r/linuxaudio • u/JGHFunRun LMMS • Jul 21 '26

Looking for community input on rules

A user just DM’d me looking for clarifications regarding self-promotion and AI.

I have created rule 3 and updated rule 4, but I would like community input:

For self-promotion, I think the following things are most important to consider (including if there should be extra rules for such things):

  1. Non-softwar

e things such as blogs, newspapers, other online communities, etc.

  1. Non-gratis (ie paid) FOSSoftware
  2. Should promotion of songs/albums/etc. be allowed

As for considerations for content-generating AI (eg. LLMs, image generators, etc.):

  1. AI disclosure will be required.
  2. I have provisionally required that all AI-generated content be free of cost
  3. Should genAI be allowed at all?
  4. If so, are there any other requirements that should be added?
7 Upvotes

90% Upvoted

13 comments sorted by

12

u/thcsquad Jul 21 '26

“⁠Should promotion of songs/albums/etc. be allowed”

One pattern I like for this from other musician subreddits is a recurring thread like “here’s what I made with Linux this week/month”. It generally would get pinned so it’s easy for people to find. If anybody wants to promote their music, they put it in that thread.

linux audio is probably a bit less busy than other musician subreddits so a monthly pinned thread might make more sense than weekly.

3

u/JGHFunRun LMMS Jul 21 '26

Yea, that’s sounds like a good idea

8

u/mimrock Jul 21 '26 edited Jul 21 '26

Banning or limiting promotion of anything paid is important (and a great idea), or there is a financial incentive to disrupt the subreddit. I had to leave multiple subreddits because AI-written SaaS ads flooded them. The app having to be under FOSS license without strings attached (for example paid cloud services, ads, etc.) sounds like a reasonable policy. I would add a manual (i.e. modmail) exception for well-established projects.

Regarding LLMs. Everyone (meaning every developer) is using them. Currently almost all actively developed software has some level of AI input, including the linux kernel. In the very close future, 100% LLM output is going to be the norm (this is not speculative, it's the norm already in many places and projects).

I have looked back the app promotion posts in this sub. Many are 100% AI. There are multiple upvoted posts here from the last few days about seemingly useful apps where the UI screams AI and even the README and the post(!!) was written by AI.

It's not a war that can be won. You can get some people to lie about AI contribution, but that's all.

I would request people not to write the post with AI and would delete or ban the most impudent offenders based on pangram (relatively good AI-detector with very low, but still non-zero false positive rate), but that's the absolute maximum that is not a naive dream.

If vibe-coded apps still flood the sub (like they do now, and it's going to get worse), there are a few ways to limit the influx.

  1. r/selfhosted has a very smart rule. You can only post apps that are older than 3 months. So Vibecoding Vincent can only use the sub for promotion if he is still interested in that app 3 months later. This sub could borrow that rule
  2. Limit app suggestions one day per week, but I feel like it would limit a lot of interesting content too.

EDIT: +1 idea that came to my mind a bit later is to limit app promotion (or all kind of posting) to people with a meaningful history on the sub (for example 50 comment karma or something).

1

u/danja 4d ago

Older apps is a great idea. Everyone using AI now, that would be a silly barrier. I'm not sure about AI-generated posts though. Yes, people do post some absolute drivel, but for folks where English isn't their first language, accessibility issues etc, a block seems a bad move. Only solution I can see is that mod reads everything thoroughly and checks with friends & family.

8

u/[deleted] Jul 21 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/JGHFunRun LMMS Jul 21 '26

Like I said, talking about non-FOSS software is unrestricted. I just don’t think specifically promoting it is good for our sub (ex. a non-FOSS audio program announcing a port would be befitting of the sub)

3

u/[deleted] Jul 21 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/JGHFunRun LMMS Jul 22 '26

I think you’ll agree with my enforcement plans then; your Cubase example would absolutely be allowed

1

u/emezeske Aug 26 '26

I recently ported my commercial softsynth Anukari (https://anukari.com) to Linux, and I have wanted to share a simple post to announce that here, but the guidelines as I read them did not permit that, as it's promotion. I'm curious how you feel about that, as there's not a lot of non-FOSS software that tries hard to support Linux, and when something shows it it seems to me that it would be of interest to the community. Obviously if I started posting frequently about the software that would absolutely be annoying, but some new product announcements seem like they might be good? (The AI-slop spam is a whole thing though...)

2

u/JGHFunRun LMMS Aug 26 '26

As I said, announcing a port is not considered a “promotion” and is allowed

2

u/emezeske Aug 28 '26

Ah, cool, I misunderstood. Thanks! (Also I like the suggestion from a comment above about the 3-month-old rule, it seems like a smart idea.)

2

u/JGHFunRun LMMS Aug 28 '26

Yea, I will probably be implementing that

1

u/mimrock Jul 21 '26

" It's nice to be able to talk about and promote Bitwig, Reaper, Modartt because they've taken good care of us."

Maybe there could be a "notability" requirement for non-FOSS apps. So it would be ok to talk about a non-FOSS products with two years of history and existing users, but not about an app I have written yesterday.

5

u/northrupthebandgeek Jul 22 '26

Re: self-promotion, a weekly “here's what I made” thread would be a good idea. I like seeing/hearing what people come up with using Linux audio tools, and having a weekly thread for it is a great way to keep that stuff discoverable without flooding the subreddit.

Re: AI, as long as there's disclosure I have no problem with it.

5

u/real_anthonii Jul 22 '26

No AI music, at all imo. It's too easy to create and could flood the sub with slop.

As for self promo, there's so few of us making music on Linux that I think allowing for us to share what we're making with linux is pretty cool.

1

u/danja 4d ago

You are in a sticky period as a mod, I don't envy you. There will be loads of self-promotional slop. But personally I wouldn't block things based on the use of AI because any sane coder is taking advantage of it now. I'd put the bar at pay-for. If it's open source, that is a good share. If not, it's selling (limited benefit, dull). Blog links etc. I'd consider sharing info, no?

2

u/StonedPhysicist 2d ago

I would really like to see less AI slop - so much of it looks nice and shiny and then will absolutely get forgotten about and left unpatched the second the "creator" gets bored. I'm also not a programmer so yeah maybe everyone else here who's already in that world will feel it's inevitable and they can no longer do without it, but as a rank-and-file "I just like Linux and I like being songs sometimes" user, I would rather not contribute to it.

That all said:

  1. Non-software posts are probably fine if they're notable.
  2. Yes if it works on Linux. I mostly use Renoise, and it's a gem for those of us who foolishly learned to write with trackers :) I don't mind if something isn't gratis so long as it's got reasonable demo terms, and if it's good I have no issue paying. Though obviously gratis/libre is wonderful.
  3. "Yes but don't take the piss". I like the idea of the monthly thread!

On AI:

  1. 100%
  2. 100%
  3. See above. Would rather not, but I'll leave that up to you.
  4. I think the "if you used AI come back in three months" rule would be helpful if nothing else to weed out the most egregious slop

Thanks for asking us!