It seems like they do though, because

1. it’s explicitly allowed

   Code or other content generated in whole or in part using AI tools can be contributed to Linux Foundation projects.

   and beyond that,

2. some numbers suggest it’s highly likely that it’s happening with no public concern or pushback from the kernel leadership.

I’ve also brought up these concerns on the mailing list, with apparently no response from the maintainers, even though Linus was CC’ed here by another kernel dev. Specifically, my suggestion to not allow AI code submissions resulted in no response.

I’m not saying I would be owed a response. But the implications of that seem pretty clear.

The point I was making was rather, there is no guaranteed safe length and you probably don’t want to make that call as a maintainer. Unless you’re a lawyer that happens to do FOSS, I guess.

I’m not a lawyer but I’m really unsure if there’s even some safe guess like two lines. E.g. if you look at lyrics, I think people have been sued less - not that I would know for sure, though, and no idea if that allows any conclusions for code…

The main confusing (or confused?) actor in the FOSS space in relation to this probably really is the Linux kernel.

I’ve seen so many projects reference significant LLM patches as acceptable “because the kernel does it”. It continues to blow my mind that the kernel would accept such a risk.

Sad to see that it’s accepted outside of the test cases at all. But good to see they’re severely limiting it, at least.

Why do I find even minor LLM changes sad?

• Because it moves the goalpost about what is okay to copy. If you brought a one-line change to a FOSS project in the past that you took out of the leaked MS Windows source code, you would have been scolded for risking such an explosive origin for such low gain. Nowadays with LLMs people seem to be trying to make that the new normal. I don’t think that’s a good path to take for the ecosystem.

• And because no project should have to think about what’s “copyright significant”. If you reach that state, I feel like you should perhaps just reject it and have somebody rewrite it cleanly.