Re: Results for LLM usage in Debian

On Sat, 29 Aug 2026 at 09:48, Lucas Nussbaum <[email protected]> wrote:
> 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.

I feel that the real issues should not be swiped under the rug.

IMHO it would be pretty uncontroversial for Debian to admonish people
or companies that still conduct aggressive web scraping campaigns and
ignore indicators like robots.txt , IMHO it would be perfectly within
the powers of the DPL in coordination with DSA would could provide
real-life data from logs and such.

Health of Free Software communities is, in the end, in our hands. It
will be what we make of it. Having some clarity should help.

And the environmental impact, IMHO it is past time that Debian has an
explicitl environmental sustainability stance in the context of
recognised partners and resources that Debian uses (either paid or
donated in kind). Regardless of it is AI or web hosting or file
storage and distribution or CI infrastructure - it is all using data
centers with their power and cooling. It should not be too hard to
have a broad consensus on what we, as a project, see as a recommended
sustainability target for our partners. Figuring what parts or that
should be mandatory for any company to be recognised as a sustainable
partner of Debian might be a bit harder. Some criteria might need to
be set for a future date, for example. I will try to come up with some
proposal and I am sure many others will have ideas as well, but first
lets have at least September to cool down from these discussions.

But IMHO that is a discussion that is worth having. For Debian. For
environment. And for other participants in wider IT economy.

Unlike the copyright question. There IMHO we do not have much useful
to contribute at this time. Let the courts run their course. When that
process is completed, there might be legislative changes demanded from
the politicians. At *that* point it *might* necessary to validate that
these changes are compatible with free software needs. Before that all
we would be doing would be just pure bikeshedding in hypotehtical
clouds.