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[80.230.25.45]) by smtp.gmail.com with ESMTPSA id ffacd0b85a97d-45ef34bcc30sm30919271f8f.12.2026.06.02.00.38.15 (version=TLS1_3 cipher=TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384 bits=256/256); Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:38:16 -0700 (PDT) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2026 03:38:13 -0400 From: "Michael S. Tsirkin" To: Peter Maydell Cc: Paolo Bonzini , qemu-devel@nongnu.org, Alex =?iso-8859-1?Q?Benn=E9e?= , Alistair Francis , BALATON Zoltan , Daniel =?iso-8859-1?Q?P=2E_Berrang=E9?= , Fabiano Rosas , Kevin Wolf , Warner Losh , Philippe =?iso-8859-1?Q?Mathieu-Daud=E9?= , Paolo Bonzini Subject: Re: [PATCH v2] docs/devel: relax policy on AI-generated contributions Message-ID: <20260602033118-mutt-send-email-mst@kernel.org> References: <20260529094619.1034458-1-pbonzini@redhat.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: Received-SPF: pass client-ip=170.10.133.124; envelope-from=mst@redhat.com; helo=us-smtp-delivery-124.mimecast.com X-Spam_score_int: -24 X-Spam_score: -2.5 X-Spam_bar: -- X-Spam_report: (-2.5 / 5.0 requ) BAYES_00=-1.9, DKIMWL_WL_HIGH=-0.445, DKIM_SIGNED=0.1, DKIM_VALID=-0.1, DKIM_VALID_AU=-0.1, DKIM_VALID_EF=-0.1, RCVD_IN_DNSWL_NONE=-0.0001, RCVD_IN_MSPIKE_H5=0.001, RCVD_IN_MSPIKE_WL=0.001, SPF_HELO_PASS=-0.001, SPF_PASS=-0.001 autolearn=unavailable autolearn_force=no X-Spam_action: no action X-BeenThere: qemu-devel@nongnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.29 Precedence: list List-Id: qemu development List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: qemu-devel-bounces+qemu-devel=archiver.kernel.org@nongnu.org Sender: qemu-devel-bounces+qemu-devel=archiver.kernel.org@nongnu.org On Fri, May 29, 2026 at 04:34:45PM +0100, Peter Maydell wrote: > On Fri, 29 May 2026 at 10:46, Paolo Bonzini wrote: > > > > Until now QEMU's code provenance policy declined any contribution > > believed to include or derive from AI-generated content. A blanket ban > > was easy to maintain while LLM output was rarely usable on its own, but > > as the tools improved an absolute prohibition has become harder to > > justify. > > > > The concern that motivated the policy is unchanged, and it is worth stating > > precisely: the DCO is about whether the submitter has the legal right to > > contribute the code, not about "creative expression". While the status of > > LLM output seems to be converging towards non-copyrightability, questions > > around unintentional reproduction of copyrighted code are still open. > > What has shifted is the balance of risk: > > > > - projects accepting AI-assisted content have not run into serious > > legal trouble so far, which suggests the probability of the risk > > materializing is not high; > > > > - other organizations, such as Red Hat[1], have assessed the risk as > > acceptable -- though a community of individual developers does not > > have the legal backing of a company, and even an unfounded dispute > > would be a long-lasting distraction from work on QEMU. > > > > Nevertheless, even Red Hat mentions that "the possibility of occasional > > replication cannot be ignored". In QEMU's view, attentiveness and > > oversight are not a practical way to address this; yet as a copyleft > > project, copyright and code provenance are of utmost importance to us. > > Therefore, it remains prudent to only permit AI assistance where the > > ramifications of copyright violations are at least easy to revert and > > unlikely to spread: tests, documentation, mechanical changes, and small > > bug fixes. Core code that other things depend on, and that cannot > > simply be thrown away once a problem is noticed long after the fact, > > stays off-limits without prior agreement from a maintainer. > > This all makes sense to me, except for the part where we allow > a maintainer to say "actually it's OK". Where our justification > for not wanting AI contributions rests on "it's too much burden > on maintainers to have to deal with and review it", allowing an > individual maintainer to say "I'm OK with that burden in this case > or for this particular contribution" logically follows as a > possible relaxation. But if as a project we want to limit the > blast-radius if we find we have to rip out a hypothetical tainted > contribution, shouldn't that mean that we hold that as a project-wide > line, rather than leaving it up to the opinion of the individual > maintainer ? It's not clear it's practical anyway. So we limit contributions to 20+ lines, so what did we achieve? They accumulate over time. > > Related to this, and already visible in the incredible uptick in > > security reports, is the question of maintainer burnout and the shift in > > effort from the author to the reviewer of the code. AI lowers the cost of > > producing a patch but does nothing to lower the cost of understanding and > > reviewing one; if anything it raises it, since a reviewer can no longer > > assume that the submitter has reasoned through every line. The limits > > above work just as much to keep the volume of review work sustainable. > > > > Revise the policy according to the above considerations, and introduce the > > "AI-used-for:" trailer as a record of where AI was used. The standard is > > slightly different from the more usual "Assisted-by"; the intention is for > > the metadata to provide more information for reviewers to judge the result. > > > > In any case, use of AI does not relax any other contribution requirement: > > authors still comply with the DCO and take responsibility for the whole > > patch via Signed-off-by. > > > > [Commit message largely based on > > https://lore.kernel.org/qemu-devel/ahXbxzB4C_lr6b0N@redhat.com/, by > > Kevin Wolf. - Paolo] > > > +**Documentation and code comments** > > + While AI can help draft text, it still requires significant human > > + oversight. Pay attention to the organization and flow of the generated > > + text, and strictly fact-check all technical details as LLMs are prone > > + to being confidently wrong. > > I think the application to documentation and comments is the part > I'm least enthusiastic about here. For changes to code, we have at > least some guardrails on the AI output, in the fact that it has to > compile and to pass tests. For changes to documentation, the > only guardrails are human eyeballs. > > Also both comments and documentation ideally are a record of > what we intended the behaviour to be. If an LLM is effectively > autogenerating something documentation-shaped from the code we > lose that. > > -- PMM