Re: LLM Commit in upstream `master`?!

Thanks Sean, Eli, and Yuan for resolving this all amicably. I'm happy to 
see that this was simply an honest mistake. And thanks to Divya for 
alerting the mailing list.

On 7/25/2026 12:21 PM, Sean Whitton wrote:
> Eli, what do you think we should do?  Should we ask the Savannah admins
> to help us forcefully undo this commit, or is it enough just to replace
> the entry in the ChangeLog file exported after cutting the emacs-32
> release branch?
> 
> I think the commit message saying co-authored by Claude even though the
> code in the commit was not co-authored by the LLM is a problem because
> we have no way of telling people that, in fact, this commit is not
> LLM-authored.  So I worry that people will keep finding it and then
> coming to the list to ask about it.  So I think that we should consider
> asking the Savannah admins for help.

I agree. Given the legal concerns (not to mention other ethical problems 
the FSF may want to take a stance on), it would be best to take some 
action now to clarify things so that we don't forget what happened 
if/when LLM contributions become a more pressing issue.

Since this is a recent change and so far a unique case, I like the idea 
of asking the Savannah admins to help rewrite Git history to set the 
record straight. If that's too invasive and people object to it, as a 
compromise we could revert the commit and re-apply it with the fixed 
commit message. Git history would still show an LLM-encumbered commit, 
but the reversion would keep it out of Git blame and help to explain 
matters to anyone who looks at our Git logs. (I don't think simply 
amending the ChangeLog is enough, since any future people auditing the 
code will likely look at Git to make sure they see *all* the commits.)

Going forward, what do people think about adding a Git commit message 
hook to check for this? That way, we can catch honest mistakes and 
remind the committer of our policies. (To preempt the obvious response: 
people could of course lie about whether they used LLMs, but we already 
place a lot of trust in people with commit access, so I'm willing to 
trust them on this as well. Anyone who knowingly broke our trust over 
this or something else should probably lose commit access.)

If there's interest in a Git hook, I could make the necessary changes, 
since I've already done some work on the Git hooks before.