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.
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:
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.
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.
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).
I do not think LLMs can be “just a tool” as many claim.
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.
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
[1] I found https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-83911-5_8 and https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-90573-5_7. The first some seems awesome and finds that ChatGPT code for small, one-function–type tasks (somewhat more pragmatic than Leetcode but only somewhat) was better than human code from GitHub in aggregate. I would wait for more studies before going to conclusions. The second one says “delves into” in the abstract and has 32 pages so even though I’m guessing it wasn’t AI-generated I ain’t reading allatritenow
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.
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.
Contributing is an act of community. Anybody seeking to contribute should take time to learn, be thoughtful, and understand the needs of the project.
My advise to a student would be: don’t rush to contribute. Learning and being thoughtful is the right foundation. An LLM won’t help. In fact, being able to generate code beyond your means of understanding might make you a burden.
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.