Re: LLM usage in Debian -- ballot options comparison

On 05.08.26 22:45, Matthias Geiger wrote:
> If we want to keep Debian going, we need more contributors, and not 
> place any unnecessary barriers up for new ones. 

Does anybody plan to *force* new users to use LLMs? No? Then where's the 
barrier?

Yes, packaging (and coding in general) is more "manual" work for people 
who cannot afford large-enough-LLM access, but (a) I expect that factor 
to shrink in the future (a2) we should be able to find sponsors to 
donate LLM tokens to Debian, (b) money *already* speeds up our work: one 
developer might own a computer that can e.g. load a multi-GByte crash 
dump into RAM and compile a new kernel in five minutes, while the other 
can only afford one that swaps like crazy and needs two hours for the 
same task. What, pray tell, are we going to do about that injustice?!?

IMHO it's perfectly OK if (c) you yourself don't want to use LLMs and 
don't want to deal with their output and their resource usage and 
whatnot, but Debian is about free software. It's not about usage 
restrictions or environmental concerns and whatnot: while we should of 
course be conscientious about that, we don't force our users and/or our 
developers to adhere to rigid environmentalism. We shouldn't force them 
to adhere to rigid anti-LLM-ism either.

-- 
-- regards
-- 
-- Matthias Urlichs

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