Cinnamon/Mint's Stance on LLM/AI Code Contributions?

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Assessment

Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Newbie friendliness
25/100
Issue type
Documentation
Clarity
Needs clarification
Activity status
Quiet
Domain
documentation

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Review the issue body and its linked references about AI-generated contributions, then check whether Cinnamon or Mint already has contribution or AI policy documentation. Done means documenting an official, maintainer-approved stance or confirming that no policy decision has been made.

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Description

Hi there,

There is a growing concern in the FLOSS community around accepting code contributions that were directly generated from an LLM/AI. As they are trained on code that is not license compatible with GPL, it is quite possible for them to recreate that incompatible code verbatim. If that code was accepted in a pull request to a GPL licensed project, it would unknowingly to both the submitter and the project itself introduce plagiarized, copyrighted code into the codebase, potentially opening itself up to legal liability.

This talk from FOSS Backstage Berlin does an excellent job of showing how LLM/AI Generated code can directly copy infringing code in its output: https://youtu.be/xvuiSgXfqc4?t=247

In Europe, a court ruled that LLM/AI output is able to be found as plagiarizing: https://www.twobirds.com/en/insights/2025/landmark-ruling-of-the-munich-regional-court-(gema-v-openai)-on-copyright-and-ai-training

According to an article on the subject, about 10% of LLM code output is likely to be plagiarized, copyrighted code: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2026/01/ai-memorization-research/685552/

In response to this threat, many FLOSS projects have decided to officially stop knowingly accepting AI generated code submissions, to reduce the risk of legal action in the first place, as well as to lessen their liability and give them a stronger defense if brought to court from an undisclosed AI contribution. The latest to do so is the GCC project, and previously the SDL library did the same.

What is Cinnamon/Mint's official stance on AI generated code contributions submissions? (and I want to emphasize generated code contributions, as I think an LLM pointing out bugs, or asking it about things in general do not render the same sort of legal threat to FLOSS projects).

Thank you for your time and consideration!

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