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

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Oct 12, 2025, 15:07 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqq5xck5fb0.fsf@gitster.g>
In-Reply-To: <CABPp-BFf+_8cUc6sWZci9F0voosOQFWQ3x8dNs0YXEZ-uRvhNg@mail.gmail.com>

Elijah Newren <newren@gmail.com> writes:

Show 12 quoted lines

>> ...
>> 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.
>
> I preferred the version Christian sent, but *if* we end up adopting
> some of the QEMU wording, I've got a logistics question:
>
>     Will we grandfather already accepted series, or proactively revert them?

Stepping back a bit, can we treat this new guideline element just like any other guidelines in SubmittingPatches and also CodingGuidelines?

We have certain rules in our SubmittingPatches and CodingGuidelines to help us not get into trouble in the future. We require the log messages to follow certain style to give them uniformity as otherwise it would become harder to dig the history later to find cause of an issue we are having today, and more importantly what the design parameters were back when the change we are having trouble with was written. We ask people to follow certain style in the code as it would make it more work to understand code if different styles are mixed together without reason.

But we also frown upon churning the codebase for the sake of strictly match the prescribed coding style. The rules are mostly to control newly written things so that they do not make our codebase into worse shape than it currently is. When we update a part of our codebase for some reason, other than "there is no particular reason but we want to fix them to match guidelines", we would take existing guideline violations the touched part may have into account, of course. And we find no need in our other non-AI guidelines to say "we grandfather badness that already exists, but we try our best to enforce the guidelines as strictly as possible", and the reason, I think, is because that is implicitly what everybody expects. Should the "We tell you again not to blindly add things with unknown origin, given the recent proliferation of AI coding product" rule be any special and different?