Debian Decides: Contributors Can Use Generative AI 'Responsibly' (debian.org)
- Reference: 0185286684
- News link: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/26/08/29/2223248/debian-decides-contributors-can-use-generative-ai-responsibly
- Source link: https://www.debian.org/vote/2026/vote_002#texte
"The responsibility for every contribution rests with the contributor who submits it, who remains accountable for its technical quality, legal acceptability, and suitability for inclusion in Debian."
> "We recognize that such tools can substantially improve the productivity of contributors when used responsibly, allowing volunteers to spend more of their limited time on work that requires technical expertise, judgment, review, and collaboration.
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> The Debian Project nevertheless expects that all contributions submitted to Debian, regardless of how and with which tools they were produced, satisfy the same standards of quality, correctness, maintainability, and legal compliance. The use of a generative AI tool does not diminish the contributor's responsibility for the work they submit. Contributors are expected to understand, review, test, and, where appropriate, modify AI-assisted output before incorporating it into Debian. Blindly accepting or uploading AI-generated material without appropriate human review is inconsistent with Debian's established development practices.
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> We enourage our contributors to disclose whether a contribution was made with AI assitance, but do not require them to do so.
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> Debian acknowledges that the legal status of material produced by generative AI systems remains the subject of ongoing discussion in many jurisdictions, including questions relating to copyright... The Project does not seek to resolve these unsettled legal questions through this General Resolution, nor does it adopt a position on whether AI-generated output is, in whole or in part, copyrightable or derived from copyrighted works. Instead, Debian continues to rely on the judgment and responsibility of its individual contributors. Project members are expected to exercise appropriate care when using generative AI tools, to consider the provenance and licensing implications of material they contribute, and to avoid introducing content whose legal status they cannot reasonably justify. Existing Debian policies governing licensing, copyright, software freedom, and the acceptance of contributions continue to apply irrespective of the tools used to produce those contributions.
It also cautions contributors to keep keys, credentials, and embargoed security reports from leaking to third-party AI services.
But discussion continues on Debian's mailing list. "I regret the loss of contributors," [3]wrote the author of the winning proposition (while acknowledging it would have happened with either option winning). "It is just too early to take a final decision on the matter. Let's revisit this in two years or so, and let this mess of a GR be a warning for our future selves."
Other comments from the mailing list:
"On a very personal note, I regret that the winning option does not acknowledge all the legitimate concerns around AI: environmental impact, copyright and licensing uncertainty, the health of Free Software communities, and the strain of aggressive scraping on the open web... [W]e have a lot of work ahead of us to act as a community and understand how we can continue to accommodate the very large minority that would have preferred to ban or discourage AI.
"I also think that our next discussion should distinguish between locally running LLMs and cloud LLMs. The way things are going, locally running LLMs will be an alternative, and then you can much better control what was the training data and the Freeness of the thing."
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader [4]Robbat2 for sharing the news.
[1] https://linux.slashdot.org/story/26/08/23/0539230/debian-is-voting-on-whether-to-allow-ai-assisted-contributions
[2] https://www.debian.org/vote/2026/vote_002#texte
[3] https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2026/08/msg00365.html
[4] https://www.slashdot.org/~Robbat2
They should have used the GCC decision (Score:2)
The GCC folks have obviously a far better understanding of the problem than the Debian leadership.
Re: (Score:2)
> The GCC folks have obviously a far better understanding of the problem than the Debian leadership.
"For the time being, the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) policy is to decline any legally significant contributions which include LLM-generated content or are derived from LLM-generated content. "
Linus Torvals and Greg K-H are using AI in the Linux Kernel and introducing LLM generated code in the Kernel (mostly pathces) NOW .
I'd venture the guess that the Kernel is "Legally Significant" from Debian's point of view.
What is Debian to do if the adopt the same approach as GCC? Reject the Linux Kernel due to the pr
Re: (Score:2)
All previous versions of the Linux kernel are available. Nothing stops any distro project from freezing the version they include. In fact, this has been done many times before, since modern Linux is a "bloated piece of crap" (TM) for some people's purposes.
Re: (Score:2)
> All previous versions of the Linux kernel are available. Nothing stops any distro project from freezing the version they include. In fact, this has been done many times before, since modern Linux is a "bloated piece of crap" (TM) for some people's purposes.
Tell us how that works for your favourite "non-AI" distro in 2040, when the last non-AI SLTS Kernel (6.12) has been going without any patches for 4 years.
Re: (Score:2)
> All previous versions of the Linux kernel are available. Nothing stops any distro project from freezing the version they include. In fact, this has been done many times before, since modern Linux is a "bloated piece of crap" (TM) for some people's purposes.
Oh, wait, is even worse, because LTS and SLTS kernels will receive AI patches. You will have to fork the last Non-AI kernel, and develop all the patches yourself, without ever again looking at the Linux mainline code, as some of that may have AI patches in it... Also, if you want that kernel to suuport new hardware, you will have to write the changes yourself...
Good luck with that.
Local models are an option NOW. (Score:2)
It turns out machines are pretty good at writing instructions for hardware resembling themselves, as long as *you* can do a good job of conveying what you actually want to accomplish. If I wanted a coding assistant, I'd be looking at the latest Qwen 27B, they just seem to keep getting better at coding even while other benchmarks are kinda hitting plateaus.
Re: (Score:2)
The problem with that is that most people writing code do not have a good idea what is all required on a more abstract level. And hence using coding assistants they will overlook stuff they would not have coding directly. This is, incidentally, not a new situation. When I did my CS studies some 35 years ago, the 5GL project had just completely failed. The idea was to have the coder only write a spec in constraint logic and have the code synthesized by software. Turns out, writing a spec for code is much har
Re: (Score:1)
Cool story bro.
This article is about Debian allowing the use of genAI for code incorporated into the Debian repos despite the international legal uncertainty, the environmental impacts, and the lack of quality that's largely being ignored solely because software in general has seen a collapse in quality since the early 2010s.
It isn't about your slopware habits.
I'm curious to know whether the people in charge of Debian have a back-up plan if Debian turns out to violate copyright in countries across the world