Dear friends, I've spent the last two days discussing the topic of LLM contributions in detail with Julian at length over video. As the discussion over the last few weeks have shown that it's very hard to find agreement on a common policy, we have tried to outline what we consider a statement that covers at least both of our views. With Julian and I representing a fairly wide spectrum of the positions, we hope that this may provide a statement that many can subscribe to. We have tried to keep it short, and not get distracted by specificies of workflows, quality standards, and definitions of terms, which seem to distract from the core that we want to address. Respectfully, Julian and Moritz ## A shared statement on our environment in the face of LLMs As human-LLM interaction is becoming more common, we find ourselves debating not only our technical goals, but also our understanding of open source community and values. This is why we all agree that we want to participate in an environment... 1. that inspires the exchange of technical ideas and knowledge between humans 2. that is supportive and accessible to the point that no one should feel the need to use LLM in the first place 3. that facilitates building trust relationships with one another 4. that rewards technical excellence and authenticity 5. that demands all interactions to be genuine and respectful We recognize that using LLMs responsibly is challenging. Not only can they be used for abuse[^1][^2], but they may also cause the quality of communication and intellectual engagement to decline[^3]. There is an emerging body of scientific literature supporting these concerns about negative effects on psychological, cognitive, real-world performance, etc. We recommend everyone to familiarize themselves with the current state of research. Here are a few links for your consideration. * [How AI Impacts Skill Formation](https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.20245) * [AI Assistance Reduces Persistence and Hurts Independent Performance](https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.04721) * [From Future of Work to Future of Workers: Addressing Asymptomatic AI Harms for Dignified Human-AI Interaction](https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.21920) * [AI Competency Erosion: Understanding Expertise Decay](https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-032-11748-9_5) * [Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task](https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.08872) * [Investigating the Effects of LLM Use on Critical Thinking Under Time Constraints: Access Timing and Time Availability](https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.08849) _(This list does not claim to be comprehensive; it is merely meant to provide you with an initial stepping stone into the current research)._ Moreover we are especially concerned about their potential negative effects on open source communities[^4], human communication and collaboration. We strive to be an inclusive community and judge contributions on their merits. This includes the use of LLMs as long as it does not disturb our envisioned environment outlined earlier. We recognize that there are users and contributors of this project who would rather not interact with LLM generated content at all. To balance the preferences and self-determination of the diverse group of contributors, we require that the use of LLMs to generate content is clearly attributed as such, failure to do so may result in contributions to be rejected. We understand that this may not be satisfactory to everyone, since we cannot completely avoid exposure to LLM generated content. However, we will neither compromise our quality standards, nor allow any disruption of human-human interaction by the use of technology. Examples of inappropriate use are: - feeding someone's email into an LLM to generate an answer - creating automated LLMs written bug reports that a volunteer has to work through to determine if it has any value at all - generating large patches that take more time to review by the project than it took you to create We want this to be a project of human interaction, of shared curiosity and a beacon of engineering excellence. These are the shared values we stand by today as a project, and they may evolve along with our shared experiences and emerging scientific evidence over time. Julian Ospald Moritz Angermann -- [^1]: https://openai.com/index/disrupting-malicious-ai-uses/ [^2]: https://www.infoq.com/news/2026/02/ai-floods-close-projects/ [^3]: https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.06166 [^4]: https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.15494