Re: [PATCH v2] SubmittingPatches: add section about AI

>
> "brian m. carlson" <sandals@crustytoothpaste.net> writes:
>
> > It may matter less what the situation actually ends up being legally
> > (although it could end up being quite bad) and more whether someone can
> > imply or suggest that Git is not being distributed in compliance with
> > the license or contains infringing code, which could effectively make it
> > undistributable because nobody wants to take that risk.  And litigation,
> > even if Git and its contributors are successful, can be extraordinarily
> > expensive.
> >
> > So I think, given the circumstances, yes, the right thing to do is to
> > ban LLM-generated contributions with a policy very similar or identical
> > to QEMU's.  If, in the future, the legal situation changes and it
> > becomes unambiguously legal to use LLMs across the world, then we can
> > reconsider that policy then.
>
> OK, so here is theirs for further discussion minimally adjusted for
> our use.  I do not see much difference at least in spirit with what
> started this thread, but phrasing is certainly firmer, and I have no
> problem with it.
>
>
>
> Use of AI content generators
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
> TL;DR:
>
>   **Current Git project policy is copied from what QEMU does.  To
>   DECLINE any contributions which are believed to include or derive
>   from AI generated content. This includes ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot,
>   Llama and similar tools.**
>
> The increasing prevalence of AI-assisted software development results in a
> number of difficult legal questions and risks for software projects, including
> Git.  Of particular concern is content generated by `Large Language Models
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_language_model>`__ (LLMs).
>
> The Git community requires that contributors certify their patch submissions
> are made in accordance with the rules of the `Developer's Certificate of
> Origin (DCO) <dco>`.
>
> To satisfy the DCO, the patch contributor has to fully understand the
> copyright and license status of content they are contributing to Git. With AI
> content generators, the copyright and license status of the output is
> ill-defined with no generally accepted, settled legal foundation.
>
> Where the training material is known, it is common for it to include large
> volumes of material under restrictive licensing/copyright terms. Even where
> the training material is all known to be under open source licenses, it is
> likely to be under a variety of terms, not all of which will be compatible
> with Git's licensing requirements.
>
> How contributors could comply with DCO terms (b) or (c) for the output of AI
> content generators commonly available today is unclear.  The Git project is
> not willing or able to accept the legal risks of non-compliance.
>
> The Git project thus requires that contributors refrain from using AI content
> generators on patches intended to be submitted to the project, and will
> decline any contribution if use of AI is either known or suspected.
>
> This policy does not apply to other uses of AI, such as researching APIs or
> algorithms, static analysis, or debugging, provided their output is not to be
> included in contributions.
>
> Examples of tools impacted by this policy includes GitHub's CoPilot, OpenAI's
> ChatGPT, Anthropic's Claude, and Meta's Code Llama, and code/content
> generation agents which are built on top of such tools.
>
> This policy may evolve as AI tools mature and the legal situation is
> clarifed. In the meanwhile, requests for exceptions to this policy will be
> evaluated by the Git project on a case by case basis. To be granted an
> exception, a contributor will need to demonstrate clarity of the license and
> copyright status for the tool's output in relation to its training model and
> code, to the satisfaction of the project maintainers.