I have been using Linux for over 8 months now, and my primary distribution of choice was Debian.

Debian recently conducted a community vote on allowing AI contributions, and it ended up allowing responsible AI contributions.

What is this responsible? How can AI commits be responsible? There are thousands of reasons to not use AI, and the primary reason is AI is a thief.

How did you react to Debian’s decision? Did you switch distros? Which one was your option, and why?

Also, when the Linux kernel itself allows AI commits, is there any practicality in a Linux distribution strictly limiting or restricting AI commits?

I have no serious usability issue with Debian now but am concerned about the use of AI even in my Linux distribution. Should I keep going with Debian or consider any other distribution, as I only have 8+ months of experience as a daily Linux user? I tried almost all Linux distros and am comfortable with everything except Void Linux and highly complex ones like Gentoo.

  • hendrik@palaver.p3x.deEnglish
    1·
    13 hours ago

    I think I get what you’re saying. That is the purpose of the license text. I mean not just companies, everyone needs to abide by the rules. But yeah, that’s basically what that text does.

    What I’m trying to say is: In my experience that’s not all there is to Free Software. I mean Linux famously started out “Just for Fun” and under a different (more restrictive) license. And it took a while before it got corporate attention. Before that it was used by individuals for their own individual benefit. And it still does both as of today.

    And I tend to see that a lot. Software like the software I was talking about and a lot of stuff on my computer was started by individuals. They had an itch to scratch or whatever and just put it out there. Lots of projects I use don’t see any contributions by (other) companies and they don’t seem to care. They’re fine. There’s quite some nice large/high-profile projects out there which work the way you said. And that’s exactly how it should be like.

    Guess there’s just a lot of reasons to publish Free Software. Some do it for profit. Some do it by themselves or in a small team. Some gets used by companies and companies contribute back. Some is done by students to learn, some because someone needed something to get a job done in their life and they’re a nice person… I also like the (A)GPL. I don’t expect my stuff to be picked up by anyone and that’s not why I write software as a hobby. But uploading it is mainly a gift to the world. Not for for-profit companies to capitalize on my work. That’s why I do copyleft.

    So I think when I look at software like the one I mentioned, or the platform we’re currently using: Getting contributions back (by large corporations) might not be what the developers had in mind at all. It is however the purpose of the license text in the repository. That’s correct.

    And regarding the AI tools: Yeah, I don’t think that’s noteworthy. AI is here to stay. It’s being used as of today and will be used in the future, the world doesn’t stop or turn back.