Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators
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Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators
#2So 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.
Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators
#3So 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 PR so they can add "contributed to the QEMU project" on their resumes.
Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators
#4I wonder whether the motivation is really legal? I get the sense that some projects are just sick of reviewing crap AI submissions
Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators
#5So 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.
Sounds like a good idea to ensure developers are owning the code they submit rather than hiding behind "I don't know why it does that, ChatGPT wrote it".
Use AI if you want to, but if the person on the other side can tell, and you can't defend the submission as your own, that's a problem.
Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators
#6I wonder whether the motivation is really legal? I get the sense that some projects are just sick of reviewing crap AI submissions
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.
Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators
#7So 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.
Sounds like a good idea to ensure developers are owning the code they submit rather than hiding behind "I don't know why it does that, ChatGPT wrote it". Use AI if you want to, but if the person on the other side can tell, and you can't defend the submission as your own, that's a problem.
> Use AI if you want to, but if the person on the other side can tell, and you can't defend the submission as your own, that's a problem.
The actual policy is "don't use AI code generators"; don't try to weasel that into "use it if you want to, but if the person on the other side can tell". That's effectively "it's only cheating if you get caught".
By way of analogy, Open Source projects also typically have policies (whether written or unwritten) that you only submit code you are legally allowed to submit. In theory, you could take a pile of proprietary reverse-engineered code that you have no license to, or a pile of code from another project that you aren't respecting the license of, and submit it anyway, and slap a `Signed-off-by` on it. Nothing will physically stop you, and people might not be able to tell. That doesn't make it OK.
Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators
#8I wonder whether the motivation is really legal? I get the sense that some projects are just sick of reviewing crap AI submissions
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.
Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators
#9I've been trying out Claude Code (the tool I've found most effective in terms of agentic code gen/manipulation) for an emulator project of mine for the last few days. Part of it is a compiler from an architecture definition to disassembler/interpreter/recompiler. I hit a fairly minor compiler bug and decided to ask Claude to debug and fix it. Some things I noted:
1. My C# code compiled just fine and ran even, but it was convinced that I was missing a closing brace on a lambda near where the exception was occurring. The diff was ... Putting the existing brace on a new line. Confidently stated that was the problem and declared it fixed.
2. It did figure out that an unexpected type was being seen, and implemented a pathway that allowed for it to get to the next error, but didn't look into why that type had gotten there; that was the actual bug, not the unhandled type. So it "fixed" it, but just kicked the can down the road.
3. When figuring out the issue, it just looked at the stack trace. That was it. It was running the compiler itself; it could've just embedded some debug code (like I did) and work out what the actual issue was, but it didn't even try. The exception was just a NotSupportedException with no extra details to work off of, so adding just a crumb of context would let you solve the issue.
Now, is this the simplest emulator you could throw AI at? No, not at all. But neither is qemu. I'm thoroughly unconvinced that current tools could provide real value on codebases like these. I'm bullish on them for the future, and I use GenAI constantly, but this ain't a viable use case today.
Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators
#10I wonder whether the motivation is really legal? I get the sense that some projects are just sick of reviewing crap AI submissions
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.
I've always thought that the possibility of forking the project is the main benefit to open-source licensing, and we know Android can be forked.