--- title: I Read the AI Policies of 120 Open Source Projects. Here... description: A survey of AI contribution policies across 120 open source projects finds 72 permit AI-assisted contributions with conditions, 37 ban it outright, and 11... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/i-read-the-ai-policies-of-120-open-source-projects-here-is-what-they-actually-say--loetfq52v twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: I Read the AI Policies of 120 Open Source Projects. Here Is What They Actually Say. | daily.dev og:description: A survey of AI contribution policies across 120 open source projects finds 72 permit AI-assisted contributions with conditions, 37 ban it outright, and 11... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/i-read-the-ai-policies-of-120-open-source-projects-here-is-what-they-actually-say--loetfq52v og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/Loetfq52v.png og:image:alt: I Read the AI Policies of 120 Open Source Projects. Here Is What They Actually Say. og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # I Read the AI Policies of 120 Open Source Projects. Here Is What They Actually Say. **[Medium](https://daily.dev/sources/medium_js)** · 8 min read · 1 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A survey of AI contribution policies across 120 open source projects finds 72 permit AI-assisted contributions with conditions, 37 ban it outright, and 11 (including Rust, Fedora, FreeBSD, GCC, Blender, NixOS, Jupyter) are still debating a position. Permissive projects typically require disclosure via commit trailers like Assisted-by:, human review before submission, a human signer for the Developer Certificate of Origin, contribution effort exceeding review effort, and confirmation that AI tool licensing doesn't conflict with the project's license. Bans like QEMU's stem mainly from unresolved copyright status of AI-generated training data rather than code quality concerns. Several traps catch new contributors: LLVM and qutip ban AI on 'good first issue' tickets since they exist for learning, Homebrew caps AI-assisted PRs at one open at a time, and multiple projects (attrs, pip, LinkML) forbid crediting AI as a co-author. The piece recommends checking CONTRIBUTING.md, PR templates, and open issues before submitting an AI-assisted patch. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### What commit message tag does the Linux kernel want for AI-assisted code contributions? The Linux kernel wants an Assisted-by: trailer in the format Assisted-by: AGENT_NAME:MODEL_VERSION for AI tool suggestions, and a separate Generated-by: tag for substantial machine-written chunks. AI agents must not add Signed-off-by tags themselves, since only humans can legally certify the Developer Certificate of Origin, so accountability stays with the human contributor. _Contributors tracking evolving commit conventions for AI-assisted patches can follow policy changes like this on daily.dev._ ### Why does QEMU ban AI-generated code contributions? QEMU declines any contribution believed to include or derive from AI generated content, and the reason is legal provenance rather than code quality. The copyright status of AI-generated output is unsettled, training data may include incompatibly licensed code, and a contributor cannot honestly certify the Developer Certificate of Origin under those conditions, so the project avoids the risk entirely. _Developers deciding whether to use AI tools on a given repo can check project-specific stances like QEMU's on daily.dev._ ### Which major open source projects still have no settled policy on AI-assisted contributions? Rust, Fedora, FreeBSD, GCC, Blender, NixOS, Jupyter, Inkscape, musl libc, Agda, and TorchGeo have live discussions running with no finalized AI contribution policy. Contributors to these projects are advised to disclose AI assistance anyway and ask in the issue thread before investing significant time, since a maintainer's early no costs far less than a rejected pull request. _Open source contributors navigating unsettled AI policy debates can keep tabs on project decisions via daily.dev._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Using Assisted-by commit footers instead of banning AI tools](https://daily.dev/posts/using-assisted-by-commit-footers-instead-of-banning-ai-tools-wwpvvihdj) · Lobsters · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Why PostgreSQL needs an AI usage policy](https://daily.dev/posts/why-postgresql-needs-an-ai-usage-policy-nsinedikt) · Planet PostgreSQL · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [AI Contributions and Maintainer Load in Open Source](https://daily.dev/posts/ai-contributions-and-maintainer-load-in-open-source-acgatvw21) · Planet Python · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#open-source](https://daily.dev/tags/open-source), [#ai-coding](https://daily.dev/tags/ai-coding), [#vibe-coding](https://daily.dev/tags/vibe-coding), [#licensing](https://daily.dev/tags/licensing) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/i-read-the-ai-policies-of-120-open-source-projects-here-is-what-they-actually-say--loetfq52v) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"I Read the AI Policies of 120 Open Source Projects. 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