Re: [PATCH] docs/code-provenance: add an exception for non-creative AI changes

[Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com>]

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On Fri, Sep 26, 2025, 16:39 Peter Maydell <peter.maydell@linaro.org> wrote:

> I figure I'll state my personal opinion on this one. This isn't
> intended to be any kind of 'veto' on the question: I don't
> feel that strongly about it (and I don't think I ought to
> have a personal veto in any case).
>
> I'm not enthusiastic. The current policy is essentially
> "the legal risks are unclear and the project isn't willing
> to accept them". That's a straightforward rule to follow
> that doesn't require either the contributor or the reviewer
> or the project to make a possibly difficult judgement call on
> what counts as not in fact risky. As soon as we start adding
> exceptions then either we the project are making those
> judgement calls, or else we're pushing them on contributors
> or reviewers. I prefer the simple "'no' until the legal
> picture becomes less murky" rule we have currently.
>

In principle I agree. I am not enthusiastic either. There are however two
problems in the current policy.

First, the policy is based on a honor code; in some cases the use of AI can
be easily spotted, but in general it's anything but trivial especially in
capable hands where, for example, code is generated by AI but commit
messages are not. As such, the policy cannot prevent inclusion of AI
generated code, it only tells you who is to blame.

Second, for this specific kind of change it is, pretty much, impossible to
tell whether it's generated with AI or by a specialized tool or by hand. If
you provide a way for people to be honest about their tool usage, and allow
it at least in some cases, there's a nonzero chance they will be; if you
just tell them a hard no, and lying by omission has more than plausible
deniability, there's a relatively high chance that they will just stay
silent on the matter while still using the tool.

In other words, as much as I would also like a simple policy, I expect
fewer undiscovered violations with the exception in place—even beyond what
the exception allows. And given the stated goal of using proposals and
actual usage to inform future policy, this approach could serve that goal
better than plain prohibition.

That said, I am okay with having no exception if that's the consensus.

Thanks,

Paolo


> -- PMM
>
>

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