On 2/6/26 03:35, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
[...] *** Why are we discussing all this in the context of Guix? *** The point I am trying to make in GCD 008 on this topic is that free software doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Yes, LLMs (+ agents) can automate away tedious packaging tasks. But we can acknowledge that the environmental cost of these tools *alone* is a problem for society, and we can refuse *collectively* to not make ourselves dependent on it. After all, we’ve been running this project without LLMs for 14 years, so it shouldn’t be too hard, right? Yes, we have work to do to improve package maintenance automation; luckily, we already have solid foundations for that—more solid than most other distros.
Can I be the devils advocate? I respect that you are the founder of the project and may define success as you wish, but to me, success means building a distribution that solves package management so well it becomes the goto distro even for even non power users, being able to handle millions of packages, and finally defenestrating windows. But working on distros is a process of constantly swimming upstream against the onslaught of new software and updates. After 14 years Guix, and infact not even NixOS its self, has managed to make the majority ofdebian/arch/ubuntu users switch over. For 50+ years people have been trying to build the free software system of their dreams. If we further burden ourselves with additional, orthogonal societal goals like carbon emissions, our backs will break. Where will we be in another 14 years?
I think that effective efforts to deal with greenhouse gasses are ultimately ones that push for political change, and Guix developers should genuinely just not worry about their relatively insignificant computational carbon footprint from LLMs. With changes in energy production, a coal powered LLM today can be a solar powered LLM tomorrow. Not to mention that such tool are also improving and becoming more efficient over time too.
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