HACKING: Add an LLM policy.

* HACKING (Acceptable use of LLM generated code): New section.

diff --git a/ChangeLog b/ChangeLog
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--- a/ChangeLog
+++ b/ChangeLog
@@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
+2026-02-16  Bruno Haible  <bruno@clisp.org>
+
+       HACKING: Add an LLM policy.
+       * HACKING (Acceptable use of LLM generated code): New section.
+
 2026-02-15  Collin Funk  <collin.funk1@gmail.com>
 
        parse-datetime: Prefer ckd_add to checking overflow by hand.

diff --git a/HACKING b/HACKING
index bdeceec0a3a2877194a0a333fddf635a1455cbdd..72c9895c0f407a28f5c5c82b0173ccf6e89b4429 100644 (file)
--- a/HACKING
+++ b/HACKING
@@ -223,6 +223,43 @@ For C source code:
   Only static variables are better kept declared upfront in a function or block.
 
 
+Acceptable use of LLM generated code
+====================================
+
+General-purpose LLMs as well as LLMs specialized for software programming
+can produce ready-to-use and, in many cases, actually working code.
+
+We need to avoid two problems with that:
+
+  * Copyright and license issue: An LLM may regurgitate a piece of copyrighted
+    code without the copyright header, thus violating the code's license.
+    (Most code licenses require that the copyright header remains intact when
+    the code is copied or becomes the basis of derivative works.)
+
+  * Maintainability issues: Such generated code has initially not been
+    reviewed by a human programmer. It is often greater in size than what a
+    careful programmer would write. Sometimes it also lacks comments.
+    People who use "vibe coding" often also observe that the code is of
+    lower quality.
+    Where software in general can be qualified as for long-term use vs.
+    short-term use, vibe coding tends to be more suitable for short-term used
+    software.
+
+To this end:
+
+  1) Code included in this package that comes from a single LLM prompt
+     must be limited in size: it must be at most 5 lines long.
+
+  2) As a submitter, you assert that you have reviewed such code that you
+     submit.
+
+Rule 1 guarantees that the LLM generated code size is smaller than the
+"legally significant for copyright purposes" threshold, see
+https://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/html_node/Legally-Significant.html
+
+Rule 2 encourages you to not submit unreviewed garbage.
+
+
 Warning Options
 ===============