glibc AI policy

[Carlos O'Donell]

On 4/11/26 1:17 PM, Florian Weimer wrote:
> * Sam James:
> 
>> Florian Weimer <fw@deneb.enyo.de> writes:
>>
>>> * Jeffrey Law:
>>>
>>>> On 4/2/2026 12:56 PM, Collin Funk wrote:
>>>>> DJ Delorie <dj@redhat.com> writes:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Given that GNU is a USA-based project, and that the copyright status of
>>>>>> AI in the USA is still... "nebulous at best"... it might take time to
>>>>>> figure out whether or not we can accept that first AI patch that comes
>>>>>> along.  Better to take that time now so we can respond more quickly
>>>>>> then.
>>>>> The copyright situation is the reason I am against tentatively accepting
>>>>> patches while waiting for a more official policy from the FSF. Thanks
>>>>> for mentioning that.'
>>>
>>>> Yea, that's where I'd land as well.  Until the copyright situation is
>>>> better understood I would not accept any LLM generated code that is
>>>> outside the de-minimis guidelines set by the FSF.
>>>
>>> Has the FSF communicated this (not accepting LLM-generated
>>> contributions for now) to the glibc stewards?  Why would the
>>> de-minimis guidelines apply, anyway?  I assume those are about not
>>> diluting the copyright assignment, but that's hardly a concern for GNU
>>> components accepting contributions under the DCO.
>>
>> Outside of communication to glibc stewards which I would not be party
>> to, with regard to Emacs, there was
>> https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2026-03/msg00554.html.
> 
> Thanks for the reference.  This is what Richard Stallman wrote:
> 
> | The FSF is working on one.  Please wait for us to finish and publish
> | it before stirring up disputes about hypothetical options.
> 
> I assume the net effect that for Emacs, it's a case-by-case decision if
> a machine-generated contribution is accepted.  So it's pretty much like
> what we do for glibc today, I think.

I agree. Until we have such guidance I will review such submissions on a
case-by-case basis. I have already approved one for Ajun Shankar
e.g. 244c404ae85003f45aa491a50b6902655ee2df15 which has 6 boiler plate
makefile lines generated by an LLM and were not legally significant.
We did not add an "Assisted-by:" line for that change, but any such
process that requires humans to remember "Assisted-by:" lines is going
to have some missing compliance aspects as a function of cost of
compliance e.g. Reviewed-by: etc.

-- 
Cheers,
Carlos.