General Resolution: LLM usage in Debian

Summary

General Resolution: LLM usage in Debian Discussion Period: 2026-07-24 Matthias Geiger [werdahias@debian.org] [text of proposal] Johannes Schauer Marin Rodrigues [josch@debian.org] [mail] Antoine Le Gonidec [vv221@debian.org] [mail] Simon Richter [sjr@debian.org] [mail] David Bremner [bremner@debian.org] [mail] Pierre-Elliott Bécue [peb@debian.org] [mail] Ian Jackson [iwj@debian.org] [mail] Amin Bandali [bandali@debian.org] [mail] Choice 1 Preamble This proposal aims to expressly forbid any contributions to Debian written with the use or assistance of large language models (LLMs) or other generative AI tools. The scope of this GR is (non-exhaustive): Debian source packages Official Debian project software, such as lintian Debian web resources Documentation and translations added by Debian contributors Official communication from Debian It does not include: Upstream projects using LLMs for development AI-related software Upstream patches/security fixes etc. Rationale Debian has a well-earned reputation for stability. This stability is crucial to Debian's position in the free software ecosystem. It is our belief that widespread LLM usage comes from the "move fast, and break things" attitude that, while common in many parts of this industry, is contrary to what makes Debian Debian, and is inappropriate for Debian contributors. In practical terms, LLM usage raises the following concerns: 1. Copyright LLM output has very unclear legal status: it may be possible to copyright on its own merits, or not; it may be affected by all of the licenses and copyrights in the training data, or not. Debian Policy and the DFSG require absolute clarity for licensing and copyright[1][2]. Software and other contributions written conventionally by humans with unclear copyright or license status are not allowed in Debian; LLM output should not have a special exception to this. 2. Quality LLM output has many well-known problems with accuracy.[3][4][5] A LLM can never "know" if its output is c...