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Generative AI Policy

BOSS projects follow a modified version of Fedora’s “AI-Assisted Contributions Policy”. The version of the policy we follow is stated below. If changes are made upstream, those changes are not to be implemented within BOSS until this document has been updated following an agreement within the committee.

The following modifications have been made to the original policy:

  • References to Fedora have been replaced with references to BOSS projects.
  • Paragraph 5 has been removed, as it does not apply to BOSS directly.
  • Concern reporting has been updated to apply to BOSS.

Policy

  1. You MAY use AI assistance for contributing to BOSS projects, as long as you follow the principles described below.
  2. Accountability: You MUST take the responsibility for your contribution. Contributing to BOSS projects means vouching for the quality, license compliance, and utility of your submission. All contributions, whether from a human author or assisted by large language models (LLMs) or other generative AI tools, must meet the project’s standards for inclusion. The contributor is always the author and is fully accountable for the entirety of these contributions.
  3. Transparency: You MUST disclose the use of AI tools when the significant part of the contribution is taken from a tool without changes. You SHOULD disclose the other uses of AI tools, where it might be useful. Routine use of assistive tools for correcting grammar and spelling, or for clarifying language, does not require disclosure.
    • Information about the use of AI tools will help us evaluate their impact, build new best practices and adjust existing processes.
    • Disclosures are made where authorship is normally indicated. For contributions tracked in git, the recommended method is an Assisted-by: commit message trailer. For other contributions, disclosure may include document preambles, design file metadata, translation notes, or wiki page categories.
    • Examples:
      • Assisted-by: generic LLM chatbot
      • Assisted-by: ChatGPTv5
  4. Contribution & Community Evaluation: AI tools may be used to assist human reviewers by providing analysis and suggestions. You MUST NOT use AI as the sole or final arbiter in making a substantive or subjective judgment on a contribution, nor may it be used to evaluate a person’s standing within the community (e.g., for funding, leadership roles, or Code of Conduct matters). This does not prohibit the use of automated tooling for objective technical validation, such as CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, or spam filtering. The final accountability for accepting a contribution, even if implemented by an automated system, always rests with the human contributor who authorizes the action.

Concerns about possible policy violations should be reported to a BOSS committee member.

The key words “MAY”, “MUST”, “MUST NOT”, and “SHOULD” in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119.