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Debian 投票允许“负责任地使用生成式 AI”

Debian votes to allow "responsible use of generative AI"

2026/08/29 22:02· 45天前

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把握 Debian 对生成式 AI 的开源治理新动向

AI 摘要

文章 URL: https://lwn.net/Articles/1091231/ 评论 URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49489982 积分：26 # 评论：4

正文

The results of the Debian general-resolution vote on the use of large language models have been posted; the winner is choice 5: Responsible Use of Generative AI.

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. We recognize that 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 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 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.

Extremist positions soundly defeated

Posted Aug 29, 2026 14:20 UTC (Sat) by bluca (subscriber, #118303) [Link] (1 responses)

It might not be obvious due to the complexity of the voting system, but it is definitely worth noting that not only the sensible and rational position won, but the options that were set up with the implicit (or by reading some emails from some proponents, quite explicit actually) purpose of setting up witch hunts to actively punish anyone who dared not toe the extremely vague anti-AI line (option 1 to change social contract, option 3 to change code of conduct, both of which imply *expelling* any dissenter) were soundly defeated and rejected: they (and only they) both failed to beat the "None of the Above" option, which is this voting system's way to say "no, absolutely not, go away".

The rest of the options cleared that line and then it was a (complicated) matter of which one was the "least unfavored" among all voters, so to speak.

A handy graph that someone else prepared makes the result a lot more digestible: https://people.debian.org/~lucas/gr-2026-002/results.png

Extremist positions soundly defeated

Posted Aug 29, 2026 14:41 UTC (Sat) by mhvk (subscriber, #86585) [Link]

It depends what you mean by "soundly" - if I read that graph correctly, about 30% of the voters preferred the no-AI options over all the others. To me, it looks like "status quo" won, which is perhaps appropriate in times of rapid change.

Personally, I hope that truly open locally run models, perhaps specialized to coding, become sufficiently good that one can do without the large, closed-source ones (which to me are very problematic for lots of reasons; it doesn't help to come from a country that will be under water -- the Greenland icesheet melting completely is nearly unavoidable by now, and 6 meters of sea level rise is more than one can build dykes for; why these data centers are not forced to rely on renewable energy is truly beyond me).