Re: [PATCH 0/4] Add agent coding assistant configuration to Linux kernel

Lorenzo Stoakes
2025-07-30T16:59:41Z

On Wed, Jul 30, 2025 at 12:36:25PM -0400, Sasha Levin wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 30, 2025 at 12:18:29PM -0400, Steven Rostedt wrote:
> > On Wed, 30 Jul 2025 16:34:28 +0100
> > Lorenzo Stoakes <lorenzo.stoakes@oracle.com> wrote:
> >
> > > > Which looked like someone else (now Cc'd on this thread) took it public,
> > > > and I wanted to see where that ended. I didn't want to start another
> > > > discussion when there's already two in progress.
> > >
> > > OK, but having a document like this is not in my view optional - we must
> > > have a clear, stated policy and one which ideally makes plain that it's
> > > opt-in and maintainers may choose not to take these patches.
> >
> > That sounds pretty much exactly as what I was stating in our meeting. That
> > is, it is OK to submit a patch written with AI but you must disclose it. It
> > is also the right of the Maintainer to refuse to take any patch that was
> > written in AI. They may feel that they want someone who fully understands
>
> This should probably be a stronger statement if we don't have it in the
> docs yet: a maintainer can refuse to take any patch, period.
>
> > what that patch does, and AI can cloud the knowledge of that patch from the
> > author.
>
> Maybe we should unify this with the academic research doc we already
> have?
>
> This way we can extend MAINTAINERS to indicate which subsystems are
> more open to research work (drivers/staging/ comes to mind) vs ones that
> aren't.
>
> Some sort of a "traffic light" system:
>
> 1. Green: the subsystem is happy to receive patches from any source.
>
> 2. Yellow: "If you're unfamiliar with the subsystem and using any
> tooling to generate your patches, please have a reviewed-by from a
> trusted developer before sending your patch".
>
> 3. No tool-generated patches without prior maintainer approval.

This sounds good, with a default on red. Which would enforce the opt-in
part.

>
> --
> Thanks,
> Sasha