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@davidgerard @wwahammy @silverwizard @firefly_lightning @cwebber Yes, which is why it's important to allow people to identify when they have used LLM/AI assistants to help. New contributors will see this is the norm, and then it will be easier to help them, because we'll know a bit about where any potential knowledge gaps might be coming from.
If we "ban" LLM/AI-assisted contributions, people will use them anyway but hide their use, which is a trickier problem to solve.
@mathieui @wwahammy @cwebber @silverwizard Would it be different if someone copy-pasted a few separate snippets from Stack Overflow? It feels like if people are unwilling to understand what their code does, that's one thing, but making a hard line even before we know that is perhaps too far.
@silverwizard @firefly_lightning @wwahammy @cwebber I think those are good questions to be asking, and what we hope to discuss in the two sessions:
$ date -d '2026-04-21 15:00 UTC'
$ date -d '2026-04-28 23:00 UTC'
(at https://bbb-new.sfconservancy.org/rooms/welcome-llm-gen-ai-users-to-foss/join )
@js If there is a copyright issue here, that still doesn't mean we should tell people who are excited about making software with LLMs to suddenly stop using LLMs, only that they should use different LLMs. It's unhelpful to label a technology universally bad if there are good versions of it. And if people don't know what the "good" and "bad" versions might be, we should help them understand.
@firefly_lightning @silverwizard @wwahammy @cwebber I'm not sure what "accepting LLM into the community" means here, and maybe it suggests clarifications we could make to the post. The fact is, a lot of FOSS projects already have LLM-generated contributions, either submitted or included already, without knowing it. We can choose to vehemently reject these, or we can choose to engage with people who submit them and ensure they understand FOSS and how to make a good change, regardless of tools.
@js The intent of the post was not to enumerate the issues with LLMs, which I think most of us here know well. Rather, we want to think about how to engage with people about their newfound ability to make software, and how to use that to benefit others. If that means we need to make models trained only on copylefted software, so be it. But let's have that as a separate discussion.
@silverwizard @josh The person I'm envisioning us reaching is the person who is making software for the first time, and isn't familiar with FOSS or how software can be more than an island. If we can bring them into the fold, then we can mitigate some of the harassment and burnout by having more people available to share the load.
@wwahammy Thanks for confirming that. There may be changes or updates we can make to clarify this.
@josh @wwahammy I definitely agree with discouraging developers who should know better from making LLM-generated commits that aren't very good. But this is a separate issue from communicating with the people who are just getting excited about buildings software, so we can encourage them to do so in FOSS-friendly ways. (2/2)
@josh @wwahammy The point I was trying to make is that people are making software with LLMs who had never made software before, they aren't familiar with how FOSS works, and we should teach them how so they can collaborate (when it makes sense) instead of being an island. When people see the huge benefits of building on FOSS, when they can make meaningful changes to their router, TV, or otherwise by themselves (and collaborate to share their changes with others), then FOSS wins. (1/2)
