Direct link to the LLM Policy Discussion: https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-workspace/-/work_items/187
Example of a KDE dev not wanting environmental concerns to play any role, despite KDE having an environmental project:
Devs rejecting any notion of transparency by disclosing AI usage in code submissions (in direct opposition to advice from the FSFE):
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.
the policy in question:
(emphasis original, except for the fourth bullet point)
“You are responsible for the code you submit, regardless of tools used.”
Literally the same stance Linus had on Linux. I’m okay with it as long as it’s enforced.
We all know the enforcement won’t match the usage, but I’m still ok with the decision.
Yes, that’s fine. And it’s also easy to enforce - just treat any code as if it’s written by a human (except obviously machine generated code like hardware descriptions etc).
Being against AI and LLMs is all fine and dandy, but it kinda takes ridiculous shape now.
However, I would prefer if open source tools would only allow the usage of open weight models and self-hosted systems. But then again, that’s my idealism talking.
I hate vibe coding, detest it, i’m tired of it. it wastes time and resources. That being said I use AI for debugging and as a glorified rubber duck. I don’t let it write ANYTHING but I will allow it to review code and make suggestions. Generally, I’d say 8 times out of 10 the suggestions are garbage BUT it will lead me down the right path. it’s a rubber duck that can talk back. So in that regards it has improved my build times, it has sped me up without actually touching the code itself.
THAT’s what AI/LLMs SHOULD be used for. an assistant that doesn’t directly interact with the project. a consultant to your code if you will.
unfortunately many people can’t make that separation and they sit on both sides of the fence.
This isn’t a bad policy, but outright ignoring ethical and environmental concerns doesn’t seem very wise either. That should still be discussed, even if this becomes the final version of the policy.
One small problem: People are now also using AI to generate summaries of their vibe coded garbage, to push them through checks.
i like how people exaggerated this into “oh no, KDE is s|op now”. I totally get the hate for greedy and overhyping ai corpos, but if this policy is a sign of slop, you a) most probably never coded anything in your life b) unaware that before ai-slop there was natural, human-produced™ slop and dumb stackoverflow copypasta that barely even worked.
It’s that humans cannot be trusted to not take shortcuts and AI has proven time and time again to be a literal gambling machine that uses persuasive writing techniques to convince you of things you wouldn’t otherwise think.
KDE is also fighting transparency which is terrible.
It’s not going to be shocking when KDE starts performing worse. If more than one person works on a project and you’re just hoping people use things responsibly, you’re dreaming.
Humans optimize everything and AI pretends to be the greatest optimization tool of all time while it spits spaghetti code it’s authors understand less of over time while it tells them "great idea! I’ll get to work right away!
you couldn’t trust humans to not take shortcuts long before the advent of ai. That’s the point of my previous comment.
KDE’s stance is literally “as long as the code is of sufficient quality and you’re able to take the responsibility over it, we don’t care which tools you were using along the way”. Policing people over what they’re (not) allowed to use never yielded positive results.
If anything, such policy allows less slop to slip through, than in any project with anti-ai policy, simply because the maintainers would be aware of the possibility, and thus would have to pay closer attention to the PR quality.
Finally, it’s an open source project. Even if anything sloppy slips past the eyes of maintainers, rather sooner than later it would be noticed by the community and fixed.
Which is obvious to you, me, and trust me when i say that it’s obvious to anybody who ever tried using ai for even the most minor coding tasks harder than webdev.