The choices are oddly and not consistently worded. "Ban LLM contributions from Debian via Social Contract", "A cautious approach to generative AI", "Debian is created by humans" and "Avoid the use of LLM: climate destruction is a deal breaker" all in one list? Sounds like several people wrote them and did not agree on the form.
I care how they made it. Would you accept code made by forced labor? Prison labor? From every country/government? What if the code is stolen? What if the code is plagiarized? What if the author is going online and loudly harassing people and encouraging harassment of other maintainers?
There's so, so many reasons to understand and care about the how.
Tried to decipher this but seems a bit convoluted. If the Kernel now allows LLM code, then what will Debian do if they ban LLM code? Choice 7 and choice 8 seem pretty clear that the project simply can't continue under those circumstances.
> After the voting period there will be a record
of all the votes without the name of the voter. It will instead contain
a cryptographic hash. You will receive a secret after you have voted
that can be used to calculate that hash. This allows you to verify
that your vote is in the list. This secret is sent in an encrypted
mail.
I've always wanted this for mail-in voting. E.g. print a random secret on the voting form I receive per mail. Afterwards publish the complete vote-count on the web, with the choice and a hash of the secret. So I can check that my vote was recorded, and only once, and correctly.
I understand there might be a lot of reasons for why it could fail in practice, but it would be a start.
For me, the main reason that I'm against all high-tech voting solutions is that a less-than-gifted citizen must be able to check that, at least for their polling station:
- Their vote, and everyone else's, was counted exactly once.
- The number of ballots that are counted is the same as the number of people who voted.
- Votes are anonymous.
All that is easily done with a clear ballot box, a signing registry, and public counting. Adding technology to that just makes the process more difficult to trust IMO.
As for myself, you're going to have to convice me that the software + hardware that's running on election day is exactly conformant to its published source code (the source code is available, right?)
It's not secret to the administrator though, as they could know who was assigned what secret. I think it could work like: before voting, you go to an office where they verify your identity and let you randomly pick envelope containing unique number from a box. After voting all votes are published and you can verify your vote was counted, but nobody else knows your number.
Proposal A would of course be the best option, but requires a two thirds majority for... some reason. Proposals B, C, D, E are all defeatist policies that appeal to a "here to stay" narrative. Proposal G is potentially workable but has so many carve-outs to be practically useless, leaving only Proposal H as a workable policy if A fails to pass.
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[ 2.1 ms ] story [ 20.5 ms ] threadThere's so, so many reasons to understand and care about the how.
I've always wanted this for mail-in voting. E.g. print a random secret on the voting form I receive per mail. Afterwards publish the complete vote-count on the web, with the choice and a hash of the secret. So I can check that my vote was recorded, and only once, and correctly.
I understand there might be a lot of reasons for why it could fail in practice, but it would be a start.
- Their vote, and everyone else's, was counted exactly once.
- The number of ballots that are counted is the same as the number of people who voted.
- Votes are anonymous.
All that is easily done with a clear ballot box, a signing registry, and public counting. Adding technology to that just makes the process more difficult to trust IMO.
As for myself, you're going to have to convice me that the software + hardware that's running on election day is exactly conformant to its published source code (the source code is available, right?)
Nobody is stopping you, please go ahead.