I have used the new template below to show how it looks. We can add more details to the linked CONTRIBUTING.md in the pop repo.
I have not included any LLM (also known as AI) generated content in...
KDE’s policy proposal explicitly allowed for contributors to not disclose that AI was used, which according to the FSFe and Software Freedom Conservancy, is not a good idea in legal terms.
“FOSS project leaders cannot make good decisions about LLM-gen-AI policy if they cannot survey which contributions were assisted, and how much they are assisted. Part of the contribution process should (at least) include a disclosure of what LLM-gen-AI system was used, its version (as these systems change over time), and a brief description of how the system assisted the contributor. This information should be included in a machine-readable format in commit logs."
Indeed, such disclosure can be an important foundational step to allow for the accurate assessment of the copyrightability of code that has been assisted or generated by AI tools, in order to assess their licensability into Free Software. Open and clear disclosure is a helpful step for the Free Software community to maintain a healthy licensing ecosystem, which is currently threatened by the legal uncertainties that come with the advent of generative AI.
Additionally, it is worthwhile for developers to document in some capacity the extent of human work that they have done in their software projects, whether it be the writing of code, the selection and arrangement of components within the project, or the extent of human modification of machine generated content.
Not to mention the ethical and environmental concerns with corporate AI usage, the use of which KDE was not interested in attempting to curb within its own project, which personally I think was disappointing, and even their KDE Eco group stated the policy was incompatible with the goals of KDE being a green project.
As far as code quality and reliability goes for mature projects like KDE and Linux, I trust the maintainers to know what they are doing. I have no place second-guessing them. If they think LLM usage disclosures are useful I believe them, if they feel otherwise I accept that as well. To me as an end user, it makes no difference. I’m not going to stop using Linux or KDE over LLM-assisted code contributions either way.
As far as copyright-ability, I could be convinced here. I’m not a legal expert at all, but it seems pretty speculative. I did read your first link, which is interesting. The legal risks as I understand them are:
A judge somewhere might say “This long-lived project has recently merged some patches which, to some unspecified and unknowable degree, involved LLM usage and therefore the GPL license indicated for this project is no longer valid. Therefore, the project is now Public Domain and it may be used and modified without releasing the changes.” Seems unlikely to me, but who really knows?
and probably much more likely:
A patch is accepted that replicates copyrighted code exactly, putting an unwitting maintainer in jeopardy. I looked around for examples of open source project maintainers being sued for this sort of infringement out of curiosity, but I really couldn’t find any. If this happens, I bet it’s typically handled outside of court with a C&D type situation.
Are there other legal risks I’m missing? I think it’s only a matter of time before some type of consensus for what the implications of the copyright questions are for FLOSS software.
There’s no need to excise anything unless you specifically let an agent create a commit. No need for pre-push hooks.
I think KDEs policy is quite rational, it’s a compromise and still clearly anti-vibe coding. IMO the problems are overstated
KDE’s policy proposal explicitly allowed for contributors to not disclose that AI was used, which according to the FSFe and Software Freedom Conservancy, is not a good idea in legal terms.
Not to mention the ethical and environmental concerns with corporate AI usage, the use of which KDE was not interested in attempting to curb within its own project, which personally I think was disappointing, and even their KDE Eco group stated the policy was incompatible with the goals of KDE being a green project.
As far as code quality and reliability goes for mature projects like KDE and Linux, I trust the maintainers to know what they are doing. I have no place second-guessing them. If they think LLM usage disclosures are useful I believe them, if they feel otherwise I accept that as well. To me as an end user, it makes no difference. I’m not going to stop using Linux or KDE over LLM-assisted code contributions either way.
As far as copyright-ability, I could be convinced here. I’m not a legal expert at all, but it seems pretty speculative. I did read your first link, which is interesting. The legal risks as I understand them are:
A judge somewhere might say “This long-lived project has recently merged some patches which, to some unspecified and unknowable degree, involved LLM usage and therefore the GPL license indicated for this project is no longer valid. Therefore, the project is now Public Domain and it may be used and modified without releasing the changes.” Seems unlikely to me, but who really knows?
and probably much more likely:
A patch is accepted that replicates copyrighted code exactly, putting an unwitting maintainer in jeopardy. I looked around for examples of open source project maintainers being sued for this sort of infringement out of curiosity, but I really couldn’t find any. If this happens, I bet it’s typically handled outside of court with a C&D type situation.
Are there other legal risks I’m missing? I think it’s only a matter of time before some type of consensus for what the implications of the copyright questions are for FLOSS software.