- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
Direct link to the LLM Policy Discussion: https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-workspace/-/work_items/187
Example of KDE dev rejecting environmental consideration:
Example of KDE devs not wanting to require LLM use be disclosed.
And all of this is coming right after the debacle with an AI slop project being allowed to give a presentation at Akademy, and the person asking how this was allowed being blocked by KDE:
https://lemmy.nz/post/42029517
as well as the discussion thread bringing up legitimate concerns about AI usage being closed:
https://discuss.kde.org/t/sorry-to-bring-up-a-contentious-topic-kde-ai-llm-policy/46333/164
As someone who genuinely loves KDE, and has even donated to the project multiple times, I sadly have to accept that the majority of KDE have hopped onto the Pro-AI train, and they will not be dissuaded otherwise.
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I am locking the thread because I consider this cherry picking comments from KDE maintainers misinformation. Let’s wait and see where they go… The discussion as to include gen AI code, in which ways, how much, etc. is something that many projects (if not all) are undergoing. Let’s be respectful to their open decision processes! This respectfulness needs to be regardless of whether we agree or not with what they do. Once they make a decision, sure, go ahead with flaming commentaries and endorsing alternatives or forks (if they appeared)
This is EXTREMELY disappointing. KDE is my favourite DE.
This. Dunno where I’m going to go once KDE starts collapsing under the weight of AI slop. XFCE maybe? Do they have an AI policy? What’s Cosmic looking like these days?
Xfce have embraced AI with their new Wayland compositor.
Cosmic accepts AI code, but according to them, they take a preemptively hostile view toward AI code submissions and will rewrite some parts by hand.
There’s some lists linked in the comments here of DE’s that reject all AI.
Maybe you should reconsider your outdated views instead. Why are you even using linux to begin with, considering the kernel also allows “ai slop”?
Outdated views, huh? Tell me you’re deluded without telling me.
Not sure how this affects what I said. Having an anti-ai policy simply doesn’t work, you’d know that if you worked on any open source projects at all. There’s a reason all sane projects, like linux and now kde, end up accepting AI code. You can keep retreating to the next DE/WM until there’s none left but the ultra niche whose entire point is it doesn’t use AI, but it also has no contributor.
That’s like telling a vegan to update their views and eat meat.
There are many legitimate reasons to want to avoid AI code and avoid encouraging corporate AI use. Not all of us have to adopt your views on AI.
The differerence is being a vegan affects you, and the world is pretty accomodating to it. Vegan options everywhere these days. Non-AI repos are getting ultrarare and will only get more so.
Using a project with AI code simply doesn’t affect you. KDE is open source, using it doesn’t contribute to anything, doesn’t encourage and AI corporation, doesn’t contribute to water/power usage during training, etc… If the maintainers check the PRs propely you won’t be affected whatsoever.
Do you want to say Kde was your fav DE.
X2
If slop coding is so great why is everyone so adamant about hiding it from users?
If you’re not willing to disclose something, maybe take that as a hint.
because yall gonna go on a witch hunt at a whiff of llm, regardless of the final code or product quality?
Somehow you consider even a little pushback crazy but won’t listen to people when they ask you not to jump into AI madness headfirst wearing blinders?
when they ask you not to jump into AI madness headfirst wearing blinders?
That’s not what you’re asking and they are not doing that. The policy is quite sane. Ye of little faith (in the developers) were perfectly fine using this free software these same people wrote beforehand, but now according to the general sentiment in the comments they have all suddenly turned into idiots who don’t know what they’re doing and we should all abandon KDE etc etc.
Having an public policy that permits the use of LLMs feels like the opposite of “hiding it”. If a project has such a policy, then you can be pretty sure that LLMs are being used, even if you cannot tell exactly what commits involved the use of LLMs. It’s probably also a lot more discoverable than disclosures in commits or PRs, which most users wouldn’t know how to look for
Realistically, I think everything actively maintained is going to have some LLM code in it by now. You can either accept it or go mad, tbh.
Art is one thing, and I can see why we wouldn’t want the computer doing that if you have the resources to employ people, but code is rarely art. Most of it was already slop. It’s had things shoehorned into it by shouty managers decades ago. Claude is far from perfect, but so are most of the people doing the gruntwork.
Most of it was already slop. It’s had things shoehorned into it by shouty managers decades ago.
Manager: You have to get this done by end of week…
Dev: itll be really shitty and kind of work. Can we clean it up after?
Manager: of course!
Dev: its done, we can ship it. Ill start cleaning it up.
Manager: No, you need to do this other thing by tomorrow!
Ive had some good ones that did honor the agreement when pushed to rush things, but its not common.
I can accept some trace amount of rat shit is going to get into my granola, but I am not willing to say that means I’m allowing rat shit in my cereal.
Please at least try to keep it out, as I do when I’m making my own granola. Yes I know it’s hard, but let’s just try.
“accept it or go mad” always just comes across as extremely desperate, lol
nooooo you don’t understand you HAVE to accept it! There’s no other choice!! Nooo stop rejecting it you’re not allowed to do that!!!
You can reject it in your own projects. That’s about it. If you’re open source and accepting any submissions, you’ve no idea if they’re LLM generated or not.
Except for all the open source libraries you probably use that also use LLMs, or you find a blog post someone wrote explaining how to do something and they used LLMs
You can avoid direct knowledgeable usage, but you’ll still have LLM code in your codebase.
As a user, I think this is the biggest issue I have with this policy. Disclosure is a big part of open source and hiding whatever tools are used is fundamentally against that philosophy.
Would you be willing to expand on what you mean by disclosure being a big part of open source?
I ask because it has not been my experience that OSS developers have ever had a habit of disclosing what tools they use. If you are lucky then a repo has instructions for contributors, that may describe tools being used, or CI configuration for running tests and linters, but most projects have neither. Mostly you just get instructions for building the project, but sometimes not even that
In some projects you’ll see a kind of a colophon section listing all the tools used in making some software. Not just obviously things like libraries, but OS, text editor, IDE, art tools, or even inspirations.
It’s not everywhere, but it’s frequent enough, and different from how proprietary software credits (or doesn’t) to make it a distinction imo.
How would you even enforce it. Its possible to make extensive use of local LLMs and have them write no code at all that you submit. Is that use of AI? Should it be disclosed? If you did you would get puritans calling it slop regardless of the result too.
Because users are dumdums who chimp out at the smallest of changes and mindlessly rebel just to feel important?
I feel like you’re describing the people who are crazy about AI right now.
I feel like using ai is like using drugs, they’re bad, but regulating them is muuuuuuuch better than just prohibiting, people will use it anyways.
It’s not a one to one comparison but I feel encouraging witch hunts will definitely do more harm than normalizing it.
To be clear, I don’t want it either, I’m acknowledging it’s the lesser of two evils.
I’m 12 and this is deep level of take right here
I feel like using ai is like using drugs, they’re bad, but regulating them is muuuuuuuch better than just prohibiting, people will use it anyways.
crime won’t happen because it is illegal?
World sees AI doing awful things like nudifying children, making nearly every software we use worse, and stealing the world’s knowledge to sell back to us, and generally dislikes AI.
Moronic software devs with massive egos: "WE SHOULD USE AI SEE HOW EASY THIS MAKES MY LIFE NOW I DONT HAVE TO LEARN. "
Also them: “I swear I just use it to augment my work! I’d never take a shortcut and eventually keep taking shortcuts and outsource my thinking! Humans notoriously NEVER take shortcuts!”
Guys wtf are we even doing anymore.
AI is not a thing, it doesn’t act, it doesn’t think. Humans do. Humans nudify children, humans enshitify software, humans steal content
Exactly.
All of the Anti-AI people are actually anti-capitalists, they’re just not finished diagnosing the problem.
AI isn’t building data centers, capitalists are. They’re doing it in such a destructive and rapid manner because they’re trying to leverage their infinite amount of cash into a future monopoly. If it wasn’t AI it would have been some other product.
Fighting the product and ignoring the actual human beings who are making these destructive decisions is only adding to the smoke screen that shifts blame away from names like Huang, Altman, and Musk.
I think you can be anticapitalist and also anti-AI. I’m certainly both
Same here! I don’t care who is responsible for it, no matter where on the political spectrum the creators are, I’m still not supporting it.
I think you can be anticapitalist and also anti-AI. I’m certainly both
Yes, the venn is basically a circle.
All of the ‘bad things AI is doing’ are bad things that capitalists are doing.
Nobody is actually angry at AI for solving age old mathematical problems, folding proteins or locating cancers. It’s not the technology that people care about.
People are angry at rapacious capitalism and are misdirecting it at the technology and not the rapacious capitalists. Anti-AI is just Anti-Capitalism for new leftists.
You sound like “Guns don’t kill people! Robbers do!”
So I’m going to ask you, would you give a gun to a child? Would you? Just answer that
Except AI won’t kill you
What in the bullshit bad faith non sequitor is this.
it doesn’t act,
I don’t disagree with anything else you are saying or the sentiment, but with the rise of “AI Agents” it is becoming more common that the AI actually does something. It seems like there is a new story every few days about an agent deleting an entire database or buying plane tickets or sending an e-mail to the FBI. Unfortunately, we have people giving it more and more permissions and ability to “just act” and it is only getting worse.
Most of those ‘news’ stories are sensationalized to the point of fiction.
And it wrecks the environment, and it stunts the user’s intelligence without actually being able to do anything truly original or novel, and it makes worse, buggier, less secure, less maintainable software. The list goes on and on
I love KDE (as a DE), but now I hate KDE (as a community).
Is there any fork (whether it’s an stablished one or it’s an emerging one) that outright bans AI, or that at least doesn’t explicitly embrace it?
KDE is huge, you can’t just fork all of it (of course technically you could, but it is not much use). You maybe could fork individual projects, a bit like https://vim-classic.org/
I was thinking of having some kind of online list for packages without AI stuff. Of course a 100% slop free desktop installation is probably impossible nowadays, it would still be interesting to see how far one can go.
Yeah, the point is that I need something that has many features only available in KDE.
Would it work if it’s done from a previous, presumably untainted commit? I know it’s possible that I’m being a bit ingenuous, but I still think that doing something is better that doing anything — just as there are explicitly anti-AI forks of other complex projects such as Firefox (both mobile [IronFox] and desktop [Konform], and both mostly untainted), and even a reimplementation of Linux in Rust (HyperOS, this one totally untainted).
If not, I have some quite good architectural ideas for a new DE, because other big DEs are or ambiguous about AI (for example, Cinnamon, MATE, GNOME or COSMIC, Hyprland), or are not as extensible as KDE (COSMIC, MATE, Cinnamon, LXQt).
Would it work if it’s done from a previous, presumably untainted commit?
Theoretically yes, but at the moment I have more than 150 KDE packages installed; you would need to do this for each one and then make sure that they actually work together in this specific combination. Then, for each package you would need to check if any security bugfixes exist upstream that don’t exist in your fork and backport these.
I would say that is the bare minimum; you probably also want any bugfixes that are implemented upstream.
I guess with a team of a few people this would be doable, at least for some time; sooner or later some dependency (e.g. systemd) will be updated in such a way that your fork is no longer compatible and then you will either have to integrate the slop code from upstream to make it work, or do that on your own.
By the way, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_Desktop_Environment is a fork of KDE 3, but that has no support for e.g. dark mode.
Such a list already exists!
Edit: i read the comment wrong, this is kind of the opposite list lmao. But it’s still useful so imma leave the comment up
There’s also https://noailist.org/, which is based on projects (not just OSS) committing to not using AI. That’s probably also the only viable approach, if you want a list of projects without AI stuff, since projects can easily be using AI without it being visible to third parties inspecting the output of the projects
This site is great thank you!
Omg, I knew Open Slopware and a few more, but not that one! Thank you!
Quite annoying. As an RHEL user. I reject AI.
Good. Fuck ludites.
Why?
this is quite… disappointing, and I say that as someone who uses primarily GNOME :(
I’ll likely be switching my gaming PC to Gnome due to all this :\
(on a side note, the Gnome dev in that thread mentions that Gnome bans AI usage, but I haven’t been able to find anything that confirms that, and AFAICT Gnome doesn’t have an official AI usage policy, only Gnome Circle does for 3rd party Gnome Extensions).
are you switchong off linix since the li ix kernel allows ai
As it is impossible to completely avoid AI use with Linux, I must content myself with only minimization instead of complete elimination, as I won’t let the pursuit of perfection mean I just give up entirely, as any reduction is still meaningfull, just as it’s still worthwhile to minimize fossil fuel usage and meat consumption as much as is reasonably possible.
you realize ai is just the tool and isnt a data center. data centers exist with out ai and ai exists with out data centers
I do not think LLMs can be “just a tool”.
Most LLM use is with corporate AI, and this KDE policy explicitly allows corporate AI usage. If they had restricted it to only open-source local models, I wouldn’t have nearly as many environmental concerns (though that would not solve the plagiarism issue).
For a more complete look at all of the downsides of AI usage, I’d encourage you to take a look at this comment.
“If they had restricted it to only open-source local models”
Is this even remotely enforceable? Stylometry can pretty effectively determine between AI and human written text ( not sure about code specifically since those are much stricter languages), but can it tell the difference between models or even if the LLM was run locally? (almost certainly not in the latter case).
Most contributors generally respect the rules of a project, and there are other rules put in place that are also not technically enforceable, such as asking a contributor to not submit copyrighted code (this would be virtually impossible for a reviewer to distinguish if it came from a closed source project), which also gives the project a stronger defense if brought to court, as they can then at least point to the rules and show where a contributor willfully broke them. In comparison, I suspect a court would not look kindly on a policy that says “Don’t disclose that you used a tool that has a 3 to 10% chance of introducing plagiarized copyrighted code with every prompt to avoid being shamed.”
As an example, the WINE project has a rule to not allow anyone who has even seen Windows source code from contributing to the project. This is to avoid the chances of someone subconsciously or consciously submitting a reproduction of what they saw in the Windows source code, and thus hopefully prevent the project being sued into oblivion from Microsoft (who would likely love to see that happen).
Adding a stipulation in the guidelines that contributors can only use more-ethical LLMs likely wouldn’t entirely prevent someone breaking that rule, but by in large, it is likely that most would adhere to it, making it an effective rule despite being difficult to enforce.
She’s updated the comment now to say ‘a lot of us outright ban’, which is more accurate.
Just a side note, GNOME Circle and Extensions are two different things (but both do ban AI projects). Circle is a way for GNOME to say a third party app is good, while Extensions are like browser extensions but for the DE.
the Gnome dev in that thread mentions that Gnome bans AI usage, but I haven’t been able to find anything that confirms that
You can bet your behind that the developers employed by IBM Red Hat are 100% using LLMs to code. Chances are they are even mandated by corporate higher-ups to do so.
Red hat is a big contributor to gnome? I didn’t know that.
Is the default DE for fedora so it makes sense
Anybody else feeling really smug now about using GNOME? Sorry KDE users, that does genuinely suck to find out.
Anybody else feeling really smug now about using GNOME?
No, I’m not. The GNOME project have not, from what I’ve seen, drawn any hard boundary on the matter.
Lacking any clear policy prohibiting AI slop in the project, it’s still entirely feasible they’ll let it in.
I haven’t confirmed it but this screenshot claims they banned it
That person seems to be mistaken. I could only find policies for GNOME Circle and extensions, and those seem similar in spirit to the one proposed here:
From the second link:
Extensions must not be AI-generated
While it is not prohibited to use AI as a learning aid or a development tool (i.e. code completions), extension developers should be able to justify and explain the code they submit, within reason.
Submissions with large amounts of unnecessary code, inconsistent code style, imaginary API usage, comments serving as LLM prompts, or other indications of AI-generated output will be rejected
Yes. I’d argue that this is similar in spirit to the linked proposal, which for example requires that
Nobody in KDE should know if you use an LLM — not because you’re concealing it, but because your usage of it produces output indistinguishable from what you could produce yourself. Contributions with obvious and lazy LLM usage may be ignored or closed.
That’s… Interesting to me. One policy explicitly condones its use and the other explicitly forbades it.
It’s a actually completely reasonable proposal
It all comes down to one thing - understand the LLM generated code you want to submit, and use the LLM for nothing else than write code, like making other people having to read LLM text. This is a whole lot like the kernel’s LLM policy.
Niko is right, the environmental corcern is not something this policy should go against - what can they do despite ban LLM usage altoguether (and per consequence get LLM generated code submitted anyway), they can’t have a blacklist for models, or force contributors to run them on their local hardware.
what can they do despite ban LLM usage altoguether (and per consequence get LLM generated code submitted anyway), they can’t have a blacklist for models, or force contributors to run them on their local hardware.
But they can? Like OP pointed out, wine forbids contributions from those that have seen Windows source code. How in the world are they supposed to enforce that? Turns out the open source community is pretty good at self enforcing.
I don’t think the average person who wants to contribute to wine has seen windows source code in the first place.
It is much easier to attempt on enforcing something like this that to enforce a full ban on AI. The problem is that AI has a much higher exposure rate than the windows source code.
Nobody said anything about enforcing it. Just put it in the contribution guidelines!! Like for fucks sake, this is like saying you shouldn’t have a law saying you can’t murder people out at sea because it’s impossible to police. The threat of action is half of the reason people don’t do bad things. There’s ZERO REASON to not have it in the guidelines.
I’m with you, but the sad reality is that, unlike Wine devs, AI devs can’t be assumed to act in good faith.
Potential Wine devs who have seen Windows source code will self enforce the rules, because they care about their integrity and the integrity of the project.
AI devs already don’t have an integrity, and they feel smug and superior for actively trying to fool any sort of measure against AI. They also seem to believe AI is the future and isn’t going away, so why bother regulating it if it won’t matter soon.
We need to come up with stricter and more effective ways to regulate and ban AI use, and that’s gonna be the difference between an unusable codebase and a great one in a few years.
Sure, but that doesn’t mean that it can’t go into the contribution guidelines. If they don’t listen then ok, you remove commits that have claude watermarking. Without that guideline you can’t stop the PRs at all.
I do kinda get Niccolo’s point that a contribution policy is not the place to decide environmental concerns even though it feels contradictory at first glance. He’s generally very critical and nuanced when it comes to LLMs so I wouldn’t call him “pro-AI”. Just watch his YouTube content.
Be quiet, we’re trying to be mad about AI.
While we’re at it, why hasn’t KDE condemned Hamas or taken a stand on the proliferation of weapons in space?
I can’t support a DE which hasn’t distanced itself from Ed Sheeran. Hopefully someone will fork KDE into a more Ed Sheeran-less experience.
I want to be angry god damn it, why is there not more things to be angry about on the topic of KDE!!!
I don’t really see why environmental policy shouldn’t be mentioned in the contribution policy. If it’s there as the justification for why a part of the policy exists and it is accurate about what the environmental impacts actually are, it seems to fit in fine within the policy? Not wanting the point there doesn’t make KDE pro-AI (since they might just want to mention it elsewhere), but it is valid criticism if they don’t acknowledge it anywhere.
However I do feel that the other points in the post are weaker. KDE’s stance is in line with what the SFC recommends when it comes to AI in FOSS, specifically around contributions. I came across the SFC recommendations a while back and it’s held up well in similar discussions so far: https://sfconservancy.org/llm-gen-ai/llm-backed-generative-ai-recommendations.html
Devs rejecting any notion of transparency by disclosing AI usage in code submissions
I don’t think they rejected the transparency part? I agree that transparency is necessary. Rather their reply is telling the commenter to not shun people. Both of those points are reflected in the SFC recommendations (point 5 on disclosure and point 3 on shunning)
And all of this is coming right after the debacle with an AI slop project being allowed to give a presentation at Akademy, and the person asking how this was allowed being blocked by KDE
I get the feeling that KDE does not curate much of anything, for better or for worse. There is a good bit of content in the KDE ecosystem that is outdated or straight up shovelware.
On top of that, Akademy is a conference that is intended for discussion, rather than a presentation about KDE.
Akademy features a 2-day conference with presentations on the latest KDE developments, followed by 4 days of workshops, Birds of a Feather (BoF) and coding sessions. It is an opportunity to meet key KDE contributors, learn about the latest features and enjoy the great atmosphere. You will meet developers, artists, translators, upstream and downstream maintainers, users, and free and open software industry leaders from all over the world
It wouldn’t work well if they had to curate every presentation at such an event. It is indeed deceitful to imply that the presenter is going to change the direction of KDE if in reality they rarely contribute and have little say in the direction of KDE. Also IMO it’s good that they let that guy participate in the conversation because it let everyone else raise points about why the idea is bad.
The contribution policy is the only place where anything meaningful can be done, as that is ultimately what will influence developers trying to contribute. Putting environmental concerns anywhere else is, IMHO, just virtue signalling.
I personally consider advocating for non-disclosure of AI use to be Pro-AI. Advocating for disclosure but still allowing it would be neutral.
Environmental concerns should be a topic that is dealt by politics.
The state dictates what is allowed and what is forbidden for any legal entity.
For example: It would be meaningless for a local kebab shop to debate whether they should use cucumbers with pesticides or without to protect the bees. If the law would say, all pesticides are forbidden, bee deaths due to pesticides would be gone. Ofc such a decision would have impact on food prices etc. so if asingle kebab shop would do it, they’d just become uncompetitive compared to the rest while making no change in bee deaths. Kind of a virtue signaling shot in the foot.
Same here, the environmental impact is not something that KDE can meaningfully influence with their decision.
Damn… I guess I’ll have to start trying out more DEs again to find something to switch to.
If you don’t mind me asking what OS do you run now? The LLM policy for KDE is essentially the same as the Linux kernel.
I’d wager that almost every large open source project has had AI code submitted and merged. There’s really no way to detect it.
Niri is solid. If you’re into it.
So many people say they reject AI, but then how can you even use desktop Linux?
The kernel & the popular browsers have an increasing number of AI contributions, there is no escaping this.
I’m personally trying to switch to NetBSD. But, it’s not going well. My laptop can’t right-click in X under NetBSD, e.g.
A lot of the ecosystems I used to enjoy and support, I simply can’t anymore. Firefox, Linux, GHC, Debian, KDE, etc., etc. It’s a distressing time for me.
Can relate, everything I used to think of as a safe haven, a return to 90’s style computing, is seemingly being corrupted, and the few remaining options we have require a rather big sacrifice in usability.
As it is impossible to completely avoid AI use with Linux, I must content myself with only minimization instead of complete elimination, as I won’t let the pursuit of perfection mean I just give up entirely. Any reduction is still meaningful, just as it’s still worthwhile to minimize fossil fuel usage and meat consumption as much as is reasonably possible.
This is all completely out of your control. You cannot tell people how to work in opensource and projects are completely unable to control if someone uses AI (or which one) to perform tasks, since it is not visible in the result. The easiest thing for you to do, if you don’t want to take part in it, is to put down your phone and go outside.
…No it isn’t? I can choose what software I use, there are projects making efforts to avoid AI as much as is possible, and most contributors tend to follow guidelines, so having no-AI rules, while not 100% effective at avoiding AI code, will still drastically reduce what gets in, which is all I’m aiming for, and which is absolutely achievable.
I’ve noticed that virtually all Pro-AI people are constantly pushing this idea that resistance is futile, and that we all just have to accept AI into all aspects of our lives, almost like a cult. I even saw some if that rhetoric in the KDE proposal this thread is about.
You can drink the AI koolaid as much as you want, but you’re not going to stop me from trying to limit it in my life wherever possible, and I’ll continue to advocate for others to abstain for a multitude of reasoned arguments as well.
Modern society is built on destruction and cruelty. Doesn’t mean I can advice somebody to give up living in society and sound smart.
To suggest that “compromising on ideals for practicality” is the same as “roll-over and accept it” is dishonest and only done by people who want to win the argument by attrition so they get what they want.
Welp glad I’m not using KDE
Actual proposed policy:
Generally, don’t. What you are willing to write is generally the upper limit of what others are willing to read. LLMs, on the other hand, often produce long, rambling, soulless, corporate-sounding nonsense that nobody wants to read; don’t do it. This includes:
Don’t use an LLM to “organize your thoughts” and copy-paste the output somewhere. Organize them yourself. Don’t use an LLM to generate commit messages and merge request descriptions. Write them yourself. Don’t use an LLM to generate a reply to someone’s question or comment, then copy-paste that as if it were your response. Understand and reply yourself.
The one acceptable usage is to write text in your native language and then machine-translate it into English, with no stylistic or tonal changes.
But of course reading is for the LLM, it’s far better to be outraged about ‘hopping on the Pro-AI train’.
That section only relates to descriptions of pull requests, not the AI code itself. They don’t want long rambly AI generated explanations of how the code works, but they are fine if the code itself is AI generated.
Yeah, I forgot to paste part about the code.
