Debian votes to let contributors code with AI

AI AND ML

Disclosure optional, quality mandatory

The Debian community has voted to allow members to use generative AI when creating their contributions, with the caveat that developers remain responsible for code quality.

The Linux distro’s community recently decided to develop a policy on use of AI-assisted coding tools, and asked participants to vote on one of eight proposals that included an outright ban, cautious use, or just avoiding LLMs because of their impact on Earth’s environment.

The rules of the vote saw community members asked to rank each of the eight proposals. Just under 600 people voted, but Debian’s election team rejected many for unspecified reasons, leaving almost 450 valid votes to count.

When the tallying was done, proposal E – “Responsible Use of Generative AI” – won the day.

The proposal means “Debian neither endorses nor prohibits the use of generative AI tools in the development, maintenance, or documentation of software, packaging, documentation, and other media published within the Debian Project.”

The proposal advocates that approach because “such tools can substantially improve the productivity of contributors when used responsibly, allowing volunteers to spend more of their limited time on work that requires technical expertise, judgment, review, and collaboration.”

The proposal also spells out that the Debian community doesn’t believe “AI made a mistake” is an excuse for sloppy contributions.

“The Debian Project nevertheless expects that all contributions submitted to Debian, regardless of how and with which tools they were produced, satisfy the same standards of quality, correctness, maintainability, and legal compliance,” the proposal states. “The use of a generative AI tool does not diminish the contributor’s responsibility for the work they submit. Contributors are expected to understand, review, test, and, where appropriate, modify AI-assisted output before incorporating it into Debian.”

Woe betide the dev who doesn’t check their AI-generated code, as the proposal also states, “Blindly accepting or uploading AI-generated material without appropriate human review is inconsistent with Debian’s established development practices.”

Another element of the proposal tries to make acknowledging the use of AI a norm.

“We encourage our contributors to disclose whether a contribution was made with AI assistance, but do not require them to do so,” the text states.

As our FOSS aficionado Liam Proven wrote in his report on the vote, the Gentoo Linux team has banned use of AI, while NetBSD and OpenBSD don’t want any clanker-written code contributions.

Linus Torvalds, arguably the most influential figure in the FOSS community, welcomes AI-generated contributions.

In July he declared “Linux is not one of those anti-AI projects” – and recently proved it by using AI to squash a tricky bug. Torvalds has also sometimes complained about AI, such as his May observation that AI-generated bug reports sometimes made the Linux security mailing list “unmanageable.” ®