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AI tooling must be disclosed for contributions

(github.com)
728 points freetonik | 1 comments | 21 Aug 25 18:49 UTC | HN request time: 0.205s | source
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kazinator ◴[21 Aug 25 20:31 UTC] No.44977700[source]▶
I think that in the FOSS environmment, it is assumed that when you submit something upstream, that you are the copyright holder. Some projects like GNU require you to sign papers legally attesting this.

It would be a lie to sign those papers for something you vibe coded.

It's not just courtesy; you are committing fraud if you put your copyright notice on something you didn't create and publishing that to the world.

I don't just want that disclosed; I cannot merge it if it is disclosed, period.

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WhyNotHugo ◴[21 Aug 25 20:48 UTC] No.44977892[source]▶
I know that purely AI-generated content is copyright-free, but I don't think that AI-assisted is also copyright free.

If I use iOS's spellchecker which "learns" from one's habit (i.e.: AI, the really polished kind), I don't lose copyright over the text which I've written.

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1. kazinator ◴[22 Aug 25 02:25 UTC] No.44980436[source]▶
It's a question of how much.

If AI told you have a missing semicolon and it regenerated an almost exact copy of your code, with only the added semicolon being different, then the case is very strong that the fixed code is a derived work of only your code. (Moreover, side point: you could burn that session, keeping the fix, and nobody would ever suspect.)

If it's purely generated, then there is no question it's a derived work of unknown works used without permission.

Those are the extreme endpoints. I think that the bulk of the intermediate area between steers toward infringment; the contribution from AI has to be very low or trivial to have a clear case that the work is still clean.

This is because a small amount of illegal material taints the whole work; it's not a linear interpolation whereby if you wrote 90% of it, it's 90% in the clear. E.g. one GPL-ed source file in a work with 50,000 source files requires the whole thing to be GPLed, or else that file removed.