Re: [PATCH RFC] coding-assistants: simplify attribution

[Laurent Pinchart <laurent.pinchart@ideasonboard.com>]

On Thu, Jul 02, 2026 at 09:46:37AM +0200, David Hildenbrand (Arm) wrote:
> On 7/2/26 09:27, Christian Brauner wrote:
> >> What would be much more relevant to know is to which degree LLMs were used.
> >>
> >> Assisted-by: LLM # translate commit message
> >> Assisted-by: LLM # generate some test cases
> >> Assisted-by: LLM # cleanup logic
> >> Assisted-by: LLM # everything and I have no clue what any in here does
> > 
> > I think we should just drop any attribution as a general kernel-wide
> > rule and let subsystems require them as needed. Then you can have all
> > the complexity in mm for this that you think is needed for your
> > workflow to function. This is precisely what the subsystem profiles are
> > for. So maybe just add:
> > 
> > Documentation/process/maintainer-mm.rst
> > 
> > alongside
> > 
> > Documentation/process/maintainer-{tip,netdev,x86}.rst
> > 
> > and lay down the rules that you require for LLM based submissions in
> > whatever detail you need.
> 
> I'm not really sure if having (more?) subsystem-specific tags is the way to go.
> (below)
> 
> So either we find a very simple, kernel-wide rule for such tags, or we drop them
> entirely.
> 
> > 
> > I don't see how this additional commentary you want would ever be
> > enforced consistently across the kernel or who would even enforce it. I
> > don't need more beaurocracy to chase after people in my subsystems tbh.
> 
> That's certainly a good thing to discuss. (below)
> 
> > 
> > The other thing is that I think this Assisted-by annotation is just
> > noise in the changelog. If you want to know in detail what an LLM was
> > used for when generating the patch it's mostly a signal for how
> > "intense" of a review this will get afaict (already questionable imho
> > but sure that's just something to disagree on).
> 
> I'd be happy to just have such information in the cover letter. Without any
> tags. Having subsystem-specific rules on the disclosure on that might be more
> reasonable.
> 
> I agree on the "enforce" aspect. It's impossible, but it's still easy to catch
> people using AI irresponsibly today ... and that's what we care about. Not
> people that know what they are doing using AI responsibly.

I have to reply to the "responsible" part: there's no possible ethical
use of generative AI in FOSS development today.

> > If the information is mostly useful during review then I still would
> > question why it has to end up in our git logs. It's completely
> > irrelevant information imho.
> 
> Fully agreed. In the tree it's irrelevant.

-- 
Regards,

Laurent Pinchart