Mastodawn

I asked emacs-devel: Are LLM contributions welcomed in GNU Emacs by the maintainers and contributors?

Eli Zaretskii:

We are awaiting the decision by the GNU Project on these matters, which will define the policy for all the GNU packages, and in the meantime we don't accept LLM-generated code, as a precaution.

For now, Emacs won't accept LLM contributions. However, given this:

Obviously, the right thing to do is protect computing freedom: share complete training inputs with every user of the LLM, together with the complete model, training configuration settings, and the accompanying software source code. Therefore, we urge Anthropic and other LLM developers that train models using huge datasets downloaded from the Internet to provide these LLMs to their users in freedom.

I sort of expect FSF, and therefore GNU along with Emacs, to be somewhat accepting of LLMs eventually, if they are "open". Too copyright-brained for their own good. Unfortunate.

#emacs

What is the policy/attitude towards LLM contributions in GNU Emacs?

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Robert Pluim 🇪🇺Mar 14

@zyd Given that in the US LLM generated code cannot be copyrighted, how do you legally integrate such code in a GPL-licensed project?

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ben

@rpluim @zyd My understanding is that although that’s true for something completely machine-generated, it doesn’t take much human input to make it copyrightable again. So although a completely vibecoded work probably wouldn’t be copyrightable, an LLM-assisted contribution might well be.

And besides, there is nothing against integrating public-domain code into free software as far as I know. It wouldn’t receive copyright protection but would be available to use by anybody.

I don’t think this means LLM contributions should be allowed, but I don’t think the copyright argument alone is strong enough to prevent it.