Post by @cwebber@social.coop

RE: https://floss.social/@josch/117507580019985725

Consequences for the recent LLM vote seem to have arrived for Debian... automated slop reviews: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2026/10/msg00263.html

And we see here that at least one Debian developer, @josch, has been lost due to this change.

This is INCREDIBLY sad IMO. If you're an MNT Reform family computer user, @josch is basically a folk hero for making those machines *work*.

I am still feeling vindicated in my Vibe Bobsled blogpost, having seen both what's happening to the Linux Kernel and now to Debian, where we see the dismantling not only of individuals coding, but also communities, as everyone rides the icy chute down the hill https://dustycloud.org/blog/faulty-towers-vibe-sickness-and-the-vibe-bobsled/

7 Boosts

1 Like

Gerard Braad

@gbraad@mastodon.social 9 min. ago

@cwebber @josch

In the audio space you see the same slop for the FM-1, a small synth. Almost all the synths are AI-generated code...

... then you get AI generated emulators in the browser...

... and now these emulators are running firmware as a VST.

The code is open source, and instead of compiling them into native synth modules targeting a host, they are just large, inneffiecient emulators.

F4GRX SÃ©bastien ⸚

@f4grx@chaos.social 10 hr. ago

@cwebber @josch debian on my machines is now climbing in the ejection seat.

Björn

@thaodan@mastodon.social 13 hr. ago

@cwebber @josch Part of the problem is that there are two camps of the AI users who don't even hear any of the issues with it.
Those two are: the one's who push the technology/the SaaS products and the others are the ones who can't program or just started.
Both have different reasons why they don't want to listen but the first has an incentive that the 2nd one doesn't listen either.
It's really frustrating to interact with people who normalize vibe coding.

Ludovic Courtès

@civodul@toot.aquilenet.fr 13 hr. ago

@cwebber @josch Sadness. :-/

The argument about improving tools like Lintian instead of dismissing them in favor of those services is exactly what I feared would happen in Guix without a proper policy in place: that people would stop improving ‘guix lint’, ‘guix refresh’, etc. as they move to LLMs.

I’m “glad” that prediction wasn’t overblown, but I’d be happier if Debian hadn’t tested it!

The True Source of Value

@be@floss.social 14 hr. ago

@cwebber @josch It really seems to be a nazi bar problem. Give the sloperators a millimetere and they take a light year.

The True Source of Value

@be@floss.social 13 hr. ago

@cwebber @josch Debian is repeating the nazi bar process that Bevy went through. It doesn't matter if the official statement explicitly puts some limitation on LLM usage or promotion; as long as any usage is allowed, all restrictions get ignored by boosters and that gets tolerated. https://blog.fallible.net/it-breaks-a-village/

fallible

It Breaks a Village: Bevy's 6th Birthday

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@hakona@im.alstadheim.no 14 hr. ago

@cwebber This, together with the churn of updates (php,node,kernel ... ) . I can feel this is wearing my enthusiasm down. @josch

see shy jo

@joeyh@sunbeam.city 14 hr. ago

@cwebber It's worth noting that the DPL was using an LLM to generate their emails for some time. I was astonished to find that fact buried in LWN a couple weeks back.

Could guix please hurry up with a LLM policy so i can switch to it? I don't have time for multiple episodes of distro hopping, I have distro hopped 2.1 times so far in 31 years.

tusharhero

@tusharhero@mathstodon.xyz 14 hr. ago

@joeyh @cwebber guix has already banned llm "contributions" .

see shy jo

@joeyh@sunbeam.city 14 hr. ago

@tusharhero @cwebber oh right, the ban on the basis that it may infringe copyright. I am still hoping for something stronger, like https://codeberg.org/guix/guix-consensus-documents/src/branch/main/008-genai.md which had 1 sole objector

Cookie monster!

Christine Lemmer-Webber

@cwebber@social.coop 14 hr. ago

@joeyh @tusharhero Yes, I am hoping for such a thing also.

(The person who objected turned out to not even be objecting because they disagreed with the policy, but rather the GCD process themselves, which makes the collapse of GCD 008 even more disappointing.)

1 more reply

Christine Lemmer-Webber

@cwebber@social.coop 14 hr. ago

@tusharhero @joeyh @josch Yeah, the manual does have a policy now. It's stated for copyright reasons explicitly; it would be good to not hinge on that alone, but yes, it is forbidden to use LLM based contributions to Guix now. https://codeberg.org/guix/guix/commit/dd3fa6231f12f0f0b911b19484ce2cc5de86a100

Cookie monster!

Daniel Lakeland

@dlakelan@mastodon.sdf.org 13 hr. ago

@cwebber @tusharhero @joeyh @josch

Even though I'd like to see a statement banning LLM contributions more generally even if the copyright issue is resolved, I'll take this ban as sufficient for the moment. If this ban can hold for a year or so, we'll likely see the financial AIpocalypse and it will be easier to get a more principled policy. Meanwhile I can start working on switching my laptop.

Christine Lemmer-Webber

@cwebber@social.coop 14 hr. ago

@joeyh Wow! Few things could make me happier than you joining us in Guix-land :)

see shy jo

@joeyh@sunbeam.city 14 hr. ago

@cwebber wow, this will be an interesting avenue for denial of sources to Debian.. If @jwz wants xscreensaver out of Debian he only has to arrange a NEW processing (trivial) and prime the LLM to recommend rejecting it.

josch

@josch@floss.social 14 hr. ago

@cwebber Please note, that I will still remain a Debian Developer with uploading rights. I will also still upload packages. I will just no longer upload to NEW as long as this situation persists.

But yes, it is becoming more and more frustrating and I'm eying other projects like #Gentoo or #NetBSD and of course #MNT remains my Nr1 hobby, so no worries :)

This specific issue will probably get addressed but when your hobby involves more and more "pushing back" then yes, priorities will change...