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

David Hildenbrand
2025-07-28T09:27:54Z

On 28.07.25 09:58, Vlastimil Babka wrote:
> On 7/27/25 21:57, Sasha Levin wrote:
>> This patch series adds unified configuration and documentation for coding
>> agents working with the Linux kernel codebase. As coding agents
>> become increasingly common in software development, it's important to
>> establish clear guidelines for their use in kernel development.
>
> Hi,
>
> this series seems to me somewhat premature. I think we first need a clear
> policy wrt LLM usage for the *humans* to follow. It seemed this thread [1]
> was going into that direction wrt usage disclosure. BTW I was quite shocked
> by Steven's reply there [2] that he learned from the LWN coverage of a
> conference talk that he had received a patch fully written by LLM without
> any such indication. Now I'm not naive to believe that it's not been
> happening already from e.g. first-time contributors, but if that coverage
> was accurate, the patch came from a very seasoned kernel contributor and I
> really wouldn't expect that to happen.
>
> Also I don't know e.g. the copyright and licensing implications of LLM usage
> beyond, say, a smarter automplete are clear? (again, such as writing the
> full patch?) The thread [1] touched on it somewhat but not completely. If
> that's clear already (IANAL), I'd hope that to be also part of such policy.
>
> I know that your series has patch 4, but that seems to be part of what the
> LLM is supposed to include for its prompt (does it make sense to call it
> "legal requirements" then?). If it fails to e.g. add the "Co-developed-by:"
> there seems to be nothing saying the human should check these things in the
> output.

Exactly that.

I want to have it clearly spelled out that if you're submitting AI
generated code that you don't fully understand and have reviewed in
detail, then you are going to have a real bad time around here.

I don't have time to talk to an AI chatbot through mail when reviewing
patches, because the submitter doesn't understand what he is doing and
blindly copy-pastes my replies to the AI.

This must not be the new mechanism to DoS kernel maintainers with AI slop.

I'll point at the approach qemu[1] has taken, which is probably a bit
too strict, but raises some key points regarding DCO, copyright etc.

[1]
https://github.com/qemu/qemu/commit/3d40db0efc22520fa6c399cf73960dced423b048

--
Cheers,

David / dhildenb