can prevent AI-assisted code to reach their codebase. 2) They will most probably change this policy in the future lest other forks/projects outpace them in terms of utility and they get reduced to a carriage…

The stance is not to 'prevent AI-assisted code to reach their codebase.' It's not like AI-assisted code is literally poisonous and their codebase dies if touched.

The stance is to deter random vibe-coders trying to resume-max by submitting PRs to known open source projects. There are so many of them rn. Hopefully by making it clear (some of) them will realize doing that is just wasting their tokens.

Re: PostmarketOS in 2026-02: generic kernels, bans use of generative AI

#47

Post by fartfeatures »

jonathrg wrote: post #3

Very happy to see PostmarketOS take an uncompromising stance and also providing justification for it.

Feels pretty Luddite to me.

I remember when people were crying about how much power a google search uses. This is the same thing all over again and it is as pointless now as it was back then.

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/08/google-says-it-dropped-th...

> Google says it dropped the energy cost of AI queries by 33x in one year. The company claims that a text query now burns the equivalent of 9 seconds of TV.

Re: PostmarketOS in 2026-02: generic kernels, bans use of generative AI

#48

Post by egorfine »

kunai wrote: post #43
egorfine wrote: post #38

> Submitting contributions fully or in part created by generative AI tools to postmarketOS. So, autocomplete done by deterministic algorithms in IDEs are okay but autocomplete done by LLM algorithms - no, that's banned? Ok, surely everybody agrees with that, it's policy after all. How it is possible to distinguish between the two in the vast majority of cases where the hand written code and autocompleted code is byte…

> So, autocomplete done by deterministic algorithms in IDEs are okay but autocomplete done by LLM algorithms - no, that's banned? Ok, surely everybody agrees with that, it's policy after all. Because autocomplete still requires heavy user input and a SWE at the top of the decision making tree. You could argue that using Claude or Codex enables you to do the same thing, but there's no guarantee someone isn't vibecodin…

Fully agree with you on all points.

But again: how do we distinguish between manual code input and sophisticated autocomplete?

Re: PostmarketOS in 2026-02: generic kernels, bans use of generative AI

#49

Post by hu3 »

raincole wrote: post #46
hu3 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pointing out that their expectation of AI-free OS is pointless. Because AI-assisted code is most probably already present in devices they use. And I dare say that even for PostmarktOS: 1) There's no way they can prevent AI-assisted code to reach their codebase. 2) They will most probably change this policy in the future lest other forks/projects outpace them in terms of utility and they get reduced to a carriage…

The stance is not to 'prevent AI-assisted code to reach their codebase.' It's not like AI-assisted code is literally poisonous and their codebase dies if touched. The stance is to deter random vibe-coders trying to resume-max by submitting PRs to known open source projects. There are so many of them rn. Hopefully by making it clear (some of) them will realize doing that is just wasting their tokens.

I understand there's an avalanche of vibe slop PRs.

But to be clear their AI instance is as clear-cut as can be. Their instance IS INDEED to "prevent AI-assisted code to reach their codebase".

> The following is not allowed in postmarketOS:

> Submitting contributions fully or in part created by generative AI tools to postmarketOS.

source: https://docs.postmarketos.org/policies-and-processes/develop...

Re: PostmarketOS in 2026-02: generic kernels, bans use of generative AI

#50

Post by idiotsecant »

fartfeatures wrote: post #47
jonathrg wrote: post #3

Very happy to see PostmarketOS take an uncompromising stance and also providing justification for it.

Feels pretty Luddite to me. I remember when people were crying about how much power a google search uses. This is the same thing all over again and it is as pointless now as it was back then. https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/08/google-says-it-dropped-th... > Google says it dropped the energy cost of AI queries by 33x in one year. The company claims that a text query now burns the equivalent of 9 seconds of TV.

No, it's entirely justified when quality of code matters. They don't want a thousand gallons of unreviewable slop. They want a reasonable amount of code that can be sensibility reviewed.
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