hi Holger, I share your concerns, but the planet is destroyed by capitalism, of which LLMs are just one (currently, gigantic) expression. I think that you'd agree that it'd not make much sense to have a GR to condemn capitalism, and I honestly wonder what is the point of one to condemn LLMs without any caveats.
I'm *very* worried about the societal externalities [0] and the nth-degree
technical and community building implications of LLMs, and at the same time I
can't ignore that LLM assistance in analysing and understanding code is often
amazing [1]
on that basis, and in the hope that the Debian community won't be reduced to
either LLM haters or enthusiasts, I support the "Debian is created by humans"
option, which IMHO takes a pragmatic approach and acknowledges societal
exernalities (without making them the whole point).
I expect a rebuttal to this email along the lines of "what is the point of being
pragmatic if there'll be no planet to live in" to which my response is: the rate
at which the planet is destroyed is very much orthogonal to what Debian decides
on LLMs, and we should prioritize the viability of the project (by avoiding
extreme positions) over moral positions with negligible effect
thanks,
serafi (speaking only for myself)
ps. not specific to your email here, but I'd also like to take this
oportunity to remind everyone of
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robustness_principle
[0] I might have missed it but I've not seen education mentioned yet; teachers
around me only have horror stories on the subject
[1] I'm much more skeptical about code generation (besides highly mechanical
changes): even "AI evangelists" have much reduced their claims about
sustained dev velocity
On Wed Aug 12, 2026 at 5:12 PM CEST, Holger Levsen wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm proposing the following ballot option for
> https://www.debian.org/vote/2026/vote_002
> and thus I'm searching seconds for it.
>
> (And yes, I'm well aware that this text condemns LLM usage and yet
> acknowledges
> it... similar to many of us condemning the effects of using planes or cars
> while
> occasionaly doing so ourselves.)
>
>
>
> ---- start ballot proposal ----
>
> title: LLM usage accellerates the destruction of our ecosystem (planet earth)
> and that is a deal-breaker
>
>
>
> Using its power under Constitution section 4.1(5), the Project issues the
> following statement describing its current position regarding the use of LLM
> (Large Language Models) within Debian.
>
> We don't have a concern with the LLM _technology_ as such: it's just maths and
> enough training material, which outputs a very large set of numbers that we
> can
> use to infer new material from existing material. But we cannot talk about the
> LLM technology without talking about who is pushing for its usage, who is
> doing
> the training and how, what effect those have on our limited resources, and
> what
> are the economical and political motives of these.
>
> Foremost we don't understand how anyone can agree that global LLM usage
> accellerates the destruction of our ecosystem, planet earth, and not feel like
> that is a deal-breaker.
>
> To often the only response we've seen to this point was that other activities
> are also bad (some even worse) for the climate. How is this even an argument?
> The planet is burning, we should try to stop that as much and as fast as we
> can!
> If others aren't stopping, isn't that even more reason to compensate for their
> irresponsible actions?
>
> And while we're on that point: All of our users live on this planet, so
> protecting this planet is a matter of life and death for all of us. In other
> words, caring about something as big as climate change during our Debian work
> is
> self evident.
>
> Debian recognizes that LLM *also* raise significant ethical, legal, technical,
> and social concerns. These include questions relating to copyright and
> licensing, privacy, the provenance and quality of generated material, the
> health
> of Free Software communities, and the long-term consequences of widespread
> reliance on LLM-generated content.
>
> That said, we would like to emphasize that we condemn LLM (resource) usage but
> not LLM users. Fight the game, but not the players.
>
> We also acknowledge that LLM usage can be hard if not impossible to detect and
> that Debian as a distribution cannot really impose LLM policies on other
> projects we package and distribute. Therefore this text is just a position
> statement. This said however, we appreciate the disclosure of LLM usage.
>
> Accordingly, Debian encourages contributors to avoid the use of LLM where
> practical and to prefer human authorship, collaboration, and technical
> understanding over LLM-generated output.
>
> At the same time, Debian has long relied on the judgment and responsibility of
> its contributors rather than prescribing individual workflows. Contributors
> remain responsible for everything they submit, irrespective of the tools used
> in
> preparing a contribution. Existing Debian standards regarding quality,
> correctness, licensing, and legal compliance continue to apply.
>
> The Debian project has always recognized the commitment and professionalism of
> its members. All contributions are under the responsibility of the Debian
> Contributor making it, no matter the technology they have behind. We trust all
> Debian Developers, Maintainers and Contributors will continue to uphold the
> high
> quality values that have distinguished our project from its onset.
>
> Please keep being excellent to each other and the only planet we have.
>
>
>
> ---- end ballot proposal ----
>
> with thanks to Didier 'OdyX' Raboud for
> https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2026/08/msg00101.html
> and Bas Wijnen for https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2026/08/msg00118.html
> and Tobias Frost for
> https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2026/07/msg00343.html
>
> Obviously written without the help of LLM.
>
>
> --
> cheers,
> Holger
>
> ⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀
> ⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁ holger@(debian|reproducible-builds|layer-acht).org
> ⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀ OpenPGP: B8BF54137B09D35CF026FE9D 091AB856069AAA1C
> ⠈⠳⣄
>
> Which Large Language Model do you prefer? The one that claims trans people
> don’t
> exist or the one that doesn’t want to talk about Tian'anmen Square in 1989?
> (@[email protected])
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