On Fri, Jul 24, 2026 at 10:45:15AM +0900, Simon Richter wrote: > if the decision ends up being that it cannot [be copyrighted], we need > to delete the corresponding copyright attributions (as far as they > don't overlap with valid ones).
This is not true, on at least a couple of levels. First, even if courts will confirm that LLM output cannot be copyrighted (in the US…), that doesn't mean that a contribution labeled with "Assisted-by:" is not copyrightable. For example, the submitted might have reworked the contribution after generation, enough for the contribution to be copyrightable. Second, "not copyrightable" doesn't equate "not DSFG free". For instance, public domain data is not copyrightable, but we can (and do) have and distribute them in Debian. (And: no, you don't need sui generis database rights to be able to do this.) It certainly might happen that future court decisions will force us to remove content from Debian, but there is nothing new here: it might happen also with content that has been produced with no LLM help at all. Cheers -- Stefano Zacchiroli - https://upsilon.cc/zack Full professor of Computer Science, Polytechnic Institute of Paris Co-founder & Chief scientific officer Software Heritage
