Re: GCC AI Policy Announcement

On Thu, 30 Jul 2026, 08:27 Richard Biener, <[email protected]>
wrote:

> On Wed, Jul 29, 2026 at 8:51=E2=80=AFPM Jonathan Wakely <jwakely.gcc@gmai=
l.com>
> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> > On Wed, 29 Jul 2026, 19:03 Richard Biener, <[email protected]>
> wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> > Am 29.07.2026 um 17:30 schrieb Arthur Cohen <
> [email protected]>:
> >> >
> >> > =EF=BB=BFHi Richard,
> >> >
> >> > What are the important LLM issues that you think the policy fails to
> address? As the policy itself states, the it is expected to evolve and
> feedback is welcome. The goal is to continuously improve it.
> >>
> >> The policy grounds its rejection of legally significant LLM
> contributions on legal issues (by means of naming).  It does not cover th=
e
> IMO much more severe issues of overwhelming reviewers and keeping GCC
> maintainable.
> >
> >
> > Such contributions are not allowed by the policy, so we don't need to
> burn reviewer time on them, and we don't need to worry that those
> contributions will make GCC unmaintainable.
> >
> > If the legal situation changes and somebody wants to argue for relaxing
> the policy, they'll need to make a convincing case that it won't overwhel=
m
> reviewers or lead to code nobody understands. Until then, such discussion=
s
> don't seem productive too me (but that doesn't mean they can't happen
> anyway).
> >
> >
> >
> >>   It also makes LLM assisted contributions by maintainers who might
> want to use LLMs to get to prototype stages fall into grey areas or even
> rejected.  I realize the policy is not a discussion review document but
> what was the point of having the policy group when the outcome is just th=
e
> obvious =E2=80=9Alegally unclear situation=E2=80=98 statement?
> >
> >
> > Now at least it's written down and we can point to it as the policy.
> Previously it was unclear whether this project cared about the legal issu=
es.
>
> It still leaves "legally significant" up to interpretation.  When
> somebody posts a LLM [assisted] patch that is legally significant or
> when I let an LLM
> do a prototype to assess viability of an idea, is not any non-LLM
> implementation of the same solution (as vague as that is) a derivative
> work of
> a possibly infringing work?  So is posting LLM produced patches to GCC
> able to DOS GCC development this way?


Is that different to posting non-GPL code?


Similar for the allowed
> use of LLMs to analyze bugs or tooling.  How can that be legally sound?
>
> Richard.
>
> >
> > As Arthur said, this isn't expected to be the final policy that lasts
> forever.
> >
>