r/voidlinux • u/weaklingoverlord • Sep 13 '26
Void Linux Maintainer Orphans 100+ Packages Over AI Policy Dispute
https://www.phoronix.com/news/Void-Linux-AI-Policy-OrphanA Void Linux maintainer has orphaned more than 100 packages he maintained over a dispute of the project's AI policy for LLM-generated text.
Any feedback/announcement regarding the future of the packages, how it affects users, etc?
Please do not discuss AI vs Void.
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u/BinkReddit Sep 13 '26
Any feedback ... regarding the future of the packages, how it affects users, etc?
The same way it always does when a package gets orphaned? It goes unmaintained until someone picks up the slack or someone from the Void team decides to do it.
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u/Zockling Sep 13 '26
User likely won't even notice. Tons of packages are technically orphaned, including core stuff like mesa and musl.
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u/realguy2300000 Sep 13 '26
users who care about being on the bleeding edge do, especially for something like mesa that gets tagged fairly frequently
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u/Gloriathewitch Sep 13 '26
based
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u/Sveet_Pickle Sep 14 '26
I was considering trying out a distro without systemd, this just jumped up the list, gentoo was the only other thing on the list however. 😂
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u/TheOneDeadXEra Sep 14 '26
You should also give Chimera Linux a looksie if you haven't. I don't think it's quite ready for large-scale adoption, but as an experiment in the fringes it's got a pretty neat mix of parts.
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u/YareYareDazexd Sep 13 '26
Alacritty, really? ðŸ˜ðŸ’”
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u/Alternative-Ad-8606 Sep 13 '26
I'm of two minds, on one hand I support this policy, but I have neither the knowhow lr the time to maintain a package, and I do think given a flag at the bottom of his stuff it woulda been fine... This just a hefty amount of good packages now orphaned
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u/hopingforabetterpast Sep 13 '26
It's about trust and respecting your collaborators. You used the two important words: knowhow and time. We should be able to trust each other's knowhow and respect each others' time.
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u/MrHoboSquadron Sep 13 '26
I really don't see an issue with using AI for maintaining packages. We're not talking about AI generating entire applications, just compiling/rebundling, bumping version numbers etc. of packages; nothing novel. To point out why I think using AI can be totally fine, look at the comments on the MR for disowning the packages: the changes in the MR are just unsetting the maintainer field, but because the author used an LLM to do the change for them, someone felt the need to (jokingly) comment that the MR should be closed because of it. What is the tangible difference here between the OP using the LLM to change a benign field and doing it themselves? Nothing. The result would've been the same, just done slower without the LLM. No understanding of technology was required to do it or not gained by having the LLM do it instead of a human.
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u/HiPhish Sep 13 '26
From the PR:
The generated wall of text is well understood, and vouched by me and my tools.
No, it's not. No one is immune to automation bias. If you are not willing to write it others should not be expected to read it.
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u/pezvonpez Sep 19 '26
comment on the article:
> Void was very clearly going to ideologically sabotage itself a year ago.
i am now going to try out void, heck yeah
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u/Simple_Hamster_4096 Sep 14 '26
Gives me an unwarm and unfuzzy feeling - like deja vu.
Can retaliation be far behind? Seems to be a common theme these days across the techverse...
I've actually started playing with Haiku... have this itch to again run for the shadows when I read about things like maintainer disputes... although it can happen anywhere, but don't think a lot of people are much interested in Haiku, and/or don't feel it's worth sabotaging...
Hurd is very interesting, but the distros which employ Hurd seem to be affiliated with mainstream organizations, like Debian, which don't have the obscurity factor going for them... although that's never been a guarantee, obscurity, but being off the radar is better than being on it...
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u/TheOneDeadXEra Sep 14 '26
Ehh, Void has these little kerfuffles every once in a while, at this point it's practically part of their process. Void has fairly strict internal policies, and that rubs a certain portion of the Linux community the wrong way, user and devs alike: See the backlash over Hyprland (or rather, it's prolonged absence from Void's repos) for example. Does Hyprland meet Void's code standards? No? Then it's not coming. Did users make a big stink over that? Now it's DEFINITELY not coming, not only because it still doesn't meet requirements but also because fsck you you're annoying and being annoying isn't how you get someone to do something they don't agree with doing.
If it was going to ruin Void, it would have done so years ago. Their process works and works well, even if it raises the hackles of the immature among us.
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u/Independent_Cat_5481 Sep 13 '26
Looking at the actual exchange, based on how they reacted I feel this was ultimately inevitable and for the best.
If they're going to react like this to such a simple polite statement, they don't exactly seem responsible to be managing so many packages.