Re: [MAINTAINERS SUMMIT] Annotating patches containing AI-assisted code

[Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab+huawei@kernel.org>]

Em Thu, 21 Aug 2025 13:53:29 -0400
Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org> escreveu:

> On Thu, 21 Aug 2025 19:30:41 +0200
> Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab+huawei@kernel.org> wrote:
> 
> > I bet that one of the first things (if not the first) you
> > considered was: printf("Hello world!").   
> 
> I do believe "how much" you copy is important in the infringement of a
> copyright. I believe this is how "sampling" works in songs. If you only
> copy a little, it's not considered infringement. At least that's the way I
> believe it works.

True, and that's the point: Berne convention with their derivative
Country-specific copyright laws have the "fair use" concept (or
similar) allowing people to copy a little. 

Yet, in the case of:

	"The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog"

this is far than obvious. Fortunatelly, as this was written
first time (it seems) on February 9, 1885, copyrights already
expired.

> Now "Hello world!" may not be enough code to copyright.
> 
> > 
> > I also bet you can't remember the first time you saw it.  
> 
> As Tony Luck replied, I remember when I first saw it in the K&R book back
> in college.
> 
> The funny part is, I still have my book. And looking at it, even though it
> recommends to use the examples, I can't seem to find where it gives you the
> right to use them. The start of the book has:
> 
>   All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
>   stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any mean,
>   electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without
>   the prior written permission of the publisher.
> 
> Hmm.

Heh, and I bet you never ever considered using it as a copyright
infringement (it is not, due to fair use), but you're probably
repeating, even without knowing it, other patterns you saw there
and on other places.

Btw, even in the case of a bigger pattern you saw there and you
may be repeating, you won't be the only one doing it: an entire
generation that used K&C textbook are also repeating them. Plus
the ones that used newer books whose authors got inspired from
it.

In practice, even with the original book's copyright, I doubt
anyone could actually enforce copyrights if one picks one of the
book's code and use as-is (and more likely one would adjust
coding style, parameter pass logic, etc).

Thanks,
Mauro