Re: [PATCH] Documentation: remove the requirement for LLM attribution

[Lorenzo Stoakes <ljs@kernel.org>]

On Thu, Jul 02, 2026 at 12:48:22PM -0400, Jeff Layton wrote:
> On Thu, 2026-07-02 at 18:19 +0200, Greg KH wrote:
> > On Thu, Jul 02, 2026 at 07:13:30PM +0300, Laurent Pinchart wrote:
> > > On Thu, Jul 02, 2026 at 11:57:46AM -0400, Jeff Layton wrote:
> > > > On Thu, 2026-07-02 at 17:07 +0200, Greg KH wrote:
> > > > > On Thu, Jul 02, 2026 at 10:32:48AM -0400, Jeff Layton wrote:
> > > > > > We've had this requirement in place in the Documentation for several
> > > > > > months, but it's becoming clear that the signal to noise ratio from this
> > > > > > is quite low.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > 1/ It's not universally followed. While many people do try to attribute
> > > > > > the LLMs in good faith, not everyone does for various reasons.
> > > > >
> > > > > Then let's move to get people to follow it.
> > > > >
> > > > > > 2/ It basically serves as free advertising for proprietary LLM companies.
> > > > >
> > > > > Who cares, make up a name, all I want is the "signal" that someone is
> > > > > using a LLM so that I can review it as-such.  And if I think someone is
> > > > > not reporting that, I can ask for them to properly attribute it and if
> > > > > they lie, well, that's on them.
> > > > >
> > > > > > 3/ It's not clear why we want to collect this info in the first place.
> > > > >
> > > > > We want to know if a LLM is being used.
> > > >
> > > > But why? What do you intend to do with this information?
> > > >
> > > > Do you mean to use it as an indicator that the patch should receive
> > > > "extra" review (or maybe that it should be ignored)? Do you mean to use
> > > > it to generate some sort of statistics at a later time?
> > >
> > > I use the information to decide how to review the patch, and what level
> > > of priority to give it. For that usage I don't need a tag, but I need
> > > the information in some human-readable form at patch submission time.
> >
> > Same here.  I don't care about stats, I care about "how do I review this
> > patch" and this gives me that signal that I need if faced with a
> > llm-helped patch.
> >
> >
>
> Do we need a tag for this though?
>
> This seems like the kind of information that we would always require in
> the cover letter of a series (or the little place in an individual
> patch for comments that don't get merged). That would also allow you to
> convey a lot more nuance about how it was used.
>
> ISTM asking people to disclose LLM usage in a cover letter would give
> everyone what they want: Information about whether and possibly how an
> LLM was used, and it also wouldn't clutter up the changelogs with these
> tags.

It's much much clearer and easier to just have a standardised tag for that.

You can see that (and grep for that) immediately, vague paragraphs not so much.

> --
> Jeff Layton <jlayton@kernel.org>

Thanks, Lroenzo