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

From: Christian Couder <christian.couder@gmail.com>
Date: Oct 8, 2025, 09:28 UTC
Message-ID: <CAP8UFD1Bc0bRdty9O0et9T=UL9FtN-g_K3DYUmHUR31waTQ+GQ@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <xmqqh5wbq5z8.fsf@gitster.g>

On Mon, Oct 6, 2025 at 7:45 PM Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:

> 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.

I don't think it's a good idea to be too firm. It could prevent people willing to follow the rules from doing things that are actually acceptable while it won't prevent the risks from people not following the rules anyway.

Some of us have given examples of some uses that are likely acceptable but seem to be banned by such firm wording. Do we want to discuss again if translating a commit message using an AI tool is fine or not?

So I think we should start with something less firm, and then discuss the pros vs cons of being firmer if some insist on being firmer then.

[...]

> 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.

I think this could be understood as if the Git project is responsible for contributors submitting content they should not submit. I don't think we should go into this.

[...]

> 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.

This is not realistic. If an AI does static analysis for example, it is likely to suggest a fix for the issues it finds. Hopefully the fix will be the right one, so it will end up being included in the contributions.

> Examples of tools impacted by this policy includes GitHub's CoPilot, OpenAI's

s/includes/include/

> ChatGPT, Anthropic's Claude, and Meta's Code Llama, and code/content
> generation agents which are built on top of such tools.

I don't think we should list examples like this. It could be understood as if we ban such tools while they can help with static analysis, typo fixing, translation, etc... On the other hand some IDEs, for example, might include AI tools without users being really aware of them.

> 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.

I don't think we want to go into such processes.

> 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.

If there are ever such AI tools trained on material such that the legal risk is reduced, we will likely know about it. And even though the legal risk will be reduced, the risk to be flooded with bad output might not. So I don't think it's worth getting into this.

Thanks.