> The FSF position has generally been that documentation does not create an aggregate work.

Do you have a reference for this FSF position? If there's something off-the-shelf we can use that may work but I'm not sure there's enough motivation (from Arm at least) to obtain legal advice or seek Linux licensing changes.

Cheers

Dan.

From: David Brown <david.brown@linaro.org>
Date: Tuesday, 2 June 2026 at 16:53
To: Dan Handley <Dan.Handley@arm.com>
Cc: Soby Mathew <Soby.Mathew@arm.com>; Sandrine Bailleux <Sandrine.Afsa@arm.com>; Manish Pandey2 <Manish.Pandey2@arm.com>; Olivier Deprez <Olivier.Deprez@arm.com>; Bipin Ravi <Bipin.Ravi@arm.com>; Joanna Farley <Joanna.Farley@arm.com>; Julius Werner <jwerner@google.com>; Varun Wadekar <vwadekar@nvidia.com>; Raghu Krishnamurthy <raghupathyk@nvidia.com>; yann.gautier@st.com <yann.gautier@st.com>; Manish Badarkhe <Manish.Badarkhe@arm.com>; Ermel, Dominik <dominik.ermel@nordicsemi.no>; jamie.mccrae@nordicsemi.no <jamie.mccrae@nordicsemi.no>; Anton Komlev <Anton.Komlev@arm.com>; Antonio De Angelis <Antonio.DeAngelis@arm.com>; Alexei Fedorov <Alexei.Fedorov@arm.com>; Javier Almansa Sobrino <Javier.AlmansaSobrino@arm.com>; Arunachalam Ganapathy <Arunachalam.Ganapathy@arm.com>; Jens Wiklander <jens.wiklander@linaro.org>; jerome.forissier@linaro.org <jerome.forissier@linaro.org>; etienne.carriere@foss.st.com <etienne.carriere@foss.st.com>; Gilles Peskine <Gilles.Peskine@arm.com>; Janos Follath <Janos.Follath@arm.com>; Manuel Pegourie-Gonnard <Manuel.Pegourie-Gonnard@arm.com>; Ronald Cron <Ronald.Cron@arm.com>; Madhukar Pappireddy <Madhukar.Pappireddy@arm.com>; Gyorgy Szing <Gyorgy.Szing@arm.com>; tsc@lists.trustedfirmware.org <tsc@lists.trustedfirmware.org>
Subject: Re: Feedback requested on TrustedFirmware.org "Guidance on AI-assisted contributions"

> which prevents us copying parts of this policy to TF.org documentation without affecting the licensing of the TF.org website.

This isn't really true. The GPL "infectious" nature applies to code that is triggered by a distribution of a combined/derivative work. The FSF position has generally been that documentation does not create an aggregate work.

Another option is to just ask Sasha (and any other authors) if adding an additional license to the file would be permissible, even explaining our use case.

David

On Tue, Jun 2, 2026 at 3:25 AM Dan Handley <Dan.Handley@arm.com> wrote:

Hello again

After looking at the below proposal again, we have a hit a snag. The Linux policy referred to below (like the rest of the Linux source) is covered by the GPL-2.0 license, which prevents us copying parts of this policy to TF.org documentation without affecting the licensing of the TF.org website. The potentially valuable part would be the defined format, in case any future analysis tools were created to parse such tags. I'm not sure there's much value in changing the tag name alone.

Therefore, unless anyone has any solution suggestions, I'm going to withdraw my proposal to change the TF.org policy. If you'd like to discuss this more at the next TSC, let me know.

Regards

Dan.

From: Dan Handley via TSC <tsc@lists.trustedfirmware.org>
Date: Thursday, 23 April 2026 at 15:59
To: Soby Mathew <Soby.Mathew@arm.com>; Sandrine Bailleux <Sandrine.Afsa@arm.com>; Manish Pandey2 <Manish.Pandey2@arm.com>; Olivier Deprez <Olivier.Deprez@arm.com>; Bipin Ravi <Bipin.Ravi@arm.com>; Joanna Farley <Joanna.Farley@arm.com>; Julius Werner <jwerner@google.com>; Varun Wadekar <vwadekar@nvidia.com>; Raghu Krishnamurthy <raghupathyk@nvidia.com>; yann.gautier@st.com <yann.gautier@st.com>; Manish Badarkhe <Manish.Badarkhe@arm.com>; David Brown (david.brown@linaro.org) <david.brown@linaro.org>; Ermel, Dominik <dominik.ermel@nordicsemi.no>; jamie.mccrae@nordicsemi.no <jamie.mccrae@nordicsemi.no>; Anton Komlev <Anton.Komlev@arm.com>; Antonio De Angelis <Antonio.DeAngelis@arm.com>; Alexei Fedorov <Alexei.Fedorov@arm.com>; Javier Almansa Sobrino <Javier.AlmansaSobrino@arm.com>; Arunachalam Ganapathy <Arunachalam.Ganapathy@arm.com>; Jens Wiklander <jens.wiklander@linaro.org>; jerome.forissier@linaro.org <jerome.forissier@linaro.org>; etienne.carriere@foss.st.com <etienne.carriere@foss.st.com>; Gilles Peskine <Gilles.Peskine@arm.com>; Janos Follath <Janos.Follath@arm.com>; Manuel Pegourie-Gonnard <Manuel.Pegourie-Gonnard@arm.com>; Ronald Cron <Ronald.Cron@arm.com>; Madhukar Pappireddy <Madhukar.Pappireddy@arm.com>; Gyorgy Szing <Gyorgy.Szing@arm.com>
Cc: tsc@lists.trustedfirmware.org <tsc@lists.trustedfirmware.org>
Subject: [TF-TSC] Re: Feedback requested on TrustedFirmware.org "Guidance on AI-assisted contributions"

Hi TSC and TF.org maintainers

This is an update on the TF.org guidance for AI-assisted contributions. The current guidance is published here: https://www.trustedfirmware.org/aipolicy/. This includes a recommendation to attribute such contributions using a "Co-developed-by:" tag.

Recently the Linux project added its own guidance: https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/Documentation/process/coding-assistants.rst. This is largely aligned with the TF.org guidance but recommends a different attribution tag name and format:

"Contributions should include an Assisted-by tag in the following format:

Assisted-by: AGENT_NAME:MODEL_VERSION [TOOL1] [TOOL2]"

This was discussed at the last TSC meeting:

https://lists.trustedfirmware.org/archives/list/tsc@lists.trustedfirmware.org/thread/3EWMS4IY6MNRCVNXBVBNJORBUYHZ66ZA/

Given that Co-developed-by: is not yet widely used for AI-assisted contributions at TF.org (see minutes for an exception) or the wider open-source ecosystem, and Linux's decision that this tag is not suitable for AI-assisted contributions, we (the TSC) propose that we align the TF.org guidance with the Linux guidance.

If you have any objection to this, please reply to this email. If we have no objections, we will proceed with the change.

Thank you and regards

Dan.

From: Dan Handley <Dan.Handley@arm.com>
Date: Thursday, 31 July 2025 at 17:24
To: Soby Mathew <Soby.Mathew@arm.com>; Sandrine Bailleux <Sandrine.Afsa@arm.com>; Manish Pandey2 <Manish.Pandey2@arm.com>; Olivier Deprez <Olivier.Deprez@arm.com>; Bipin Ravi <Bipin.Ravi@arm.com>; Joanna Farley <Joanna.Farley@arm.com>; Julius Werner <jwerner@google.com>; Varun Wadekar <vwadekar@nvidia.com>; Raghu Krishnamurthy <raghupathyk@nvidia.com>; yann.gautier@st.com <yann.gautier@st.com>; Manish Badarkhe <Manish.Badarkhe@arm.com>; David Brown (david.brown@linaro.org) <david.brown@linaro.org>; Ermel, Dominik <dominik.ermel@nordicsemi.no>; jamie.mccrae@nordicsemi.no <jamie.mccrae@nordicsemi.no>; Anton Komlev <Anton.Komlev@arm.com>; Antonio De Angelis <Antonio.DeAngelis@arm.com>; Alexei Fedorov <Alexei.Fedorov@arm.com>; Javier Almansa Sobrino <Javier.AlmansaSobrino@arm.com>; Arunachalam Ganapathy <Arunachalam.Ganapathy@arm.com>; Jens Wiklander <jens.wiklander@linaro.org>; jerome.forissier@linaro.org <jerome.forissier@linaro.org>; etienne.carriere@foss.st.com <etienne.carriere@foss.st.com>; Gilles Peskine <Gilles.Peskine@arm.com>; Janos Follath <Janos.Follath@arm.com>; Manuel Pegourie-Gonnard <Manuel.Pegourie-Gonnard@arm.com>; Ronald Cron <Ronald.Cron@arm.com>; Joao Alves <Joao.Alves@arm.com>; Madhukar Pappireddy <Madhukar.Pappireddy@arm.com>; Gyorgy Szing <Gyorgy.Szing@arm.com>
Cc: tsc@lists.trustedfirmware.org <tsc@lists.trustedfirmware.org>
Subject: Feedback requested on TrustedFirmware.org "Guidance on AI-assisted contributions"

Hi all

I’ve sent this to what I hope is a representative subset of TrustedFirmware.org project maintainers. Feel free to forward to others you think should be included.

 

I’m writing to gather maintainer feedback on a proposal for TrustedFirmware.org to have a policy on the use of AI-assistants in code contributions. Several other open-source organizations already have their own policies. Attached is the current draft of that policy, which is based on the Linux Foundation and Apache Software Foundation guidance. This has been discussed at the TF.org board and more recently, the TSC (see minutes here). Eric Finco @ ST had 2 pieces of feedback to this, the 2^nd of which prompted me to seek this wider input. To summarize that feedback:

1. Eric would like all contributions that use AI assistants to explicitly attribute the tool(s) used in the contribution for transparency reasons. The counter feedback is that this might be onerous to generate (especially if a tool has a complex backend) and there is no clear use for that information.
2. Eric would like the policy to apply to all TrustedFirmware.org projects, rather allowing projects to develop their own project-specific guidance (as per the current draft).

 

Some of this might require more interaction discussion. My plan was to invite you all to a future TSC meeting (perhaps in September) to discuss further. I’m happy to take feedback on the policy, Eric’s feedback or the process to handle this. Feel free to reply to this email (to all or just to me), or just wait for that TSC meeting.

Best regards

Dan.