The ensloppification of D is a grave mistake

[Adam Wilson]

On Friday, 3 July 2026 at 10:55:19 UTC, solidstate1991 wrote:
> On one hand, this creates a legal minefield for us, possibly 
> forcing us into a lawsuit, or to relicense Phobos, ending with 
> relicensing every later D applications. On the other hand, it 
> can help to erode the social contract around open source.
>

IANAL, but yes, there is a possibility of a legal issues ahead 
for LLM's. However, I would ask, do you not think that some of 
the best legal minds in the world have spent untold numbers of 
hours asking all these questions already? With the benefit of 
being actual legal scholars?

I also think you seriously underestimate how conservative the 
legal departments at tech corps tend to be. If I may share a 
story from my time at Microsoft:

I wanted to add an OSS library to our project. It was one of the 
licenses Microsoft allows, solved a huge problem for my team, and 
most importantly was already used extensively inside Microsoft on 
other teams. I needed my bosses approval, his bosses approval, 
and once I had those, I had to spend a day completing 
paperwork... For a library that Microsoft already used internally.

That is how risk-averse the average corporate legal department is.

Do you really think a legal department would allow a 
multi-trillion dollar company to blindly run into the biggest 
potential legal minefield in decades without first having at 
least spent a few man-decades of time figuring out all the ways 
to NOT step on a mine?

There is one potential risk vector for Phobos I can see, and that 
is someone being sued for using Phobos in their product. This is 
possible, however, there are no such lawsuits currently in 
progress. All LLM related lawsuits at the moment are targeted at 
the tools themselves. Thus the risk remains entirely theoretical 
at present.

I am not saying that their are **NO** risks, but what I am saying 
that you are most likely significantly over-estimating the legal 
risk here.

Again, IANAL.

I would note that the biggest OSS organization in the world by 
number of active devs, the Linux Foundation, is not only actively 
incorporating large volumes of LLM generated code into the Linux 
kernel, they are considering [removing all LLM attribution 
requirements](https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-AI-Attribution-Again), because realistically, nobody actually cares how the code was created, only that the code meets their quality metrics. If the LF is legally unconcerned then I see no reason why an org as small and penniless as D should be more concerned.

> I therefore demand to stop adopting LLM usage for the 
> development of the standard library at least, but I would be 
> extra thankful if the D Language Foundation could do a 180 
> degree turn on LLM adoption.

I am going to be blunt. There is a sort of naive hauteur required 
to make such a demand.

Your post approaches this topic as though, we the community, must 
immediately acquiesce to your demand without any further 
consideration of the topic. As best I can tell you are making 
this demand because you have determined that your position is the 
only valid moral/ethical/legal position and any further 
discussion on the merits is therefore rendered moot. This is a 
highly unprofessional way to approach a deeply sensitive topic as 
it presumes that you, and those with whom you agree, are the sole 
arbiters of what is moral/ethical/legal and all other positions 
are *prima facie* immoral/unethical/illegal because you have 
determined it to be so.

Instead of making demands, I would strongly encourage you to 
engage in the discourse on the topic with an open mind and a 
learner's heart.

You may of course choose to leave, and there are a handful of 
languages that may meet your requirements. But if the D community 
chooses to allow LLM's then that is the community's choice and 
you do not have the right to demand otherwise.

Which gets to my last point. In my opinion, your demand of the 
DLF is misplaced. For the entire duration of my time in the D 
community, the community has always determined the direction of 
the DLF, and not the other way around. Therefore it is the 
community to whom you should be directing your demand. Not the 
DLF.

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Nothing in this post represents or is intended to represent the 
official position of the DLF. These are my thoughts, and my 
thoughts alone, on this topic.