Re: LLM usage in Debian -- ballot options comparison

On Wed, 05 Aug 2026 10:37, Gerardo Ballabio <[email protected]> wrote:
>Didier 'OdyX' Raboud wrote:
>> Sure, it's _possible_ to run some LLMs locally, for some people, but let's face it; it's an enormous situational privilege to even be thinking about doing so for almost everyone.
>
>I'm not convinced that because some people cannot afford it, we should
>forbid it even for those who can. That sounds like "nobody should have
>well paid jobs because there are poor people" or "nobody should own a
>nice house because there are people living in shelters". The discourse
>about "privilege" almost always develops into wanting to cut down
>privileged people. It should be the contrary: we should want more
>people to become privileged. Aiming at equality by making everybody's
>lives worse is what communism has always been doing, and it has never
>worked.
>

This is a rather false equivalence IMO. Housing is very different from a 
technology such as LLMs, and has nothing to do with the point OdyX 
raised.
A possible new contributor to Debian might only one computing device 
(let's assume a run-of-the mill laptop with onboard graphics).

While this is perfectly fine for daily tasks, running GPU-intense LLMs 
on there is simply out out the question. First of all, GPUs are not 
available right now at all, same for any kind of RAM.
.
Second, you are only able to run a LLM locally now if you *already* own 
a reasonably powered device / hardware to do so, which, lets face it, is 
is clear indicator that you would be privileged to some degree.

Society as a whole should indeed aim to have all people have their basic 
needs met. LLMs are totally detrimental to that, since they only allow 
the people already privileged (to some degree) run them locally. As I 
outline earlier in the thread, their training consumes a truly 
staggering amount of resources. If anything, they increase inequality.

Furthermore, most available LLMs now cost money. If you are privileged 
enough, spending some money on that might be pocket change for you; 
however I would argue most people will spend the same money to get 
their basic needs met.

If we want to keep Debian going, we need more contributors, and not 
place any unnecessary barriers up for new ones.

Expecting them to have a high-powered device is delusional, and will 
keep out a lot of them. 

Right now, I do pretty much all of my Debian work on a device with a CPU 
that was released in 2021; this is still fairly recent though. Many 
excellent people in the broader free software community I met are 
running some ancient thinkpad, and that's fine. It is the universal 
operation system, after all.


best,