Re: GR: Ban LLM contributions from Debian

gregor herrmann <[email protected]> Thu, 23 Jul 2026 01:10:23 +0200
Newsgroups	gmane.linux.debian.devel.vote
Message-ID	<[email protected]>
On Thu, 23 Jul 2026 00:03:35 +0200, Matthias Geiger wrote:

>>>What follows is a GR proposal to ban LLM contributions.
>>This text looks quite garbled, both in my MUA and on 
>><https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2026/07/msg00000.html>.
>>Could you please post it again in a readable way?
>Hi,
>right, sorry.
>Wrapped at 80 chars below :)

Thanks for your effort, but his doesn't really look better.

Cf. <https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2026/07/msg00023.html> or 
some parts quoted below.

>Rationale
>===========
>
>Debian has a well-earned reputation for stability. This stability is 
>crucial to Debian's position in the free software ecosystem. It is our 
>belief that widespread LLM usage comes from the "move fast, and break 
>things" attitude that, while common in many parts of this industry, is 
>contrary to what makes Debian Debian, and is inappropriate for Debian 
>contributors.
>
>In practical terms, LLM usage raises the following concerns:
>
>1. Copyright  	LLM output has very unclear legal status: it may be 
>possible to 	copyright on its own merits, or not; it may be affected 
>by all of 	the licenses and copyrights in the training data, or not. 
>Debian 	Policy and the DFSG require absolute clarity for licensing and 
>	copyright[1][2]. Software and other contributions written 
>	conventionally by humans with unclear copyright or license status 
>	are not allowed in Debian;
>   LLM output should not have a special exception to this.
>    2. Quality     LLM output has many well-known problems with 
>accuracy.[3][4][5]
>	A LLM can never "know" if its output is correct since it merely 
>	produces syntactically likely combinations of the training data.
>   In some environments this is good enough. In Debian, it is not.
>	For instance, in packaging, each Debian source package is unique. 
>	Since packaging syntax and best practices have changed over time, a 
>	LLM-produced package will have a mixture of contents spanning the 
>	age of the archive, with watch files that do not work, overrides out 
>	of context, imaginary copyright, and will generally be unfit for 
>	upload. A seasoned Debian contributor with packaging expertise may 
>	find some limited usefulness here, but a new contributor cannot, and 
>	would not know how to fix it. These same quality and accuracy 
>	concerns apply clearly to all of the areas listed in the scope of 
>	this proposal above.
>   If Debian were a closed organization comprising only domain experts
>	who never leave, this might not be an issue; however,
>        3. Community  	Debian is a project that is more than just 
>code: it is a community 	built on shared interests in free software 
>and solving technical 	problems. Debian intentionally grows this 
>community through many 	means, and new contributors are always 
>encouraged to join. Allowing 	LLM contributions breaks this. New 
>contributors submitting LLM 	output for review places an unnecessary 
>strain on the reviewer, 	which can lead to burnout. Furthermore, 
>LLM-dependent new 	contributors do not actually learn and understand 
>the details of 	Debian packaging or processes, so they cannot come to 
>replace a 	former burned out DD.

…


Cheers,
gregor

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