Re: [PATCH 2/2] docs: define policy forbidding use of "AI" / LLM code generators

[Daniel P . Berrangé]

On Thu, Nov 23, 2023 at 05:39:18PM -0500, Michael S. Tsirkin wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 23, 2023 at 05:58:45PM +0000, Daniel P. Berrangé wrote:
> > The license of a code generation tool itself is usually considered
> > to be not a factor in the license of its output.
> 
> Really? I would find it very surprising if a code generation tool that
> is not a language model and so is not understanding the code it's
> generating did not include some code snippets going into the output.
> It is also possible to unintentionally run afoul of GPL's definition of source
> code which is "the preferred form of the work for making modifications to 
> it". 
> So even if you have copyright to input, dumping just output and putting
> GPL on it might or might not be ok.

Consider the C pre-processor. This takes an input .c file, and expands
all the macros, to split out a new .c file.

The license of the output .c file is determined by the license of the
input .c file. The license of the CPP impl (whether OSS or proprietary)
doesn't have any influence on the license of the output file, it cannot
magically force the output file to be proprietary any more than it can
force it to be output file GPL.

With regards,
Daniel
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