Elementary OS bans AI code, docs and artwork; DHH hits back
The Linux distro's ban now reaches as far as pull request descriptions.
Elementary OS has extended its ban on AI to cover "code, documentation, issues, and artwork", according to The Lunduke Journal. The same post says the Linux distribution has even banned the use of AI to write pull request descriptions.
DHH's first reaction to the report was one line. "Hard to know whether to laugh or cry." He followed up with a longer swing, calling the position Luddism and arguing that people who love computers should be amazed by what the machines can now do rather than fencing them off.
Hard to know whether to laugh or cry.
Review by origin, not by quality
What makes this more than a forum argument is where it lands. A contributor policy is not a preference, it is a rule that binds the people who show up with a patch. A ban that reaches pull request descriptions is a ban on how a contributor drafts prose about their own work, which is about as far from the merged diff as a policy can get and still be enforced against you.
That is the shape of the disagreement. One side wants contributions judged by where they came from, because provenance is the thing they can state as a rule up front. The other side, DHH's side here, wants them judged by whether the code is any good, and treats the origin question as noise. Neither source argues the quality case with evidence. This is a policy and a reaction to a policy, not a study.
For working engineers, the practical question is whether your own open source contributions are now subject to origin rules you have to attest to, and how a project would even check. Nobody in either post says how Elementary OS plans to detect AI-written code, documentation or pull request text, and nobody says what happens to a contributor who is caught. For now it is a stated policy and a one line verdict from DHH.
It boggles the mind how you can love computers and not be amazed at what we've made them do.