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.
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)
Welp glad I’m not using KDE
Guess I’ll stay on xfce…
Damn… I guess I’ll have to start trying out more DEs again to find something to switch to.
Niri is solid. If you’re into it.
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.
Quite annoying. As an RHEL user. I reject AI.
Well, fuck.
Any viable alternatives, or should I switch to BSD? (Gnome obviously doesn’t count, it’s designed for tablets, not desktops).
If you want to get away from LLM assisted code your best bet is NetBSD, with an older version of an X11 DE , using an older version of Firefox with JavaScript turned off.
If you do this you are basicly fully avoiding LLM assisted code. Be sure to check every thing you install though. Or use only software versions from before 2023.
BSD has a libertarian energy to its culture, so I suspect they will be vibing a lot too.
AFAIK NetBSD is explicitly rejecting AI contributions.
That and OpenBSD’s Theo de Raadt is rejecting LLM code based on copyright arguments (not “respect author” but rather “we get sued” kind of point), here’s an example (click “next in thread” a bunch of times if you want).
Though back in 2001 he claimed the songs on the CDs were “as free as everything else” (no), but like meh.
Check out the options listed here: https://slrpnk.net/comment/24475952
GNOME is great if you use Dash to Panel.
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.
So when will we ban code snippets? And autocoplete? Actually, lets go back to punch cards already!
I’m seriously getting sick and tired of this topic. AI is a tool, if you don’t like it, don’t use it, but let others do what they want. I hate vibecoders as much as I hate full anti-AI haters since both are equally wrong. AI is a powerful tool and the next step for assisted coding, but that’s it, do not let it do all the work and just allow it to work on it’s own without double-checking what it is actually doing. If you prefer to type everything yourself, letter by letter, go ahead. If you found an AI that produces perfect output that doesn’t need any adjustment/corrections, send me a link. If you have no idea what you’re doing, I do not want your code on my pc, no matter if you wrote it yourself or let an AI generate it for you and anything in-between. It’s that simple. Or at least it should be.
And if the environment is your biggest concern, LM Studio is free, so is Qwen, Gemma, Mistral, GPT-OSS and a ton of other models that you can run locally on your PC. You will need a somewhat powerful PC and some more patience than with the top models running on almost unlimited resources in a datacenter, but they get the job done eventually nontheless. The job of assisting you, that it, no vibecoding! They’ll break your stuff even faster if not kept in check.
AI is a tool
There is no such thing as “just a tool”.
Even so, some technology (like the examples of “autocomplete” you give) are effectively harmless to anyone else. But some technology is harmful to others even if those others don’t use it.
if you don’t like it, don’t use it, but let others do what they want.
I’m happy to let others do what they want where it harms no one else.
LLMs as currently deployed are not that. Their use, by anyone, is harmful to us, and we need to resist it for the sake of everyone.
The first article has really interesting views, although it is a bit too philosophical for my taste. “Tools influence/change people and the environment they are used in”, sure can’t argue with that. But change is nothing to be afraid of and should be embraced, although you’d have to consider if change happens for the better or worse. And I see AI more like a knife in this situation: I can use a knife to slice food into smaller pieces that are easier to eat or to stab people. With great power comes great responsibility and a bit of self control topped up with rational thinking helps with the decision how to use what you have available in the best way possible. I will not refuse to touch a knive because I could hurt myself or others and I will force restraint upon myself to not give in to the intrusive thought of running up to people stabbing everyone in my vicinity. The same way I will not refuse to use AI because I could get too lazy to do my job and just vibe code everything while endangering every system that runs my code, I’ll force myself to do the right thing and use it to help me with my projects while keeping a close eye on every change it makes, validating that the output is safe, actually working and performing well. That’s my interpretation of the article at least, it may not be “just” a tool, but it is a tool, and just like every tool, is should only be used by people that know how to use it. If I missed the point or misinterpreted it then I’d like to reiterate that I’m not very good with philosophical metaphors.
The second article, which is written with AI assistance itself, sweet irony, is a bit too much for me to counter-argue every point written there, and I refuse to also use AI for this task in a similar fashion than the author even tho it would make the task easier. In summary, most points seem to not apply to coding at all or only apply to vibecoding, which I will not try to argument against since I agree that AI is not flawless and has its dangers (like pretty much everything else in life) and I too hate vibecoders. If you use AI as I described, as a tool that assists you, most counterpoints are non-issues. To highlight some of the more important mentioned concerns: Code Quality will not suffer if you review the output carefully and manually fix issues that made its way into the output, De-skilling of Developers might be of concern if you really leave most of the tasks up to AI but this once again leans more towards vibecoding than AI assisted coding, if you still write the majority of code yourself and you carefully check the output of the generated parts you will still have to understand what is going on any why it is written the way it is. One argument that I have conflicting views with is “Intellectual Property and Licensing” but this is a topic I could start an argument even outside of AI context. On a smaller scale, one example I like to bring up is that there are only so many ways you can sort an array and usually there’s always only one fastest/most efficient way, so should we allow this algorithm to be copyrighted/licensed in the first place? On a higher level, let’s look at the video games industry, if game mechanics are patented like Nintendo is famous for, it usually only hurts the industry as a whole, especially with more trivial things. And where should one draw the line? Where does inspiration stop and code theft start? And can you even claim ownership for your product after you probably also got lots of code from projects on Github or snippets from StackOverflow? That’s why most of my projects are open source as well, I took from the wider coding community so now it is my turn to give back as well, learn and take from me like I learned and took from you. But I think this topic by itself is very subjective and there are lots of opinions on the matter. To get back to the AI context, I don’t know how much of a difference it makes if the AI now takes your code and a ton of code from other people, then mashes it together into a different shape so that it fits my project or if I take just yours and adjust it myself using my skills and experience. One thing I do acknowledge and criticize is that the AI companies not only never asked for permission, but also never financially (or otherwise) compensated the creators of the training data while trying to charge you for using the service AIs provide, which is why I never paid for AI, neither for tokens nor via a subscription. You got the data for free, I use the AI for free. And at the same time, I may have “stolen” code in my works, but my work is also open source so feel free to “steal” it back.
the policy in question:
The golden rule for LLM usage in KDE is Don’t be lazy:
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Don’t try to use a tool to replace your own judgment, interpersonal communication, or learning process.
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Don’t take unsustainable shortcuts.
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Don’t avoid growing as a person.
The result will be poor-quality work that eventually becomes someone else’s problem.
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.
Using an LLM to generate contributions
KDE follows a “human in the loop” principle: you must be making decisions and adjustments beyond mere prompting. The output must express your unique humanity in some way.
- Don’t be a “meat proxy”. For example:
- Don’t submit throwaway LLM-created changes as a “first draft or proof-of-concept for maintainers to improve”.
- Don’t submit “vibe-coded” changes you don’t understand and couldn’t make yourself.
- Don’t disclose LLM usage as a way of trying to excuse the potential errors or poor quality of a contribution that you haven’t put much effort into.
- Don’t add “Assisted-by: [some LLM]” tags to your commits; it’s just free advertising for the LLM’s provider.
(emphasis original, except for the fourth bullet point)
One small problem: People are now also using AI to generate summaries of their vibe coded garbage, to push them through checks.
Using an LLM to generate text
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.
emphasis mine
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.
Sounds pretty reasonable to me. Don’t go saying “well chatgpt said it”, no, you are responsible for it.
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.
[…] AI pretends to be the greatest optimization tool of all time […]
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.
This seems fine to me, it’s all they can really do since banning AI entirely just isn’t possible; someone could use it and submit very high quality code and no one would know AI was involved.
And if its very high quality, does it matter?
There are more concerns beyond the quality of the code itself, such as the ones I listed here
This seems fine
“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.
LLMs are great for rubberducking and diagnosis, forensics, and the like.
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You may only contribute your time building the product I use for free in a manner I approve of.
guess its time to move my desktop off of kde.
this is a pretty big change for me because it has been my default desktop enviroment since i first got into linux
Damn. I was thinking of switching to one of the KDE distros. That’s out the window now.
I find the proposed policy very nuanced and generally useful. It’s not banning LLM usage but still prohibiting mindless vibe-coded contributions. I don’t see an issue and your post seems to be blowing this out of proportion.
Nuance? We don’t know what that is. Ban everything we don’t agree with! *grabs pitchfork*
Do people not have humor in this community?
No. Always serious. We don’t know what irony is.
It makes no distinction between self-hosted LLMs or Corportate LLMs, and disregards the dangers of using LLM code in FLOSS projects due to copyright concerns and the environmental and social damage corporate AI causes. For more details:
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Simply using an AI that’s run on a corporate data centers encourages the construction of yet more data centers, with all of the environmental/climate negatives they bring, as well as local harms they induce on the people living near them, such as increased electricity rates.
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Using corporate AI directly helps the financial situations of those giant corporations (by boosting usage/user numbers, they are able to attract more investment capital), most of which are ran by right-wing CEOs who are more than willing to collaborate with and fund fascist governments to ensure that they are not regulated in search of both maximum profits. Some of these companies, such as Nvidia, Palantir and Oracle, genuinely appear to be seeking to use these tools for what would previously be considered crackpot conspiracy theory levels of public control and surveillance.
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I’m wary of the potential effects of AI usage resulting in declining or stagnating critical thinking based on some preliminary studies (example 1, example 2).
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I do not think LLMs can be “just a tool” as many claim.
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99% of LLMs (the ones virtually everyone use) are trained on copyrighted code that is incompatible with GPL licensed projects. LLMs have a 3 to 10% chance to unknowingly reproduce the copyrighted code perfectly, introducing legal plagiarism into an open-source project, which could easily open up the developers to being sued in the future if companies scanned open source repos for copyright violations.
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Many courts are ruling that LLM generated code cannot be copyrighted at all, meaning that it also cannot be legally made GPL, losing the protections from corporate exploration the GPL normally grants. https://fsfe.org/news/2026/news-20260825-01.html
So, the broke CS students that want to help in their favourite DE while using LLMs to save time on their tight schedule should buy some overpriced homelab server before being able to contribute, is that it?
No, they should manually code to help with their studies, like we have for generations. What do you think we did before AI? Have more time in the day?
Its so unbelievably simple: don’t turn on the coal burning sycophant machine. Read a book or something. If you arent passionate enough to do something manually, i dont want your automatic contributions.
deleted by creator
You make it sound like FLOSS hasn’t been able to function for the last 30 years without code plagiarizing LLMs.
Do you think the whole endeavor will just up and collapse without using fascist owned AI?
No, FOSS won’t die without AI, this was never a possibility.
The real problem is that the ““AI”” industry is forcing us to take a choice: create policies to deal with it, or drown in the noise. This what an AI policy serves, to filter out the noise they created.
The broke CS student that neither has money nor time shouldn’t be contributing.
What the fuck dude? This is classism at it’s finest
There’s no classism about this. You either contribute with labor or with money. The dev team could’ve already consulted an LLM themselves if that’s what they wanted. Meat proxies are useless.
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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).
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.
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.
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
Do we have a list of desktops that ban AI?
https://codeberg.org/ethical-foss/open-slopware#desktop-environments
https://codeberg.org/ethical-foss/open-slopware#window-managers
tl;dr: Lumina, Lumina NG, and GNOME (not mentioned) are good choices of DE; bspwm, River, Sway, and Openbox are good choices of WM. The two options in bold have anti-AI policies, while the rest are simply untainted. Openbox is safer than the rest, as it has been feature-complete since 2010, and therefore only gets occasional patches.
Niri should join that list since this recent commit: https://github.com/niri-wm/niri/commit/7256ccf6274a1f953c6987ade34ea1c0e4944c27
Good to see that. I was sceptical because literally ~2 days ago I saw a LLM gen’d PR not be outright rejected and the lead dev requested deletion unnecessary comments which meant they were open to the merge. Seeing how the change came yesterday makes far more sense.
E: Seems like 1 hour (E2: ago*) they even commented on the PR about the new policy: https://github.com/niri-wm/niri/pull/3246#issuecomment-5755531477
BSD.
Linux has reasonable use of AI permitted.
This list contains the only known DE’s that openly reject AI. Basically just a couple window managers.
Pretty much every major full blown DE accepts or uses AI. Gnome and Cinnamon have no official stances
Yeah, but GNOME developers mostly dislike AI, so the project could be considered to be at a lower risk of contamination.
It definitely seems like one of the better options for the full fledged DE’s.
On a related note, while looking through that new list, it lists Sway as a non-AI alternative, but as of a couple weeks ago, this doesn’t looks promising: https://github.com/swaywm/sway/issues/9272
Conveniently utilizing the hardships that Kenyans face or random ethical concerns about climate change as your motivating factor while being beneficiaries of Françafrique and modern famines in Africa is not a serious position, it’s borderline racist.
Lmao i guess we’re racist now for having ethical concerns.
Really unfortunate, sway was my favourite wm, but even without ai slop, I’m not just gonna keep using it after they call me racist.
That doesn’t look great, but the code still seems clean: https://slopscan.ava.pet/repo/https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Fswaywm%2Fsway/master
Perhaps for now. Personally I’d be hesitant to invest in learning Sway’s keyboard shortcuts and workflow if they’re going to be pro-AI long term.
