Re: [PATCH 0/3] treewide: migrate from legacy utime.h to utimensat

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Aug 23, 2026, 15:23 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqa4qcvp1o.fsf@gitster.g>
In-Reply-To: <aooRdiVdjovWSFiG@fruit.crustytoothpaste.net>

"brian m. carlson" <sandals@crustytoothpaste.net> writes:

Show 5 quoted lines

> On 2026-08-22 at 17:59:09, Junio C Hamano wrote:
>> "brian m. carlson" <sandals@crustytoothpaste.net> writes:
>> 
>> > I therefore haven't read this series to avoid being influenced by code
>> > we're not allowed to include.

More on this a bit later...

> So we do have more of a legal problem if we knowingly distribute code
> that infringes copyright or which we suspect may do so.

Projects like the Linux kernel ask you to disclose your use of AI (and have other requirements on your use), but I haven't read exactly why they want it. I wish they instead said, "We do not want to be blamed for knowingly infringing. While we do not particularly encourage you to use AI, if you use one, do not tell us" ;-).

Show 7 quoted lines

> If somebody comes to our project and lies to us about the provenance of
> their work, that's very serious.  Saying, "I wrote this with AI," when
> we don't allow AI is being honest and ethical and disclosing relevant
> details to the project.  It may be that we can't accept their code for
> that reason, but they have participated in the project in good faith.
> We could certainly accept other patches from such a person written
> without AI.

But that contradicts what you yourself did, doesn't it? An honest developer who discloses their use of AI admits that their eyes are already contaminated by AI output, because they did not avoid being influenced as you did. So are they unwelcome now?

Stepping back a bit, even before the AI era, a human developer may have seen code elsewhere that they are not allowed to include in a particular project. Learning from what others did is the nature of our work, and it is inevitable. Is it reasonable for BSD-only projects to declare that those who are familiar with constructs that appear in Git code after working on it are unwelcome, because their contributions may be contaminated by what they have seen in a GPLed project?

I very much appreciate that you are treading very cautiously on the safer side, but I hope that the actual balance lies on a somewhat more practical side that trusts humans.

> That doesn't affect whether we end up having negative consequences from
> distributing that code, true.  But at some point, we have to trust that
> most people are honest or our community and society break down.

True. True.

Thanks.