Hi, On 2026-03-03 at 21:23+01:00, Simon Tournier wrote: > If I stretch, consider that I’m using non-free drivers, running non-free > OS, I’m asking help to some evil person who never respects any items of > our Code of Conduct, in summary, I’m living the worst unethical* life. > Does the project reject my contributions? > > Including LLMs in a policy as to what we accept in Guix paves the way > for a kind of “police of thought”, IMHO. > > Maybe I overlook something, well, from my point of view, we cannot > encode ethical behavior at the level of the PRs. > > *unethical life: the opposite of what I’m trying to live for real. :-)
I tried to be really specific in phrasing when I started this thread to avoid this topic; I wanted a discussion about incorporating non-trivial snippets from LLMs into a codebase, not other usages. It's a very specific action, not a lifestyle or filosofi. In other words, I want to talk about the end (software projects and the composition of their source code), not the means to it (contribution processes and contributors' private lives). In my mind Guix has two keys properties: a complete dedication to free software, and reproducibility. This dedication is why I contribute to the project, and I assume that reason is shared by many other contributors. So far, software freedom is mostly enforced through the framework of copyright. Undermining such framework by not respecting licenses is actively weakening our ability to keep software free through legal means. The warez community is basically following this path, where all physically acquirable creative works are remixed and redistributed without any restriction. The problem is such acquisition is difficult and risky. Relicensing or declaring public domain dedication ver verbatim and near-verbatim copies of freely licensed work is undermining the legal frameworks free software projects rely upon, and creating precedences for owners of proprietary software to not respect any license. This happens when a free software project accept patches (co-)output by LLMs without tracing and respecting the original licensing information. In shorts, I'm asking that we to not be in support (by including in official Guix channel) of projects doing such license laundery. As for Guix itself, instead of asking contributors > Did you use any LLM while working on this patchset? which should be none of our concern, state that > Guix does not accept patches including any non-trivial snippet > generated by an LLM, as well as code taken from other works > without declaring their origin. It's up to the contributors to be honest about it, I just don't think we should accept or encourage something just because it is nontrivial to detect. Kind regards, Phong
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