DHH pushes back as Linux projects ban AI written contributions
Luddites, as far as the eye can see. It boggles the mind how you can love computers and not be amazed at what we've made them do. Harness the intelligence bloom for the good of mankind! Make computers better and more beautiful by using what they can now do to assist you!
Context
Open source projects are splitting over whether to accept code written with AI, which shapes how fast AI tools can contribute to shared software.
The elementary OS contributor policy bans contributions generated by LLMs and chatbots across code, documentation, issues and artwork, and the project recently reminded contributors that such pull requests will be closed without review. On October 7 The Register reported that System76 now requires COSMIC desktop contributors to declare their pull requests contain no LLM generated content. DHH, the creator of Ruby on Rails and Omarchy, answered the trend with two widely shared posts.
Deep dive
DHH's lead post quoted The Lunduke Journal's report that elementary OS had extended its AI ban to code, documentation, issues and artwork, and even to pull request descriptions. He called the reaction Luddites as far as the eye can see and urged developers to use what computers can now do to make software better.
In a second post he called the bans a mind virus spreading through parts of open source, arguing that code is good or bad regardless of whether a person or a model wrote it, and that projects should simply merge good code and reject bad code.
That second post quoted a claim that Guix had banned all AI contributions. The claim could not be confirmed: the Guix development mailing list shows that a restrictive proposal, GCD 008, was withdrawn on July 28 despite broad support because one member disapproved, and no newer adopted policy was found.
The Register's report shows how varied the rules are. COSMIC bans AI written code, comments and descriptions but lets contributors learn and find bugs with AI. GNOME Calendar does not allow LLM generated contributions, and GNOME Extensions rejects AI generated extensions. GNOME developer Michael Catanzaro argues the project must accept AI found bug reports, while Debian and the Linux kernel allow AI assisted work.
What to expect next
More projects are likely to publish explicit AI policies, and the GNOME debate over AI found bug reports is the one to watch next, since it involves a large desktop with many memory unsafe components.
Open questions include how projects can enforce a ban they cannot reliably detect, whether contributor declarations hold up, and whether a formal Guix policy emerges. DHH's own Omarchy, which uses AI agents to review pull requests, is a direct counter example.