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Debian and the sirens

Joey Hess · 29 Aug 2026

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  1. What LLMs in Debian development will do, I fear, is eliminate any incentive to scrap boilerplate or reform policies that require a lot of other senseless human effort.
  2. So they will make Debian even more firmly what it is, and ever less likely to explore what it could become.
  3. If they succeeed, Debian will become dependent on proprietary software for development, while still needing people in the loop, doing even less appealing scut-work.
  4. I could speak of other harms, but that alone is enough that I'm sure that, if I had not left the project twelve years ago, I would be leaving it soon.
  5. Debian has always been more than the sum of its policies, not just a ship, but a crew.

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