Flathub, by the most popular (effectively only) repository for Flatpak applications, has changed its policies to include a strict ban on “AI” use for both application submissions as well as the application code itself.
This policy applies to both the application being submitted to Flathub and the Flathub submission itself, including the manifest, metadata, patches, build scripts, and pull request. For the purpose of this policy, applications include BaseApps, extensions, and any other artifacts that can be produced by flatpak-builder.
Submission pull requests must not be generated, opened, or automated using AI tools or agents. Please also do not request review from any AI tools in the submission PR. Automated Copilot reviews on GitHub can be disabled by the submitter by going here and changing Repository access to exclude the repo or disabling the global “Automatic Copilot code review” found here.
Applications containing AI-generated or AI-assisted code, documentation, or other content are not allowed.
↫ Flathub policy diff
This is a fairly strict policy, but they do leave some wiggle room by also including the following line:
Exceptions may be granted for mature, well-maintained projects.
↫ Flathub policy diff
I don’t think they had any choice adding this exception, but it does feel a little bit like “rules for thee but not for me”. I can easily see the relatively small in-crowd of developers around Flathub and Flatpak, and their friends, handing each other exceptions, while enforcing the much stricter rules when it comes to outsiders. Say a well-known GNOME application from a long-time GNOME contributor adds “AI”-generated code, will it really be banned from Flathub?
I have my doubts.
Regardless, it’s mostly good news. It’s important to note that this policy change won’t be applied retroactively, so slopcoded applications already on Flathub won’t be removed.
A lof of it will probably come down to how much of the project is AI. I dont see them making an exception if a long time gnome devs fully vibe codes a new project (the gnome devs ive seen seem to be pretty anti-ai too) but that carved out exemption for established programs i see being a way for projects to selectively merge bits of AI code should they want to. Ive recently become aware that Antennapod on Android has started merging ai code and while i dont feel great about it theyre also not vibecoding the project either so i think that in the medium term its here to stay and as the main “store” for Flatpak its probably on their best interest to not ban all projects that have accepted ai code
I stopped using flatpaks, i kind of like the idea though.
The dependency on systemD made me go back to building from source myself on Void for any packages not in the repo.
Well, given how hit-or-miss the time I can spend on my hobby projects is (i.e. I don’t consider them “well-maintained”) and how I’m not willing to jeopardize my plans to make Flathub my primary distribution channel for QuickTile, that’s a new clause commited to my README and my PR template and a couple of in-progress PRs apologetically closed.
(One with a couple of bugfixes and a couple of new features and one which was on hold pending me having time to implement a proper “platform backend” abstraction, which used Clause Opus to implement the glue-code to add support for GNOME Shell via an extension which re-exposes what I currently support on X11 via libwnck.)
Thanks for the heads up.
Next, ban IDE-assisted coding and auto-formatting. Only pure, natural, organic code allowed.
Those are deterministic tools rather than a probabilistic black box though.