Re: LLM usage in Debian -- ballot options comparison

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Hi Lucas and everybody else,

Quoting Lucas Nussbaum (2026-07-30 09:16:14)
> 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 o=
f 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 di=
vision
> > of our community or even some of our members leaving. That's tough stuf=
f.
> > Apparently, some in our community feel strong enough about this topic t=
hat 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 w=
ould not
> > feel *very* strongly (as in: badly) about that topic.
>=20
> 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.

my paragraph was meant in the context of the Debian related work we do right
now. I am not using LLMs to do anything Debian related and I fail to come up
with anything that my refusal to use LLMs could result in you feeling bad o=
ver
my work. Me not using LLMs likely does not make you feel bad. You using them
for tasks like your initial mail makes me feel bad. This is of course my own
problem and I have to deal with it somehow but that's what I meant when I t=
ried
to describe this asymmetry.

> 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?
>=20
> 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.
>=20
> That's why I've been (perhaps naively) trying to do with Proposal B.

I don't think you've been "naively" doing it. I think it's good that you ad=
ded
a ballot option including the things which are of value to you. And I also
think that your contribution to this topic has been constructive.

I also agree that even though I really, really dislike the way our society =
is
going with respect to its use of LLMs, I care about Debian so much that "so=
me"
allowed LLM use would be fine for me and would not make me leave the projec=
t.

Working together in a consensual way is maybe a key point here and I like t=
hat
your GR ballot includes point 4 about disclosure. That and other points of =
your
ballot option make it better for me than the status-quo where we do not have
the requirements which your ballot option presents and thus I'm likely going
to put it above NOTA.

I have strong feelings about LLMs but I am willing to make compromises. This
discussion (including your input) has challenged my understanding on this t=
opic
already and I have shifted my opinion on some areas. So thank you for your
input!

> 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.

In my opinion: please keep disclosing your use of LLMs. That is (and I feel=
 bad
having read this) *unless* you fear that disclosing this information would
subject you to harassment from others. I would trust anybody's judgement on
where to draw the line in a way that would make them feel more safe from
harassment.

> > Lucas, I'm not mad at you. I now know from your messages to the list wh=
at your
> > position is and I respect that. And I can understand that with that pos=
ition
> > 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 b=
ad
> > inside every time they see this kind of thing on our MLs (for reasons w=
hich are
> > out-of-scope of the topic about which I want to write about in this ema=
il).
>=20
> 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.
>=20
> So, is there a way to accomodate most of the needs of both camps?

Sorry, I explained myself poorly there. Your message was fine (for me). I l=
ike
that you disclose your use of genAI and your disclosure of your prompt.  I =
have
read your SPEC.md and you have clearly put a lot of work into this. I don't
want to belittle that work. Your SPEC.md has been useful to me for example
because of the 12 bullet points which I can use to rate my own understandin=
g of
each ballot entry. So what I would've preferred is, if you had not spent ti=
me
on writing this prompt and then send it to some LLM to generate HTML and
markdown pages. Your message itself was fine.

And here comes the part where I'm struggling to see a way forward to make "=
both
camps" happy. You like to work this way. If you cannot do your work for Deb=
ian
in that way anymore, I can see how doing work for Debian would be less fun =
for
you and that'd suck. I don't see a good way out where everybody "wins" right
now because unless the global landscape changes drastically, I fear I will
always cringe a little when a mail lands into my inbox starting with "I use=
d an
LLM to generate this and that".

I see you saw my "Kitten" example in the other mail. I used this example
because I think (hope!) that we can agree that killing baby kittens is real=
ly,
really bad and we should not be doing that. Going back to being more realis=
tic:
if I would now try to weigh costs versus benefits of use of genAI then on t=
he
one hand we have for the costs a long list containing items like: all the b=
ig
and powerful models being owned by billion dollar corporations, big enough =
to
sway politics, big enough to sway public opinion, that make the rich richer
(with a surprising number of rich people with clearly anti-democratic fasci=
st
view points), the poor poorer (no everybody can be an artist!), support the
climate crisis with data centers requiring more electricity than nation sta=
tes,
use and pollute water, requiring supercomputers to train (not something we =
do
as part of a source package build), scraping our web because suddenly
everything is free game (server admins hate this trick), making me want to =
buy
faster hardware because my browser has to solve anubis riddles on every web=
site
i use, oh no the hardware is now super expensive so you can only afford it =
if
you have enough cash around, the whole copyright dilemma, the whole
hallucination issue, the issue with inherent sexism and racism (why are the=
se
points so low on my list?), the problem that if the LLM is wrong I cannot "=
fix
it", pushing back on the idea of "free software needs free tools", the deep
fakes, the problems for my students with learning because the LLM just hands
them the answer (yes the smart ones will still be smart but many will just =
not
put the effort anymore) and so on...  Oh and there is also the small thing =
of
my hobby being replaced by a machine but that issue really pales in contras=
t to
the long list of *real* problems.

And on the list of benefits we have, very cynically speaking: it now was mu=
ch
easier to create a 17 kB HTML table.

Now you can go and you can challenge any of my points above. And yes, your =
HTML
table will not make the oceans boil or democracy fail. But the things we do=
 do
not happen in a vacuum. The things we do influence others and they normalize
how all of us (even outside Debian) do things going forward. The free softw=
are
movement also started small and see where we are now. I would not like this=
 to
become another thread where we discuss how local models are more ethical th=
an
claude/chatgpt (they are) or how things will be so much more efficient in t=
he
future (they probably will be). The point I'm trying to make is this:

Most of us are in a very, very privileged position. Many of us can work for
Debian because we either have secure jobs where we are paid to do this or
because we live a sheltered and financially secure enough life to do this in
our free time. Compared to most of us on this planet, we can count us as
*extremely* well off. And I understand how for probably all of us, creating
software is something very important to us because otherwise we wouldn't pu=
t so
much of our time into it. But at the end of the day: it's just software.  I=
t's
just an interesting sequence of zeroes and ones. Being able to produce this
sequence faster is a first-world-problem of such a high degree of privilege
that it pales against most of the issues I have with LLMs even if all of the
issues in my list above would only be half as bad as I think they are.

For myself this means that I rather "limit myself" and write software "slow=
ly"
or that I don't do some things at all. That way, I'm not part of the proble=
ms I
see and instead am part of the world that I want to live in.

Sorry Lucas that this long (and emotional) mail was now a direct reply to
yours. I *highly* respect your work and your technical expertise. Just to
affirm, I do not think that you acted in bad faith and I don't think that y=
our
messages were written badly. It is useful for me to read your messages.

Thanks!

cheers, josch

P.S.: Thank you for reading this far. I dread writing about topics this lar=
ge
and would like if my involvement in the discussion could be kept to a minim=
um.
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