Live data from Hacker News

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

postmarketos.org

61–70 of 116 posts

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

#61
post #45

> 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.

Alright, let's see Codex 5.3 create a competitor to postmarketOS (without just copying the homework of other devs). If you believe in the technology so much, put it to the test, see what it can really do.

Reminds me how one year ago people were saying "sure, GPT-4o can write a function, but try to make it write a whole application"

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

#63
This sounds impractical and like they will probably not keep the ban

AI use should be able to accelerate the development of ports on currently unsupported or undersupported devices which would directly support the project

I guess I wouldn't worry about the policy, they will probably naturally switch it if / when AI becomes more useful in practice

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

#64
post #2

[flagged]

Weird stance to take. I can understand "untested AI-genned code is bad, and thus anything that reeks of AI is going to be scrutinized" - especially given that PostmarketOS deals a lot with kernel drivers for hardware. Notoriously low error margins. But they just had to go out of their way and make it ideological rather than pragmatic.

The licensure of the code generated by LLMs is not a settled matter in all jurisdictions; this is a very valid pragmatic concern they address.

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

#65
post #45

> 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.

Alright, let's see Codex 5.3 create a competitor to postmarketOS (without just copying the homework of other devs). If you believe in the technology so much, put it to the test, see what it can really do.

Fun that you had to caveat it with some hand wavy homework bull. Gives you a nice get out of jail free clause when inevitably an AI writes an OS.

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

#66
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

[flagged]

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

#67
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.

The audacity to call an organisation that works on making mobile phones and other small PCs work with free software Luddite is impressive.

That's like calling a person going for seconds a conservative (in the USA political sense).

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

#68
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

[flagged]

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

#69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alright, let's see Codex 5.3 create a competitor to postmarketOS (without just copying the homework of other devs). If you believe in the technology so much, put it to the test, see what it can really do.

Reminds me how one year ago people were saying "sure, GPT-4o can write a function, but try to make it write a whole application"

Sure, AI has developed quickly, but let's see it take on a real engineering challenge, rather than regurgitating boilerplate code.

Writing device drivers from incomplete specs is much harder than "writing a whole application" where the specs are clearly defined and there's a lot more example code to reference. If you believe in AI so much, and believe that it's unreasonable for postmarketOS to not want to use it, put it to the test, prove the doubters wrong, what have you got to lose?

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

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the famously useless PosmarketOS. Why don't you share the list of very useful things you created instead, mono442?

Never ask a woman her age or a vibe coder to show you an useful program they've written.

[flagged]
Post reply on HN