[gdal-dev] Proposed RFC 8 amendment regarding (prohibited use of) generative AI tools

[Howard Butler]

> On Oct 7, 2024, at 11:38 AM, Even Rouault via gdal-dev <gdal-dev at lists.osgeo.org> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I propose we update RFC 8 with the following changes: https://github.com/OSGeo/gdal/pull/10958
> 
> Can we enforce that? No (similarly we can't prevent someone from stealing copyrighted material from source code of proprietary software they have access to, or "re-license" or "forget" copyright attribution of open source code without authorization), but at least we set the policy.
> 
> This is admittedly a highly controversial topic. Debian for example has had related discussions but didn't come with a position for now, whereas Gentoo banned use of generative AI: https://lwn.net/Articles/972331/
> 
> It seems more prudent to me to ban for now, and potentially relax in the future, when/if the legal status of this becomes clearer. (not even mentioning the ethical or environmental impact sides of such tools)
> 
> Even

I wonder if the policy should be to require any contributions that use generative AI *be labeled as such*. This would serve two purposes – it would allow us to react to contributions that would be problematic to include and it would allow us to preserve those labels in the codebase for any of the contributions for future users of the software.

It is always the responsibility of the users of the software to be aware of the copyright implications of their use of the software. The project should do its best to give users the tools to know the status of the software in regard to where code that is included originated. 

As to how to functionally implement it, maybe a simple tag on PRs that users must check ("did you use copilot or similar when making this PR?" and then some kind of automation that push that tag into the changeset history when it is merged. 

Howard