Re: GCC AI Policy Announcement

I think the new AI policy is too restrictive, and does not
need to be so to serve the purpose of the GPL.

If you read the preamble of the GPL v3, you will find

# the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom
# to share and change all versions of a program--to make sure it remains
# free software for all its users.

and

# Developers that use the GNU GPL protect your rights with two steps:
# (1) assert copyright on the software, and (2) offer you this License
# giving you legal permission to copy, distribute and/or modify it.

so copyrighting the software is a means to an end, not an end in itself.

What happens if a patch contains a non-trival amount of code that
cannot be copyrighted because it was assisted by AI?

If some third party were to distribute a binary of gcc, they would
still be obliged to distribute the source that is covered by the GPLv3.
Reverting the non- copyrightable patches before source distribution
would break things and make no sense. Alternatively, distributing
only the copyright-free patches would also make no sense, because
they would not result in a working compiler.

A gcc version which contains both copyrighted and non-copyrighted code
would therefore still be protected.

I would therefore suggest to focus on the practical aspects that Richard
mentioned, such as the danger of architecturally poor-quality code,
potential reviewer overload etc.

Best regards

	Thomas