Skip to content

AI-assisted contribution policy

Note

This Rocky Linux Documentation project’s AI-Assisted Contributions Policy is based on and extends the AI-Assisted Contributions Policy developed by the Fedora Project. It is subject to changes and revisions.

You MAY use AI assistance for contributing to the Rocky Linux Documentation Project, as long as you follow the principles described below.

Accountability

  • You MUST take the responsibility for your contribution.
  • Contributing to Rocky Linux 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.

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 contributed content, disclosure must be included in the document preamble or other document metadata section.

Examples:

---
title: 
author: Steven Spencer
contributors: Ganna Zhyrnova, Colussi Franco, tianci li, Wale Soyinka 
ai-contributors: Claude (claude-sonnet-4-20250514), Gemini (gemini-2.5-pro)
---

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.

Large scale initiatives

The policy does not cover the large scale initiatives which may significantly change the ways the project operates or lead to exponential growth in contributions in some parts of the project. Such initiatives need to be discussed separately with the project leadership.

Respect for existing contributions

  • You MUST NOT submit AI-generated contributions that are primarily derived from, or substantially a rework of, other contributors’ work.
  • AI-assisted edits SHOULD preserve the original author’s intent, voice, and structure.

Concerns about possible policy violations should be reported as an issue via this link

The key words “MAY”, “MUST”, “MUST NOT”, and “SHOULD” in this document are to be interpreted as described in link:https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc2119[RFC 2119].

Contributors: Steven Spencer