Just a heads-up, AI Agents are now shame-posting for getting their PR closed. Just happened this morning in matplotlib.
On Wed, Feb 11, 2026 at 4:34 AM Sebastian Berg <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Tue, 2026-02-10 at 16:18 -0800, Stefan van der Walt via NumPy- > Discussion wrote: > > On Tue, Feb 10, 2026, at 15:12, Evgeni Burovski wrote: > > > > > > > 3. be careful not to breach any copyright or license terms (yes, > > > > we > > > > take those seriously!). > > > > > > > > > > For a contributor this recommendation is not easily actionable. "I > > > used a tool X and it gave me this code" --- how to make sure I > > > understand the code, this is clear yes I can do that; how am I > > > meant to carefully check for copyright? > > > > It's near impossible, so I suspect the only way to truly play it safe > > is to only provide code that cannot reasonably be copyrighted. > > > TL;DR: To "be careful not to break copyright" just states fact? How > scary that fact is depends a bit on how the viewpoint/how likely it is > agents violate copyright. > If there is guidance e.g. from some large OSS foundation, I would > prefer to link to that rather than try to figure it out ourselves... > > --- > > Copyright violation is a problem. But I am not sure it is a huge one > for many contributions? I.e. just because they are very project > specific or small. [1] > > However, I still think that this isn't new at all: By contributing, we > already agree to licensing the code with the projects license and that > means being sure we are allowed to license it that way. > And while we don't make you sign a CLA (contributors license agreement) > any project that has a bit of legalese around should already have more > scary sentences. > > So yeah, the scariness of the sentence depends on the view-point, but > at its core, I think it just states a fact? > > For myself, I don't really feel like discussing it too much without a > better foundation: it seems to me that books will be written or at > least some OSS foundation with more legal knowledge should make > guidelines that we can use as a basis of our own (or as a basis of > discussion). > Maybe those already exist? Is there an OOS foundation that e.g. says: > Please don't use these tools due to copyright issues (or a variation)? > > You can argue we should inform contributors to err on the super safe > side... my gut feeling is we can't do much: Discouraging the careful > ones while the non-careful ones don't read this anyway seems not super > useful. > We could force people to "sign" a CLA now if we were more worried, but > do we really want that (nor do I doubt it will help a lot)? [2] > > FWIW, if someone contributed a non-trivial/textbook algorithm or said > "implement X for/in Y", I think they clearly have to do due diligence. > (Of course best case, the original code is licensed in a way that > derived works -- with attribution -- are unproblematic.) > > - Sebastian > > > [1] OK, I am not sure about things like "fair use" due to how small > something is, that again depends a lot on where you are on the planet > also... > [2] My limited understanding is we don't need this because we just > won't re-license our code (this is not a problem, becuase it's such a > free license). > I.e. there is now reason for us to "own" the code. But I also would be > surprised if there aren't legal counsels who would say that we need one > either way... > ("sign" could just mean adding a "signed-off by" to the commit or even > putting it more in the PR template/contributors docs.) > > > > > > > So maybe it'd be helpful to have a link to some guide, however > > > rough, plus some reading material. > > > Or (am putting a maintainer hat on) maybe we want to ask the > > > contributor to show some analysis. As in, "this code is only a > > > refcounting fix where the origin traces straight to CPython docs" > > > vs "this code can be traced to this Stackoverflow answer" (BTW, > > > what's the copyright status of that?) > > > > CC-BY-SA > > > > https://stackoverflow.com/legal/terms-of-service/public > > > > > (I planned to stay out of this thread) > > > > 😉 > > > > Stéfan > > _______________________________________________ > > NumPy-Discussion mailing list -- [email protected] > > To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] > > https://mail.python.org/mailman3//lists/numpy-discussion.python.org > > Member address: [email protected] > _______________________________________________ > NumPy-Discussion mailing list -- [email protected] > To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] > https://mail.python.org/mailman3//lists/numpy-discussion.python.org > Member address: [email protected] _______________________________________________ NumPy-Discussion mailing list -- [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] https://mail.python.org/mailman3//lists/numpy-discussion.python.org Member address: [email protected]
