GCC released their AI-Policy... it is not terribly different from ours and aligns pretty closely. There are a few areas of divergence:
Their policy follows... this is available at https://forge.sourceware.org/redi/gcc-wwwdocs/raw/commit/4d0793a6a14bf9bfe9e92ac1599840780355199d/htdocs/ai-policy.html GNU Compiler Collection - AI PolicyCommunity First First, all contributors should be treated with respect and kindness <https://gcc.gnu.org/conduct.html>. There are strongly held and widely varying opinions regarding large language models (LLMs) and everyone should be presumed to be contributing in good faith. We welcome all contributors to the community even if they have not yet followed our policies; we should guide such contributors on how to do so. Acceptable Contributions For the time being, the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) policy is to decline any legally significant <https://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/maintain.html#Legally-Significant> contributions which include LLM-generated content or are derived from LLM-generated content. The GCC maintainers are free to accept legally insignificant <https://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/maintain.html#Legally-Significant> contributions generated by an LLM as long as they meet the usual prerequisites <https://gcc.gnu.org/contribute.html> for any contribution and the contribution is clearly marked. As an exception, the GCC maintainers are free to accept *legally significant* <https://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/maintain.html#Legally-Significant> contributions to *test cases*, generated in whole or in part by an LLM. This policy does not apply to code which does not primarily belong to the GCC project, but is imported from other projects for convenience or to satisfy prerequisites (e.g. libsanitizer). Transparency & Accountability The commit message for any contribution of LLM-generated content must include an “Assisted-by:” tag. All contributions must be submitted by a human who understands the changes and is prepared to answer questions about them. The decision to include the contribution in the project must also be made by a human. Only a human may provide the “Signed-off-by:” tag certifying the Developer Certificate of Origin (DCO) <https://developercertificate.org/>. An LLM may not commit code to the project repository. Personal Use This policy does not apply to a contributor's other uses of AI including the use of these tools to enable them to work with their own computing devices e.g. screen readers, text-to-speech, direct translations, spelling or grammar assistance, where the contributor verifies the output of the tool. This policy does not apply to a contributor's use of AI for the purposes of research, analysis, bug discovery and reporting (output should not be sent verbatim without due consideration), patch review (supporting human review, not replacing it) and debugging, so long as the output is not included in the contributions to the project. If the output is included in the contributions to the project then this policy would apply. Next Steps This policy is expected to evolve with the community or as the overall GNU Project position is updated. At the latest the policy will be reviewed at the start of 2027. This work is marked CC0 1.0 Universal <https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/> To Summarize: GNUstep's approach is outcome-based: contributions are judged on licensing, provenance, quality, correctness, maintainability, and human review regardless of the tools used to create them. GCC's approach is process-based for legally significant contributions: AI-generated code is declined because of legal and provenance concerns, even if the resulting code would otherwise satisfy the project's technical standards. This seems fairly closely aligned with our approach with the exception of code that is wholly generated by an LLM. Our approach emphasizes caution in this case and, during our discussion, I recommended not accepting this kind of contribution. We are not bound by GCC's policy, and I recommend we review ours as it becomes necessary as well. Yours, GC On Sat, Jul 18, 2026 at 12:23 PM Gregory Casamento <[email protected]> wrote: > Lars, > > I don't know how the GNU Project is arriving at its policy or whether > individual GNU projects have an opportunity to provide input. I have > written to RMS about our policy and given him a link to it. I hope it can > inform any decision they make. > > I don't think the discussion should become a witch hunt either. AI is a > tool, and like any tool, it can be used well or poorly. Regardless of how > code is produced, I believe our responsibility as maintainers remains the > same: to ensure that contributions meet our standards for licensing, > provenance, quality, correctness, maintainability, and review. > > Ultimately, those standards are what determine whether code belongs in > GNUstep, not the particular tools used during its development. > > I'm hoping the GNU Project reaches a thoughtful and balanced conclusion. > > Yours, Greg > > On Sat, Jul 18, 2026 at 5:00 AM [email protected] < > [email protected]> wrote: > >> Hi Greg, >> >> just one question in this regard: Do we have a voice in GNU’s discussion >> on that topic (I hope, there is a discussion an not just a decision by one >> person, namely RMS)? If so, I hope, we make our standpoint clear and don’t >> go onto a witch-hunt against AI (which would be like a witch hunt against >> compilers and linkers in the times when UNIX was still written in >> assembler). In my opinion AI is just a (very sophisticated) tool which you >> need to know, how to use it and its limitations. Then we can use it sanely >> and to our advantage. >> >> Hoping for the best outcome, >> >> Lars >> >> Am 18.07.2026 um 10:23 schrieb Gregory Casamento < >> [email protected]>: >> >> David, >> >> Sorry for the late reply; work has been very demanding lately. Of >> course, any policy they issue will apply to us. I think this is a >> reasonable approach for EMACS if they are waiting for guidance from the GNU >> Project. >> >> Until that policy is published, however, I don't think it gives us any >> basis for changing GNUstep's existing approach. Once the GNU Project has >> issued its guidance, we can evaluate it on its merits, determine whether >> and how it applies to GNUstep, and discuss whether any changes are >> warranted. >> >> I believe our current policy provides a practical balance as it focuses >> on licensing, provenance, code quality, review, and maintainability rather >> than the specific tools contributors use. >> >> As mentioned in previous emails, I have set a clear line on what is >> acceptable, and this was reflected in the discussion a few weeks ago. >> >> Yours, GC >> >> On Wed, Jul 15, 2026 at 4:31 AM David Chisnall <[email protected]> >> wrote: >> >>> On 14 Jul 2026, at 22:48, Gregory Casamento <[email protected]> >>> wrote: >>> > >>> > Based on the discussion, I do not see sufficient consensus or >>> justification to replace our existing AI policy with a "No-AI" policy for >>> the GNUstep core libraries. Accordingly, the existing policy will remain in >>> effect. >>> >>> Most of the arguments have been covered in other places and it’s quite >>> surprising that most of the folks in this thread seem unfamiliar with them, >>> but I would add one thing: >>> >>> This week, EMACS paused ‘AI’ contributions because the GNU project is >>> expected to provide an explicit policy soon. I presume that policy will >>> apply to GNUstep as well. >>> >>> David >>> >>> >> >> -- >> Gregory Casamento >> GNUstep Lead Developer / Black Lotus, Principal Consultant >> http://www.gnustep.org - http://heronsperch.blogspot.com >> https://www.openhub.net/languages/objective_c >> >> >> > > -- > Gregory Casamento > GNUstep Lead Developer / Black Lotus, Principal Consultant > http://www.gnustep.org - http://heronsperch.blogspot.com > https://www.openhub.net/languages/objective_c > -- Gregory Casamento GNUstep Lead Developer / Black Lotus, Principal Consultant http://www.gnustep.org - http://heronsperch.blogspot.com https://www.openhub.net/languages/objective_c
