Re: Policy on use of LLM tools and bug fixes
Jonathan Wakely via Gcc <[email protected]>
| Newsgroups | gmane.comp.gcc.devel,gmane.comp.gcc.fortran |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <CAH6eHdRc2zWF96TMVFg8SPN_g6E8L-VVAn0KOpw9TttZDo9t-g@mail.gmail.com> |
On Thu, 16 Apr 2026 at 15:28, Richard Earnshaw (foss) via Gcc <[email protected]> wrote: > > On 14/03/2026 19:02, Jeffrey Law via Gcc wrote: > > > > > > On 3/14/2026 12:59 PM, Jerry D via Gcc wrote: > >> Some of the various LLM services available appear to be getting very good at generating bug fixes. I realize that one must be careful as these tools can at times do things that may be superfluous to the actual fix. By superfluous I mean lines of code that are not relevant to the lines that fix it. > >> > >> I saw some discussions of this subject for gcc somewhere and wanted to know if we have a specific policy established / documented somewhere regarding this. > > The steering committee is trying to figure out a good policy right now. > > > > Jeff > > I notice that the Linux kernel recently adopted the following policy: https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/Documentation/process/coding-assistants.rst > > Has there been any progress on GCC yet? Carlos and I prepared a draft policy, but I believe the GCC steering committee is also looking into it. The FSF are also working on policies. Our draft policy takes a similar position to the kernel one: LLMs cannot do a DCO sign-off as their output is not copyrightable. The correct trailer to use is Assisted-by and not Co-authored-by. But our draft policy proposes *not* accepted AI-generated code, only allowing the use of AI for assistance, idea generation, testing, but not generating the actual code. That's because the legal status of AI-generated code is unclear, is not copyrightable, and does not meet the legal prerequisites for GCC contributions.