On Oct 22, 2026 17:08, Theodore Tso <[email protected]> wrote: > I will note that if there is any human contribution, that part will be > copyrightable. under the license claimed by the human. So for > example, if I take some public-domain code, and modify it such that it > can be integrated into e2fsprogs, my changes to, say, > lib/ext2fs/crc32c.c are something that I can put under the LGPL. And > if someone takes a patch which was originally generated using LLM, and > then make changes to improve it, or when it modifies other code which > has human-licensed GPLv2 code, the resulting code is under the GPLv2. > > The concern that people seem to have is a threhold question. If 99% > of the code is human-generated, and 1% LLM-generated or public domain > code, can we consider the entire code base under the GPL license? > What is if it's 60% / 40%? What if it's 99% LLM or public domain, and > 1% human-generated GPLv2 changes? > > I very much doubt this is something that debian-legal can answer.... > but given that we do have projects that are partially LLM-generated > contributions, any policy that we come up with should ideally not > claim that say, the Linux kernel is not copyrightable because it > contains LLM-generated code, and thus must be dropped from Debian. > > - Ted
It isn't only about how many %. Let me give an example. When there's an embargoed security issue on OpenStack, I take upstream patch, apply it to the last 3 or 4 branches they support, backport it to 5 more to reach Bookworm. Then the day of disclosure, I file a Debian bug, and ask the LLM to replace the Bug-Debian: place holder of patches by the real bug number, and also reference the bug in d/changelog. I use an LLM because doing so in 8 branches would take me probably 20 to 30 minutes. There is no question if I would be able to do the same: the result would be the exact same bit for bit, just by hand, it would waste 20 minutes of my life. I also check the LLM does the same thing I would. In such case, is there a copyright issue ? I don't think so, especially if you consider that it is ME who tought the LLM how to do it, and correct it when wrong. In this occurence, the LLM is just a powerful editor! Cheers, Thomas Goirand (zigo)
