Re: AGENTS.md and CLAUDE.md Are Concessions to Proprietary Services, Not Defenses Against Them

> Date: Tue, 04 Aug 2026 02:35:07 +0300
> From: Jean Louis <[email protected]>
> Cc: Lynn Winebarger <[email protected]>, Eli Zaretskii <[email protected]>, Jim
>  Porter <[email protected]>, emacs-devel <[email protected]>
> 
> On 2026-08-03 18:38, Sean Whitton wrote:
> > Lynn Winebarger [03/Aug 11:10am -04] wrote:
> >> What about users who are maintaining a private version of Emacs for 
> >> use
> >> internal to an organization?
> > 
> > They can delete the file.
> 
> The term "AGENTS" is created by Anthropic to support their proprietary 
> tooling. CLAUDE.md as well.  Never used Claude and I don't run Service 
> as a Software Substitute. I do run LLMs locally on my computer, those 
> that are not proprietary.
> 
> Placing such files in the GNU project gives namespace and advertising to 
> service as a software substitute. Who Does That Server Really Serve? - 
> GNU Project - Free Software Foundation:
> https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-serve.html

You are confused.  We are discussing the use of these files a a means
to prevent LLM-generated code from being inadvertently added to Emacs.
IOW, we are using the features of LLM agents against them, not for
them.  Thus, the above article has nothing to do with this discussion,
because we (and the GNU project in general) does not and cannot
control what our users do, we can only encourage or discourage certain
activities.  This one discourages LLM-generated code in our tree.

> Question is ethical: placing such files into GNU project like Emacs 
> would make it compatible to and usable with proprietary LLM services 
> like Claude, ChatGPT, etc.

No, it won't.  It will do the exact opposite.

> Even if AGENTS.md or CLAUDE.md has negative prompt, it is handshake with 
> the proprietary software and service as a software substitute.

By your logic, merely mentioning the names of these agents is already
a "crime".  But then we cannot even provide commit and push hooks to
prevent such code or log messages from entering our repository,
because they must mention these names as substrings, and that is
absurd.

Such absurd outcomes are always the result of applying the GNU
philosophy as a dogma, without really thinking about the issues.
Which is what you are calling us to do here (and in other cases).

> The GNU article asks: "If you had the free software, the data, and the 
> computer power, would you still use someone else's computer to do that 
> job?"
> 
> Apply that logic here: If you didn't have proprietary LLMs (Claude, 
> ChatGPT, etc.), would you ever need an AGENTS.md or CLAUDE.md file?

See above for the real answer.  You are approaching this issue
formally, looking at the words and not at what the sentences mean in
practice.

> The GNU Project does not need to make itself more convenient for them.

And we don't, quite the contrary.  Your opinions are mistaken and
based on a misunderstanding.