Comment by hitekker
13 hours ago
Apparently, the noise around the AI policy came from Bun's developers saying that policy blocks upstreaming their performance PR. But the real reason seems to be that PR's code itself isn't in great shape, and introduces unhealthy complexity https://ziggit.dev/t/bun-s-zig-fork-got-4x-faster-compilatio...
> Parallel semantic analysis has been an explicitly planned feature of the Zig compiler for a long time, and it has heavily influenced the design of the self-hosted Zig compiler. However, implementing this feature correctly has implications not only for the compiler implementation, but for the Zig language itself! Therefore, to implement this feature without an avalanche of bugs and inconsistencies, we need to make language changes.
Yes, that reply provides convincing arguments for not merging the Bun fork, as it interferes with Zig's own roadmap for achieving even better results, while continuing to improve the whole language.
Not only this, but also:
Bun's fork will exhibit indeterministic behavior.
As if that was a bad thing in 2026!
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A single PR for a 3000-line addition would, in all likelihood, be rejected anyway.
Really depends the author and context. Large PRs are often justified for compiler work, you have a lot of pieces to touch at the same time
Doubt it: https://github.com/ziglang/zig/pull/24536
When somebody comments PR with “Incredible work, Jacob. It is an honor to call you my colleague.” then it's safe to assume it's out of the ordinary contribution. Pretty much falling outside of the “in all likelyhood”.
3000 line LLM commit is not that.
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Jacob is part of the core team, not a random outside contributor.
Very different context: that PR is from a maintainer, and trusted member of Zig, which surely discussed the implementation/design internally as well
What’s the point in debating the PR quality? The policy explicitly forbids all LLM code, so that policy is of course the “real reason”.
> What’s the point in debating the PR quality?
Because the pro-group are whining that the policy is preventing the merge, when in actual fact even if the policy did not exist, the PR is crap anyway.
I don’t see how it could be that bad (incorrect, specifically), considering bun is probably the most widely-used production use case of zig. But regardless, let’s say it’s a bad PR for the sake of argument - it’s beside the point. It cannot be merged no matter how good it is, due to the strict no-LLM policy.
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Of course the policy is preventing the merge. That’s literally the point of the policy…
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People forget that LLM code cannot be covered by copyright. So LLM code cannot be placed under an open source license
This is overstated. Not all LLM code is produced the same way. Code produced through substantial human creative input still falls under copyright, at least the way things are now. Besides, nothing legally prevents placing code under a license. Enforceability is the question, not permission.
It's a bit like saying speed limits don't apply on private property, therefore you can't have any traffic rules on your private racetrack.
Because it's Bun. Which is practically the use case testimonial of Zig.