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Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators

(github.com)
490 points todsacerdoti | 1 comments | 25 Jun 25 23:26 UTC | HN request time: 0.213s | source
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wyldfire ◴[25 Jun 25 23:52 UTC] No.44382903[source]▶
I understand where this comes from but I think it's a mistake. I agree it would be nice if there were "well settled law" regarding AI and copyright, probably relatively few rulings and next to zero legislation on which to base their feelings.

In addition to a policy to reject contributions from AI, I think it may make sense to point out places where AI generated content can be used. For example - how much of QEMU project's (copious) CI setup is really stuff that is critical content to protect? What about ever-more interesting test cases or environments that could be enabled? Something like "contribute those things here instead, and make judicious use of AI there, with these kinds of guard rails..."

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1. dijksterhuis ◴[26 Jun 25 01:07 UTC] No.44383312[source]▶
It's a simpler solution is just to wait until legal situation is clearer.

QEMU is (mostly) GPL 2.0 licensed, meaning (most) code contributions need to be GPL 2.0 compatible [0]. Let's say, hypothetically, there's a code contribution added by some patch involving gen AI code which is derived/memorised/copied from non-GPL compatible code [1]. Then, hypothetically, a legal case sets precedent that gen AI FOSS code must re-apply the license of the original derived/memorised/copied code. QEMU maintainers would probably need to roll back all those incompatible code contributions. After some time, those code contributions could have ended up with downstream callers which also need to be rewritten (even in CI code).

It might be possible to first say "only CI code which is clearly labelled as 'DO NOT RE-USE: AI' or some such". But the maintainers would still need to go through and rewrite those parts of the CI code if this hypothetical plays out. Plus it adds extra work to reviews and merge processes etc.

it's just less work and less drama for everyone involved to say "no thank you (for now)".

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caveat: IANAL, and licensing is not my specific expertise (but i would quite like it to be one day)

[0]: https://github.com/qemu/qemu/blob/master/LICENSE

[1]: e.g. No license / MPL / Apache / Aritistic / Creative Commons https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#NonFreeSoftwa...