Re: GR: Ban LLM contributions from Debian

Pierre-Elliott Bécue <[email protected]> Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:40:59 +0200
Newsgroups	gmane.linux.debian.devel.vote
Message-ID	<[email protected]>
Based on the feedback I got:

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Accept AI contributions for Debian specific work
================================================

Debian as a project does not endorse or recommend the use of generative
AI assistants for software development, as it raises multiple concerns
about ethics, legality, copyright, etc.

Nevertheless, Debian acknowledges that these practices are already in
use and here to stay. Rather than banning their use, which seems
counter-productive and unenforceable, the project chooses to place
responsibility on contributors and therefore defines the following
guidelines.

*These apply exclusively to code and work done specifically for the
Debian project (Debian websites, applications, resources, packages,
etc.)*. They do not apply to any upstream work. In what follows, "work"
refers to the contributions done specifically for the Debian project.

 - All code and work assisted by a generative AI agent or tool must
   comply with the DFSG.
 - The submitter is solely responsible for the submitted work and:
   + they sufficiently evaluated and properly understand the work they
     intend to submit, and are able to explain and defend it;
   + they put any potential Signed-off-by tag and GPG signatures on the
     contributions they send to the Debian infrastructure (package,
     commit, mail, …) themselves;
   + any content uploaded that would end up in production on Debian
     infrastructure (main git branch, package upload) has been submitted
     by them explicitely.
 - Work assisted by a generative AI agent or tool should be marked as
   such in the adapted place (commit message, changelog, …). Some
   lightweight generative tools, such as tab-completion in Copilot, may
   be used without the contributor realising they rely on generative AI
   models; we therefore trust submitters to assess when this rule
   applies. When in doubt, add such marking;
 - No cloud-based AI shall be used when the data transmitted could
   either be sensitive to the project (personal data, information under
   embargo, …) or not public (debian-private discussions, …).

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