Earlier I already noticed OP glossing over nuance when commenting about this.

Reading the blog linked here I really don't see any issue, esp. not of the "drunk with power" kind which seems to be a go-to for certain people as soon as something icky comes up.
Being "leader" of an OSS project is not fun. It's like herding cats. And the money probably isn't so hot either.
Your skepticism rocks, but please attack actual rich assholes instead.

AFAICS so far, KDE likes to discuss things even more than other OSS projects, including public brainstorming.

I hope they come to a good policy against AI, which is problematic not only from a developer's POV.
So far KDE still seem to be in the brainstorming phase though.

To round off, some key parts (which I fear will get misquoted/overblown) from this very article:

• Everyone agreed it (AI slop) was a problem, and that we don’t want that crap.
• There was less certainty about the best way to handle it socially.
• Several wished for an official policy so we didn’t all have to figure it out on our own. I proposed a set of draft guidelines making it quite clear that slop merge requests are unwanted, and can be ignored or closed. It received a generally positive reception.
• Another KDE developer requested that we workshop it somewhere more modern and capable.
• I got busy and didn’t do so.
• Several weeks later, various people on the internet discovered that a talk proposing “a lovable, sovereign, AI-native KDE” had been accepted at Akademy 2026 and created drama around it. [ Already then Nate replied that this was just one speaker of many and in no way representative of KDE as a whole ]
• Akademy happened, and the talk was given to what I’m told was a fairly chilly reception. The next day, a workshop was held about the topic, also receiving a chilly reception.
• Realizing this topic was not going away, later that day I re-opened a second draft of my LLM guidelines on invent.kde.org. KDE contributors began to discuss the draft proposal.
• Two people unknown to any KDE contributors appeared and began fighting with one another about the broader topic of the morality of AI, not the proposed guidelines.
• One of those people exposed the other person’s odious Twitter posts in an effort to discredit them.
• Later, the identity of the doxxed exposed person was verified, and they were also banned for their conduct outside of KDE being so unacceptable that people inside KDE did not want to associate with them.
• Someone else outside of KDE set up https://.com in an attempt to pressure KDE into banning LLMs. A bunch of people signed onto it, almost none of whom are known KDE contributors (I see one person I know in there).
• The topic was picked up on social media and the press with… varying levels of accuracy.
• The draft proposal was removed and the whole topic hidden.

It wasn't my intention to leave anything important out here.

edit:

But I was in a hurry when I wrote this.
I wanted to include/quote this post where Nate Graham states that simply forbidding AI-assisted contributions is no good because you cannot be 100% sure of any code not having been written with the help of AI.
Therefore such a roundabout rule makes no sense; instead one should ban the use of slop.
I am not a developer so I have to takes his word, but this makes a lot of sense to me.

The OP of that thread (who seems to be similarly inflamed as the OP of this one) then replied:

Even a policy that can’t be enforced very well is better than none. We are still making an ethical stand and we can ban obvious usage of the technology.

ngraham replied:

I disagree. Policies that can’t be enforced breed disrespect for the rules.

And once again I find myself agreeing.

That said, developers (and project leaders) should never forget the overall threat of AI, which goes well beyond software development. Like fucking our environment even more, and the people that live in it.

Whether KDE is willing to take such a political stance remains to be seen I guess? IDK what their track record is there.

I have since seen the proposal of a KDE AI policy - and no thanks to the "Nate Graham is bad" party in this thread. My takeaway:

• I personally believe that being against AI goes beyond just code. It's ethical, political, whatever you want to call it. AI sucks, quite literally, the life out of people and the ground they're living on.
• Unfortunately most FOSS projects concentrate more on code quality etc. in their AI policies, not on these overarching issues.
• KDE seems to be a little late to the party wrt AI policies written out
• Their proposal is just that atm and personally I applaude the transparent decision making process
• There are too many people who are understandably outraged about the whole issue, but go about opposing it in a bad way, distorting or obfuscating facts in favor of a more dramatic good vs bad narrative - as seen right here
• In the extreme this becomes indistinguishable from trolling. It's totally understandable that blog or repo owners shut hard-to-moderate comment sections down. If you're serious about this topic and having a nuanced discussion about it, there are places to do this; forums, for example.

"various people on the internet"

"Two people unknown to any KDE contributors"

"Someone else outside of KDE"

"A bunch of people [...] almost none of whom are known KDE contributors"

"A bunch of people mostly outside of KDE"

Geez, can you condescend your users any harder? Or, like me, people who want to continue recommending your shit to noobs?

Since his rise to power within the project (kind of around the 5 launch) I felt like Nate's vibe was more to cater to the suits than anything else so I don't find this surprising. I just hope common sense prevails and he can see he's fucking it up.

How about extending some benefit of doubt to project like KDE? It has an excellent track record which can't be said for the likes like: Ubuntu, RedHat, Omarchy (duh), Mozilla, even Linux with GPLv2 vs GPLv3

Dear god the condescending tone. The passive-aggressive edit to the statement so that it still says the Nazi was "doxxed". The inability neither apologize nor correct their bad behaviour (the original reporter is IIRC still banned). The between-the-lines insistence on "please be kind (to centrists and nazis)". The insistence that making decisions on AI usage does not involve ethics.

Reminds me of the times when Fedora was exclusionary and racist to South Americans (dunno if they still are, lost them long ago).

KDE went to the trash like, woosh. This fast.

Yah, the last is way too much to ask of places like Lemmy, that's for sure.