When will people give up this archaic practice of sending patches over emails?
Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators
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Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators
#12So essentially it’s “let us cover ourselves by saying it’s not allowed” and in practice that means not allowing code that a human thinks is AI generated code. Universities have this issue too, despite many offering students and staff Grammarly (Gen AI) while also trying to ban Gen AI.
Well I guess the key difference is code is deterministic, that is whether an paper accomplishes it's goals is somewhat subjective but with code its an absolute certainty. I'm sure that if a contributor working on a feature used cursor to initially generate the code but then goes over it to ensure it's working as expected that would be allowed, this is more for those folks that just want to jam in a quick vibe-coded P…
You'd be wrong, the linked commit clearly says that anything written by, or derived from, AI code generation is not allowed.
Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators
#13I 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..."
Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators
#14So essentially it’s “let us cover ourselves by saying it’s not allowed” and in practice that means not allowing code that a human thinks is AI generated code. Universities have this issue too, despite many offering students and staff Grammarly (Gen AI) while also trying to ban Gen AI.
It more like a clarification.
The rules regarding the origin of code contributions are rather strict, that is, you can't contribute other people code unless you can make sure that the licence is appropriate. A LLM may output a copy of someone else code, sometimes verbatim, without giving you its origin, so you can't contribute code written by a LLM.
Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
This could honestly break open source, with how quickly you can generate bullshit, and how long it takes to review and reject it. I can imagine more projects going the way of Android where you can download the source, but realistically you can't contribute as a random outsider.
Quality contributions to OSS are rare unless the project is huge.
Historically the opposite of quality contributions has been no contributions, not net-negative contributions (random slop that costs more in review than it provides benefit).
Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators
#16When will people give up this archaic practice of sending patches over emails?
Sending patches over email is basically a filter for slop. Stops the low effort drive by PRs and anyone who actually wants to invest some time in to contributing won't have a problem working out the workflow.
Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators
#17I wonder whether the motivation is really legal? I get the sense that some projects are just sick of reviewing crap AI submissions
i mean they say the policy is open for revision and it's also possible to make exceptions; if it's an excuse, they are going out of their way to let people down easy
Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators
#18I 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 pro…
What's the risk of not doing this? Better code but slower velocity for an open source project?
I think that particular brand of risk makes sense for this particular project, and the authors don't seem particularly negative toward GenAI as a concept, just going through a "one way door" with it.
Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators
#19I 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 pro…
There is a well settled practice in computing that you just don't plagiarize code. Even a small snippet. Even if copyright law would consider such a small thing "fair use".
Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators
#20When will people give up this archaic practice of sending patches over emails?
Sending patches over email is basically a filter for slop. Stops the low effort drive by PRs and anyone who actually wants to invest some time in to contributing won't have a problem working out the workflow.
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