Void Linux Maintainer Orphans 100 Packages over AI Policy Dispute

Posted by Bender 4 hours ago

Comments

Comment by jfultz 1 hour ago

Zero-tolerance no-AI policies are tiresome. I get why people have concerns. No PR reviewer wants to review drek the submitter him/herself doesn't understand. And LLMs have been a disproportionate source for such drek. But the actual problem they're trying to solve should be low-quality submissions, rather than spending energy fulfilling some notion of AI-free purity.

The linked issue raised the complaint that a bit of text as a "wall of text" (implication, I guess, too many words, too little meaning). Maybe it was or wasn't. But being generated by an LLM doesn't make it a wall of text, and being written by a human doesn't make it not a wall (speaking as somebody who has been fairly accused at times of generating 100% human-made walls of text).

Comment by vouaobrasil 1 hour ago

No because some people are against AI for reasons other than just slop. Some people actually find it revolting that it uses so much energy and that it encourages deskilling in many. AI in my view is antithetical to human creativity and I try very hard to avoid software projects that use AI, whenever possible. And I try to only promote software that is AI-free.

Comment by collingreen 50 minutes ago

Don't forget ethical concerns about using things that only exist because of boatloads of criminal behavior.

Some people are tired of situations where 14 year olds get hounded for years for downloading music but altman/amodei/musk/zuck get billions and zero consequences for stealing more copyrighted content than any individual ever could in a lifetime.

Comment by nijave 3 hours ago

Seems fine to me. Maintainer wants to use AI and community bans many AI uses so maintainer leaves.

As AI bans go, this one doesn't seem too stringent if you disclose AI and actually check what it's doing.

Comment by bastawhiz 2 hours ago

That doesn't seem to be the case.

> All contributions are expected to be made by humans. AI tools may be used for research and learning, but all content in contributions must originate from and be understood by the contributor. This includes code, documentation, issues, security reports, pull request descriptions, and comments in all Void Linux community spaces.

This reads as though you can't use an LLM to write any code at all.

Comment by isityettime 2 hours ago

Sure you can. You could use an LLM to write a prototype or test cases, satisfy yourself that it works, then reimplement it by examining the generated code and deciding on your own implementation, and typing it out. You'd have to replace or throw out any LLM-generated test cases and other LLM-generated scaffolding, too, of course.

So you can use LLMs to write lots of code. It just can't be the code that you finally submit as the work you own and maintain. That might be a blunt instrument but it does seem likely to help ensure that compliant maintainers retain a (historically, at least) normal level of connection to their code regardless of what tools they use during development. I can imagine some developers who particularly care about the quality of some project choosing to impose this exact same discipline on themselves, even if for their dayjob or other personal projects they almost exclusively use LLM-generated code.

Maybe that's annoying, maybe it slows down development of the project, and it's fair for a maintainer to decide that's not how they want to work. But it's not the same as banning the use of LLMs to write code in connection with the project.

Comment by bastawhiz 1 hour ago

The comment I replied to said this:

> As AI bans go, this one doesn't seem too stringent if you disclose AI and actually check what it's doing.

I'm not arguing for or against the policy, but the policy as-written reads to me a complete and total ban on the submission of any and all generated text, which is not what that commenter suggested. I'm not sure you could possibly make it more stringent without getting into the territory of thought police.

Comment by nijave 2 hours ago

Probably need a lawyer to weigh in but "originate from and be understood by a contributor" sounds like "write a prompt". The machine isn't sentient and doesn't just decide to generate code one day.

Maybe that's not what the authors of the policy intended but that's how it reads imo

Comment by nicce 1 hour ago

I feel like people are just taking the easy shortcut when making these policies and banning AI completely. With AI, it is very easy to make sloppy code where nobody didn't put much thought on it. But AI can be really useful if you have the patience to use it incrementally and not by just asking it to one shot something.

Since on average the people don't have patience and don't act with responsibility, spaghetti gets everywhere. It may sound tempting to ban the AI-generated code, but the issue is not the AI, but the lack of responsibility and potentially the the lack of experience of the developers whom are contributing with this spaghetti slop.

The judgment should go for the end result and the author is responsible if the code is bad. Add exponential back-off to contributions if they are bad.

It is also possible to brute-force maintainers with too many things to review, but you can also limit the lines of code they can contribute, unless they have some sort of reputation.

Banning the AI just means that everyone is using it, but nobody is saying it aloud. Since it saves so much time when used correctly.

Comment by jezek2 1 hour ago

I agree, the policy should be to not allow low quality submissions and have clear copyright status. There are some nuances that needs to be addressed though.

With LLMs it's too easy to replicate implementation of algorithm that is copyrighted, with manual coding it's more deliberate. Sometimes you can't really separate the algorithm from the implementation. So a maintainer needs to check the origin of any algorithm used.

The copyright status for non-algorithm code is quite straightforward and it's often a non-copyrightable code anyway (boilerplate, configuration, obvious steps, etc.). The generated code by LLM has no human author therefore it is public domain, there is no problem of incorporating of public domain code. Any copyrigtable modifications are made by the user of the LLM.

The biggest problem is the amount of low effort contributions caused by AI usage. But one could just reject it on being of low effort.

There is no need to specifically target AI in the policy, with one exception that is unique to LLM contributions: people not understanding anything about the produced code at all. One couldn't trust anything from such contributor.

Comment by vouaobrasil 1 hour ago

> Banning the AI just means that everyone is using it, but nobody is saying it aloud. Since it saves so much time when used correctly.

Not exactly. It also attracts developers who are against AI philosophically. What I've actually seen is that there are a sizable number of people who are against AI and want a place for their code. You're also wrong that AI isn't the problem: it is. AI is the problem because it's too addictive and easy to use, and we're not rational creatures but instinctive.

Personally, I would only contribute to projects that have a complete AI-free policy. I hate AI and think it's a detriment to the human race.

Comment by jezek2 47 minutes ago

To me AI seems to be similar to drugs. It can be used responsibly (eg. medical use), some users are total junkies. There are huge social/economical impacts. It has similar anti stances, even proposing legislative bans (should we relive the prohibition again?). It's interesting to observe it in this context.

Comment by redleader55 2 hours ago

Does that mean that Void will drop the Linux part? Linus very publicly announced they welcome AI submissions.

Seems like a very dumb hill to die on in 2026

Comment by wormius 2 hours ago

I am sure this is referring to the userspace contribs, not the kernel itself, since the userspace stuff is really what makes the distro a distro (unless it's running custom kernels, which it would have to use a backport from pre-AI code, or something)...

That said if they extended to kernel-space, it seems like NetBSD would be the other *nix like alternative (Google's AI summary says they're the only BSD to take a strict no-ai stance).

Or Gnu HURD.