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Reply to @civodul@toot.aquilenet.fr
Ludovic Courtès@civodul@toot.aquilenet.fr (2026-08-31 05:27:18)
And that’s probably the crux of the split among free software people on this matter: are our development efforts made in a vacuum?

It’s not new: whether, for instance, to use BitKeeper for Linux development led to similar debates.

The difference here is that LLMs are not even “just a tool” in the sense BK was: the lock-in is going to be much deeper, in our organizations and in our brains.  LLMs threaten the ideal of knowledge sharing and the social fabric we’ve built.
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Ludovic Courtès@civodul@toot.aquilenet.fr (2026-08-31 05:28:32)
I’m not a Debian contributor and not a user anymore but I’ve always viewed Debian as a lighthouse for free software and for collective self-determination.

I’m afraid about the signal this vote is sending to the free software community at large; I’m afraid of it moving the Overton window further towards disregard for humans and for the climate change emergency, in a selfish and myopic way that we’ll regret.

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Strypey@strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz (2026-08-31 10:59:52)
@civodul 
> I’m afraid about the signal this vote is sending to the free software community at large

As I read it, the clearest signal this sends is 'as a collective, we don't know how to think about this yet'. It suggests the pro and anti LLM factions are roughly equal, and their biggest share fear is splitting the community. So to avoid that, they've voted together to watch and wait, until consensus swings one way or the other.

Disappointing, but far from the worst outcome.

@algernon