Debian Votes on AI Usage Policy for Developers: Allow or Ban?

The Debian project is conducting an official vote on the use of LLMs (Large Language Models). A total of 8 options have been proposed, and the voting deadline has been extended by one week. As of now, fewer than 350 votes have been cast.

Key Voting Options

• Option A: Explicitly prohibits contributions written using LLMs or generative AI tools. (Requires a 3:1 majority)
• Option B: Allows AI-assisted contributions if they meet 6 conditions, including legal compatibility, licensing, and responsibility attribution.
• Option C: Rejects LLMs entirely within practical scope. (Supported by Ian Jackson, author of dpkg)
• Option D: Since AI usage is already widespread, defines guidelines that contributors must be responsible for and comply with.
• Option G: Direct code contributions must be written by humans, and LLM outputs are not allowed as direct contributions.
• Option H: Considers LLM usage a deal-breaker as it accelerates ecosystem destruction.

Background and Current Status

Debian 13 is a large-scale project containing approximately 70,000 packages and over 1.46 billion lines of code. This vote addresses various perspectives beyond simple allow/ban, including responsibility attribution and environmental impact. Other distributions such as Gentoo and NetBSD have already set precedents by banning AI code contributions.