How to check copyright?

Posted Oct 2, 2025 12:44 UTC (Thu) by io-cat (subscriber, #172381)
In reply to: How to check copyright? by farnz
Parent article: Fedora floats AI-assisted contributions policy

I understand your position, but the primary distinction in my view is that nowadays there is no reliable way to get licensing information from an LLM in most cases.

Using these tools then makes it extremely hard if not impossible to comply with the rules.

I strongly agree with the statement that the final responsibility is on the contributor (the person).
But the encouragement to use these tools in the original policy post is incompatible with compliance in the current landscape.

How to check copyright?

Posted Oct 2, 2025 12:47 UTC (Thu) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link] (3 responses)

I see no encouragement to use these tools in the policy post.

Quite the opposite - I see it telling you that if you use them, you're responsible for everything they do, and Fedora will not accept "oh, that was the LLM" as an excuse for your failure to sort out licensing terms.

How to check copyright?

Posted Oct 2, 2025 13:10 UTC (Thu) by io-cat (subscriber, #172381) [Link] (1 responses)

Here is the direct quote in the original post that I was referring to:

> We encourage the use of AI assistants as an evolution of the contributor toolkit. However, human oversight remains critical.

https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/council-policy-pro...

How to check copyright?

Posted Oct 2, 2025 13:17 UTC (Thu) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link]

I missed that, skipping over what I thought was "corporate boilerplate" to the bolded sentence afterwards: "The contributor is always the author and is fully accountable for their contributions."

How to check copyright?

Posted Oct 2, 2025 13:10 UTC (Thu) by jzb (editor, #7867) [Link]

"I see no encouragement to use these tools in the policy post."

The first sentence in the original policy post after the heading "AI-assisted project contributions" is "We encourage the use of AI assistants as an evolution of the contributor toolkit." (Emphasis added.)

The second draft posted in the discussion thread is more neutral and focuses on stressing that the contributor is responsible.

How to check copyright?

Posted Oct 2, 2025 13:21 UTC (Thu) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link] (6 responses)

> I understand your position, but the primary distinction in my view is that nowadays there is no reliable way to get licensing information from an LLM in most cases.

Well that’s a problem for LLM advocates not for Fedora. It’s not for the community to solve problems in products pushed by wealthy corporations. The sad part of IBM buying Red Hat is that Fedora is now part of the corporate hype cycle, and every Red Hat employee is now required to state whatever tech IBM wants a slice of is something terrific you should be enthusiastic about. Red Hat consistently outperformed the IBMs of the day because it delivered solid boring tech that solved actual problems not over-hyped vaporware.

LLM tech has some core unsolved problems just like cryptocurrencies (the previous hype cycle) had core unsolved problems, sad to be you if you were foolish enough to put your savings there listening to the corporate hype, the corporate hype does not care about you nor about communities.

How to check copyright?

Posted Oct 2, 2025 13:53 UTC (Thu) by io-cat (subscriber, #172381) [Link] (2 responses)

I think we are in agreement that this should not be the community problem.

Could you clarify how did you perceive my comment? I’m not sure how does your response, especially given the tone, follow from it :)

How to check copyright?

Posted Oct 2, 2025 14:57 UTC (Thu) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link] (1 responses)

I *think* I reacted strongly to the first part of your post. I just hate the “It’s too hard, let’s pretend the problem does not exist” of hype advocates.

I completely agree the “enthusiasm” and gushing about the greatness of IA has no place in a community policy. That’s pure unadulterated corporate brown-nosing. Good community policies should be dry and to the point, help contributors contribute, not feel like an advert for something else.

How to check copyright?

Posted Oct 2, 2025 15:21 UTC (Thu) by io-cat (subscriber, #172381) [Link]

I see. The intent of that part of my comment does not contradict your sentiment.

If it is too hard or impossible to guarantee that the license of LLM output is compliant with the rules - it doesn’t make sense to me to encourage or perhaps even allow usage of such tools until this is ironed out by their proponents.

I’m focusing my opinion here specifically on the licensing question, aside from other potentially problematic things.

How to check copyright?

Posted Oct 2, 2025 13:58 UTC (Thu) by zdzichu (subscriber, #17118) [Link]

Fortunately, Red Hat employes are minority among Fedora contributors (around 30%). Rest of us are free to totally ignore what people at IBM are enthusiastic about.

How to check copyright?

Posted Oct 3, 2025 9:38 UTC (Fri) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link]

Anyway, if anyone had any doubt about where the sudden urge to be enthusiastic about AI is coming from, here is a confirmation

https://blogs.gnome.org/chergert/2025/10/03/mi2-glib/

How to check copyright?

Posted Oct 3, 2025 12:56 UTC (Fri) by stefanha (subscriber, #55072) [Link]

> every Red Hat employee is now required to state whatever tech IBM wants a slice of is something terrific you should be enthusiastic about

I felt bemused reading this. Here we are in a comment thread that I, a Red Hat employee, started about issues with the policy proposal. Many of the people raising questions on the Fedora website are also Red Hat employees.

It's normal for discussions to happen in public in the community. Red Hatters can and will disagree with each other.