This AI policy is so utterly backwards and stupid I don't even have a nicer way of saying it.

After reading the web page, I am left with some questions unanswered,

* Is it a goal for AlpineBSD to run on native hardware, or is it intended for containers (a major use-case for Alpine itself)?

* For users who want to avoid AI-generated code, why run this rather than netbsd itself?

If the team want to attract interest, they should give more context.

The mission is unclear. The team could address this by stating goals and milestones on the front page.

There is a link to a tool s6 on the page. The description of that tool opens with a circular definition. It would be clearer if it stated why it exists in the opening paragraph. Near the bottom it talks about "One of the design goals of s6-frontend". It would be better to state all of the design goals.

The whole "as little AI code as possible" is tribalism.

I want software that is brilliant and well audited, no matter who or what produced it.

No AI guarantees nothing, especially if it's a C codebase like netbsd, why not also join the rust tribe then?

Neat project. One thing I don't see covered: is everything going to be statically linked like it is on Alpine Linux? Is statically linking libc advisable on a NetBSD kernel? I know (unlike Linux) on FreeBSD the kernel ABI can change every major release, but I'm not familiar with NetBSD's approach.

Great website, great AI policy. The two are probably related.

Ok so it's "AI free". But why? It doesn't justify the decision but just assumes you will understand the reasoning. I have to say: I don't. For example they are pinning binutils, gcc, and gdb to the last version they know does not have LLM generated code. I assume this means they will not be able to accept any upstream patches, but instead have to take over maintenance of those packages themselves for the forseeable future, effectively meaning development on those will stop for the purposes of AlpineBSD. Seems stupid, to me.

Interesting to watch the rapid fragmentation of FOSS into “hard” anti-AI, AI-neutral-to-discouraged, AI-supplemented, and AI-forward camps, akin to the early GPL vs BSD wars. Suddenly I don’t see as many complaints about licensing, and some of the die-hard GPL stans are silently dropping that position as Linux adopts AI-supplemented development.

On one hand it’s unfortunate, because it hypothetically dilutes developer efforts, but on the other hand the most extreme groups already had incompatible personalities and weren’t working well together. This self-sorting may actually result in a better cadence and less energy wasted on arguing.