websockify AI policy
====================

The legal and ethical status of LLM-generated content is currently
uncertain. LLMs are trained on large amounts of existing work, much of
it under licenses that require attribution or impose other conditions,
and their output can reproduce or be derived from that work without any
indication of its origin. websockify is a Free Software project that
depends on copyright and licenses being respected, and we want to show
the same respect for the work of others. For now, the websockify project
has therefore decided to take a cautionary approach to such content.
This policy reflects the current situation, and will be revisited as it
becomes clearer.

Any significant contribution to websockify must not include
LLM-generated content or be derived from LLM-generated content. This
applies to all contributions, including code, documentation, and
translations.

Minor LLM-generated contributions can still be accepted, as long as they
fulfill all other requirements on quality. The commits must be marked
with an "Assisted-by:" tag for transparency.

All contributions must be submitted by a human who has reviewed them,
understands them, and can answer questions about them.

There is no strict definition of what is a "significant" contribution.
The decision will be made by the websockify maintainer or maintainers
that review the contribution. A guideline is the GNU project's
definition[^1] of legally significant changes.

As an exception, significant LLM-generated contributions to test cases
can be accepted. Tests are largely constrained by the code they
exercise, leaving less room for reproducing the work of others, and they
can be removed without affecting websockify itself. Such changes must be
kept in separate commits, marked with an "Assisted-by:" tag, so that
they can be identified and removed if needed in the future.

This policy does not apply to code that primarily belongs to other
projects and is imported into websockify.

Other uses of AI
----------------

This policy covers content included in contributions. It does not cover
using AI tools for research, understanding the code, finding bugs,
debugging, or as support when reviewing, as long as the output is not
included in a contribution. Neither does it cover assistive uses such
as spelling and grammar checking, or screen readers. Bug reports and
comments written with AI assistance should be verified by the contributor
before posting.

[^1]: https://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/maintain.html#Legally-Significant