Gentoo Linux Plans Migration from GitHub Over 'Attempts to Force Copilot Usage for Our Repositories' (gentoo.org)
- Reference: 0180564102
- News link: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/26/01/11/1926219/gentoo-linux-plans-migration-from-github-over-attempts-to-force-copilot-usage-for-our-repositories
- Source link: https://www.gentoo.org/news/2026/01/05/new-year.html
> Mostly because of the continuous attempts to force Copilot usage for our repositories, Gentoo currently considers and plans the migration of our repository mirrors and pull request contributions to [2]Codeberg . Codeberg is a site based on Forgejo, maintained by a non-profit organization, and located in Berlin, Germany. Gentoo continues to host its own primary git, bugs, etc infrastructure and has no plans to change that...
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> We now publish weekly Gentoo images for Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), based on the amd64 stages, [3]see our mirrors . While these images are not present in the Microsoft store yet, that's something we intend to fix soon...
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> Given the unfortunate fracturing of the GnuPG / OpenPGP / LibrePGP ecosystem due to competing standards, we now provide an [4]alternatives [5]mechanism to [6]choose the system gpg provider and ease compatibility testing...
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> We have added a bootstrap path for Rust from C++ using [7]Mutabah's Rust compiler mrustc , which alleviates the need for pre-built binaries and makes it significantly easier to support more configurations. Similarly, Ada and D support in gcc now have clean bootstrap paths, which makes enabling these in the compiler as easy as switching the useflags on gcc and running emerge.
Other interesting statistics for the year:
Gentoo currently consists of 31,663 ebuilds for 19,174 different packages.
For amd64 (x86-64), there are 89 GBytes of binary packages available on the mirrors.
Gentoo each week builds 154 distinct installation stages for different processor architectures and system configurations, with an overwhelming part of these fully up-to-date.
The number of commits to the main ::gentoo repository has remained at an overall high level in 2025, with a slight decrease from 123,942 to 112,927.
The number of commits by external contributors was 9,396, now across 377 unique external authors.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader [8]Heraklit for sharing the 2025 retrospective.
[1] https://www.gentoo.org/news/2026/01/05/new-year.html
[2] https://codeberg.org/
[3] https://distfiles.gentoo.org/releases/amd64/autobuilds/current-stage4-amd64-wsl-systemd/
[4] https://freepg.org/
[5] https://gitlab.com/sequoia-pgp/sequoia-chameleon-gnupg#sequoias-reimplementation-of-the-gnupg-interface
[6] https://gnupg.org/
[7] https://github.com/thepowersgang/mrustc
[8] https://www.slashdot.org/~Heraklit
Re: (Score:1)
It's owned by Microsoft and Copilot actually means "Copilot AI".
It's sad how little the of the old tech ./ remains.
Re: (Score:2)
>> It's owned by Microsoft and Copilot actually means "Copilot AI".
> OK. So what? That doesn't answer the question. How can Microsoft "force Copilot usage for our repositories"?
For example, automated AI "review" of pull requests, making all sorts of nonsensical suggestions.
Re: (Score:2)
Tell it no or just ignore it?
Re: (Score:2)
> Tell it no or just ignore it?
You can't globally switch it off for a repo. And short of telling all our users preemptively to ignore it...
Re: (Score:3)
Pretty simple really. You integrate it irrevocably into the commit process. Make a pull request? Copilot is going to have a look at it. Maybe even modify it. Put it in the toolchain anywhere you like, give no one an option to opt out. Done.
Which, you know, is just another way to steal training data to put coders out of work (it won't) and a way to fuck up someone's pull request if it actually does anything other than store it and analyze it. LLMs are all about theft of labor and then not even crediting it,
Re: (Score:2)
So, I was going to concentrate on specifics, but then I realized that the main answer is "in ways that none of us could even dream of". Where companies like Google aspire to be truly evil, Microsoft has been doing it for years and has more experience than any other in the field. Firstly, they can just inject issues from copilot directly into your issue tracker: [1]it's worth reading this issue to get some taste [github.com].
If you use a Microsoft product, Microsoft will just install CoPilot into it. In fact there are alre
[1] https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/159749
This is why AI will inevitably consolidate (Score:3)
Into the hands of a few players. Microsoft owning GitHub gives them access to a bunch of code and discussion about that code that otherwise wouldn't exist anywhere else. When stack overflow completely finishes dying and AI bots can no longer be trained from that repository Microsoft is the only company that's going to have a repository suitable for training.
Basically whoever controls the major platforms gets to control the training data needed to keep AI functional. Similarly Facebook and Twitter and Reddit are the only platforms large enough to provide enough training data for things like images and text.
This means that we're going to have monopolies for the AI tech of llms. And those basically nothing to stop that.
It makes sense for players like Ubuntu to get out of that ecosystem so that their work isn't being used to help that process of monopolization and consolidation along.
Honestly if it wasn't from Monopoly Linux on the desktop would have happened 20 years ago when netbooks took off. If we have proper antitrust law enforcement then when that guy from Asus or Acer I forget which did that drunken rant about how Microsoft shut down their Linux netbooks there would have been an investigation and Microsoft would have been broken up then and there.
But voters have different priorities than antitrust law enforcement so here we are.
Why no own infrastructure? (Score:3)
git performs best when compiles with -funroll-loops.
Re: (Score:2)
Because git still doesn't have proper pull request support.
What took Gentoo so long? (Score:5, Insightful)
They really should have moved off GitHub already when Microslop acquired it. (I for one moved the few repositories I had published on github to gitlab.)
Microslop was and still is an enemy of every free operating system, no matter how much chalk their representatives use when they speak. Their "Linux is cancer"-adverts from back then were not just a glitch, they pretty much sum up how Microslop sees Linux.
That "Copilot" force feeding is just another cherry on their existing evil cake.
Context: Gentoo prohibits LLM-assisted contrbtions (Score:4, Informative)
> It is expressly forbidden to contribute to Gentoo any content that has been created with the assistance of Natural Language Processing artificial intelligence tools. This motion can be revisited, should a case been made over such a tool that does not pose copyright, ethical and quality concerns. [1]https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/P... [gentoo.org]
[1] https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:Council/AI_policy
Re: (Score:3)
The hell are you talking about? Do you even know what natural language processing is? It's a specific way of parsing a prompt that allows for unstructured language use. i.e.: No keywords, no formal syntax, enormous general dictionary. You don't use booleans. You don't use other logic operands. You just say it as you would to a person and it "understands" (spoiler alert: LLMs don't). Natural language prompting has been a unicorn/white whale/Holy Grail for decades, just like AGI.
Now that we've had our CS 101