Re: LLM usage in Debian -- ballot options comparison

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Hi Johannes,

On 30/07/26 at 07:48 +0200, Johannes Schauer Marin Rodrigues wrote:
> But I
> think it became clear from the other mega-thread that there are a lot of people
> with very strong feelings about this topic. In fact, their feelings are
> apparently so strong that they open the big can of worms that is a GR, we spend
> a *lot* of our time on very difficult discussions and we risk a hard division
> of our community or even some of our members leaving. That's tough stuff.
> Apparently, some in our community feel strong enough about this topic that they
> are willing to risk all of that and put so much trouble on their fellow DD's
> limited Debian time. Even if this whole LLM topic is fine for you, you probably
> see that this would not've been made into a GR if some of our friends would not
> feel *very* strongly (as in: badly) about that topic.

This paragraph works both ways:
Some of us are also convinced that AIs is fundamentally changing
software engineering, and want to use that technology in the context of
Debian, to the point that they would lack motivation to continue working
on Debian if it was not possible.

I think that the key question, that is not completely addressed so far,
is: can we find a middleground that allows pro-AI and anti-AI
contributors to continue working reasonably healthily together?

I am sure that many of us care more about Debian, than about their
personal absolute freedom to use AI the way they want, or about their
personal absolute freedom to never ever be exposed to AI outputs. So
maybe there's a way to build better ballot options that seek more
consensual ways of working together while accomodating some/most of the
needs of both camps.

That's why I've been (perhaps naively) trying to do with Proposal B.

For example, we have been discussing disclosure of AI use. Some
proposals require it, some only encourage it. But would it
be better for anti-AI contributors if we discouraged it, to avoid
putting emphasis on AI? On the technical level, I think that's a bad
idea, but maybe it's a good one on the social level.

> Lucas, I'm not mad at you. I now know from your messages to the list what your
> position is and I respect that. And I can understand that with that position
> toward AI/LLMs it felt okay for you to send this message. I still think that it
> lacked a bit of empathy towards people like, for example, me who feel bad
> inside every time they see this kind of thing on our MLs (for reasons which are
> out-of-scope of the topic about which I want to write about in this email).

I'm interested in understanding how you would have preferred this
message to be written. I completely hear the point about empathy, but
I'm really not sure that adding a paragraph in that direction would have
helped (also, I'm not sure adding adding such paragraphs in the preamble
of each AI-assisted contribution would be efficient on the long term).
My strategy was "disclose, factually, the use of AI as early as possible
so one can stop reading and avoid feeling tricked about reading AI
outputs", but I can see how it can feel harsh.

So, is there a way to accomodate most of the needs of both camps?

Lucas

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