Re: [PATCH 4/4] agents: add legal requirements and agent attribution guidelines

Kees Cook
2025-07-28T02:43:32Z

On Sun, Jul 27, 2025 at 03:58:02PM -0400, Sasha Levin wrote:
> +Licensing Requirements
> +----------------------
> +
> +**GPL-2.0 License**
> + The Linux kernel is licensed under GPL-2.0 only with a syscall exception. Coding agents MUST follow this licensing rule with no exceptions. Any code contributed must be compatible with this license.
> +
> +**SPDX License Identifiers**
> + All files must have proper SPDX license identifiers. For most kernel source files, this should be the first line of the file in the appropriate comment format:
> +
> + - For C source/header files: ``// SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0``
> + - For scripts: ``# SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0``
> + - For documentation: ``.. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0``

Again, all of this is redundant. And if the SPDX stuff *isn't*
redundant, it needs to be listed somewhere else for humans.

> +Signed-off-by Restriction
> +-------------------------
> +
> +Coding assistants **MUST NOT** add a ``Signed-off-by`` tag pointing to themselves. The ``Signed-off-by`` tag represents a legal certification by a human developer that they have the right to submit the code under the open source license.
> +
> +Only the human user running the coding assistant should add their ``Signed-off-by`` tag to commits. The agent's contribution is acknowledged through the ``Co-developed-by`` tag as described below.

This is unique to Agents. Yes, this is fine.

> +Agent Attribution Requirement
> +-----------------------------
> +
> +When creating commits, coding agents **MUST** identify themselves by including the following tag in the commit message::
> +
> + Co-developed-by: $AGENT_NAME $AGENT_MODEL $AGENT_VERSION
> +
> +Examples:
> +
> +- ``Co-developed-by: Claude claude-3-opus-20240229``
> +- ``Co-developed-by: GitHub-Copilot GPT-4 v1.0.0``
> +- ``Co-developed-by: Cursor gpt-4-turbo-2024-04-09``
> +
> +This transparency helps maintainers and reviewers understand that a coding agent was involved in the development process.

This is fine too.

But like I said before, you must update checkpatch.pl to not complain
about Co-developed-by missing S-o-b when C-d-b lacks email address,
and it should be part of this series.

-Kees

--
Kees Cook