Debian polls its developers on AI: permit or ban?(www.theregister.com)
15 pointsby lproven2 hours ago3 comments
  • ivandenysov37 minutes ago
    > Debian is a large and complicated project: the release announcement for version 13 says it has 69,830 packages, which take a total of 403 GB of disk, and contain 1,463,291,186 lines of code. So, suitably, it is a large and complex poll.

    Surely these are not just Debian-owned packages. Whatever Debian decides won’t apply to packages not owned by Debian

    • roryirvine17 minutes ago
      Debian is huge - that's why so many other distros use it as a base!

      So, yes, all those packages are maintained either by an individual Debian Developer or a team of them.

      There are third party repos, but they're (currently) neither as widespread nor as commonly-used as those for other major distros. This vote won't affect them, and you might potentially expect to see their use grow if one of the harsher options in this GR were to pass.

  • lproven2 hours ago
    Posting this because I want people to vote -- and ideally vote for a total ban.
    • tescreal9 minutes ago
      I'm curious about enforcement. Are they going to ban packages with a whiff of llm? If so, how will they reliably audit?
    • colesantiagoan hour ago
      > and ideally vote for a total ban.

      If a total ban were to happen, wouldn't that make Debian a target for hackers who can use LLMs to find vulnerabilities?

      How would Debian keep up with the influx of AI assisted 0 days?

  • m4rtink19 minutes ago
    Ban.