From: Taylor Blau Date: Tue, 06 Oct 2026 18:06:35 GMT Subject: [NOTES 06/07] AI contribution policy Message-ID: In-Reply-To: Topic: AI contribution policy * Josh: What is the current AI policy? * Elijah: [Reading from SubmittingPatches.] The DCO requires contributors to certify their contributions, and it is not clear whether they can do that for AI-generated output. * Taylor: If we take AI out of the picture, is any of that inconsistent with how we already treat patches? * brian: It often has a distinct character. It may get better, but currently it can be noticeable and awkward to read. * Elijah: It is often useful for proofreading and improving writing. * Emily: One thing missing from the policy is attribution. Johannes sent something with an Assisted-by trailer, which helps us understand whether and how a tool was used. * Taylor: Would I review Johannes's patches differently if I knew AI was used? * Emily: It is different for new contributors and people with whom we have established trust. * Patrick: Sometimes knowing helps us avoid reading complete garbage. * Emily: Having the policy in SubmittingPatches helps because people and agents will read it. * brian: Many people do not read SubmittingPatches often, but honesty about where code came from is useful. Using AI for language cleanup is useful too. * Taylor: The policy effectively says we cannot do anything significant with these tools. * Peff: We are seeing more contributions where an agent makes the changes and a person acts as a "meat proxy". * Emily: Those proxies are getting thinner. * brian: The Linux kernel requires people to state that they have authority to submit the code. * Peff: What is the rest of the open-source world doing? Are we missing useful tools by being conservative? * brian: Some people will no longer trust us if we accept AI-generated code. * Taylor: The Linux kernel is much more permissive than we are. * Peff: We imagine that we will be sued, while the rest of the world does not seem to. * Patrick: Opening the policy further would open the door to an even greater influx of contributions. * Emily: That is why I want more attribution. * brian: When I contribute to open source, I am attributed as the author. With AI-written code, I am implicitly using other people's code. * Taylor: When I read code from a project with a license incompatible with Git's, I learn from it, and that knowledge may implicitly influence my work on Git. * brian: That is a coherent position, but not everybody agrees. The project has to decide. * Emily: Have we used a voting process for something like this before? * Patrick: We need proposals and a vote. Who would be allowed to vote? * Peff: Active developers with a track record; perhaps a threshold such as 50 merged patches. * Taylor: We asked the SFC lawyers, and the result is what is in SubmittingPatches. * brian: SFC is very American in its legal approach. * Peff: We should give SFC more credit; it is more worldwide than that. * Emily: This was a problem with GSoC. There was a record amount of contributions, but the quality was poor. * Peff: We need to agree on a policy. Do we accept AI at all, and to what degree? * Taylor: One possibility is a process similar to Debian's, with proposals and voting. * Patrick: We need to follow legal counsel, and we do not need to use the same proposals as Debian. * Peff: We got legal advice on the current text. We should work out the voting options, take them through SFC counsel, communicate the risks and concerns, and then hold the vote. * Emily: I am happy to set this up. I have been doing something similar with Jujutsu. * Peff: We depend on Junio. If people disagree with the policy, they could fork into Git-AI. * Josh: Let a few key people put forward their opinions and see how much they differ. * Patrick: Let us do that on the mailing list. * Peff: brian, would you champion one position? * brian: Sure. I will take some things from the Debian project. * Peff: Taylor, would you put forward another position? * Taylor: Sure, though I am not yet sure what it would be. * Patrick: Then we need to decide what the vote would be. * Martin: If there is a vote, how would the result be enforced? * Peff: Junio is the source of authority, and usually follows the crowd. * Peff: Emily, are you leading the voting procedure? * Emily: Yes.