The developers of the SDL (Simple DirectMedia Layer) library adopted rules prohibiting the acceptance of changes containing code generated by large language models such as ChatGPT,
Claude, Copilot and Grok. It is allowed to use AI to identify problems and analyze transmitted changes, but fixes for such problems must be created by people.
Judging by the experience gained by the project, problems identified using AI often turn out to be hallucinations that are not real problems in practice or contain incorrect information. Developers reporting problems identified by AI must have a good understanding of the problem being reported and must personally verify its existence. When sending pull requests, the developer must confirm that he is the author of the code and transfers the result of his work under the Zlib license.
The reasons for prohibiting development using AI are the incompatibility of the code created through AI with the Zlib license due to the inability to accurately determine the source of the code, as well as possible licensing conflicts due to indirect borrowing of code from projects under other licenses (since a large language model is trained on code under different licenses, the generated code can potentially be interpreted as a derivative work).
Additionally, we can mention the creation of two forks of the Vim text editor, created due to dissatisfaction with the increasing use of AI in the preparation of changes:
- Vim Classic – a fork of the Vim 8.2 codebase, continuing maintenance of the previous branch. The project was founded by Drew DeVault, author of the Sway user environment, the Aerc email client, the Hare programming language, and the SourceHut collaborative development platform. The reasons for creating the fork include non-acceptance of Vim’s policy regarding the use of AI, the desire to maintain a clear conscience and continue to enjoy working with Vim.
- EVi is a fork of the Vim 9.1.0 branch, which has not yet accepted changes created with the help of AI.