the BSDs in the AI Age

[George Rosamond]

I want to initiate a thread on the "BSDs and AI today."

A few things first.

There are many levels to this discussion, and for the sake of clarity
and sanity, please top posting. All replies should be inline.

This is useful:
https://subspace.kernel.org/etiquette.html#do-not-top-post-when-replying

I'm looking to do a presentation on this in the summer for NYC*BUG.
There hasn't been anything in our community which provides the
high-level overview of the impact of AI, covering things from the impact
on the BSD operating systems to the impact on $job, etc. Hopefully this
thread can provide some raw materials, and become an outlet for
individual experiences and more general views.

I initiated a similar fruitful (but private) discussion for another
open-source project, and think it's high-time for us to do the same on
a public list.

***

There's a few layers to this discussions. Note these are discussions
points, not "Yes" or "No" surveys.

* How are LLMs (big tech or otherwise) impacting $job now? Are you using
Claude Code or similar tools for day to day? Was it required or was it
your choice? Was there expectations from this tools in terms of
productivity, etc? This question raises the impact of AWS Bedrock/Kiro...

* Should BSD projects have explicit LLM-focused policies? Look at the
2nd point in the NetBSD "Commit Guidelines" at
https://www.netbsd.org/developers/commit-guidelines.html. OSS-Security
already discussed the issue with alleged CVEs discovered by people with
LLMs trying to stack their resume with credentials.

* How should the BSD projects themselves be using LLMs? Integration in
the shell (oh, please no...)? Porting of APIs for big tech LLMs?
Utilizing LLMs to discover bad code, CVEs, undiscovered vulnerabilities?

* How should individual developers and users consider LLMs as tools for
contributing to the BSDs and other open-source projects? I happily used
a big tech LLM to deal with an rc file for some very Linuxey software
wrapped up in systemd clutter.

Other relevant questions added to this thread are welcomed, including
references to other relevant public mailing list discussions.

g