1. Purpose and Scope
Gravity Linux is a clean-room reverse-engineering project focused on enabling Linux to run on Apple platforms. We believe that LLMs are incredibly powerful reverse engineering tools, yet can present serious risks when used improperly.
The legal, technical, and provenance implications of code produced with large language models remain uncertain. This policy therefore takes a deliberately conservative approach. It permits and encourages responsible LLM use while attempting to remove the most serious uncertainties concerning copyright, contamination, and code provenance.
We emphasize the effectiveness of LLMs in live probing. They do not become tired or frustrated and can assist with repetitive, continuous experimentation. LLMs accelerate live probing of hardware, which should always be the first resort when trying to understand a new system. Any knowledge gathered by live probing by an untainted contributor and LLM is admissible for use in the project.
This policy applies to all Gravity Linux contributors.
2. Contributor Responsibility
Above all, you are responsible for delivering correct, maintainable, and demonstrably clean-room work.
Use of an LLM does not excuse:
- low-quality, nonfunctional, unmaintainable, tainted, or otherwise bad code
- inaccurate or difficult to read documentation
- contamination by proprietary implementation details
- failure to comply with any other policies or procedures
An LLM is a tool used under your direction. You remain responsible for its inputs, outputs, behavior, and resulting contributions.
3. LLMs as Extensions of Contributors
Your LLM is an extension of you. If in any session your LLM has looked at any disassembly, decompilation, or other protected implementation details of an Apple component, you must consider yourself tainted with respect to that component. Thus, you may not contribute to clean-room implementations of that component. Clearing the context window, or starting a new session, does not change this.
You may produce clean room documentation using your gained knowledge, subject to the documentation restrictions defined below.
When clean separation cannot be demonstrated, the resulting work may not be accepted.
4. Prohibition on LLM Laundering
LLM laundering is strictly forbidden.
LLM laundering includes providing Apple copyrighted code, disassembly, decompiled output, proprietary implementation details, or substantially equivalent protected material to an LLM and asking it to:
- rewrite the material;
- rename identifiers;
- restructure or refactor it;
- generate a functionally equivalent substitute;
- convert it into pseudocode;
- otherwise disguise, transform, or obscure its origin.
Material does not become clean-room merely because it has been processed, summarized, rewritten, or regenerated by an LLM.
This will be strictly enforced.
5. Disclosure Requirements
All LLM use connected to a contribution must be disclosed.
Disclosure must be sufficient to allow maintainers to understand:
- what role the LLM played;
- what categories of information were provided to it;
- what human review was performed; and
- what evidence supports the clean-room provenance of the contribution.
Disclosure is required even when the contributor believes the LLM’s involvement was minor.
Failure to disclose LLM use may be treated as a serious violation of this policy.
6. Documentation Classification
All project documentation must be clearly labeled according to its intended audience: For Humans, or For LLMs.
Documentation labeled For Humans must either:
- be written entirely by a human; or
- receive extensive human review sufficient to verify its accuracy, clarity, provenance, and suitability for human reliance.
The reviewing contributor must take full responsibility for the final text.
Documentation labeled For LLMs must still comply with all clean-room, provenance, disclosure, and copyright requirements.
Neither type of documentation is allowed to contain tainted information.
6.1 Communication Restrictions
Unless explicitly requested, any Discord messages, interpersonal communication, or other chat like formats may not contain large blocks of LLM generated content.
Github issues, bug reports, or other technical communications, must follow the above requirements for documentation “For Humans”.
LLMs are not tools for communicating with humans.
7. Records and Process Verification
Gravity Linux maintainers may request information necessary to verify compliance with this policy.
Requested information may include:
- complete LLM transcripts;
- prompts and responses;
- descriptions of the contributor’s clean-room process;
- sources used during development;
- agent activity logs;
- commit history; and
- other records relevant to provenance.
Contributors should preserve sufficient records to demonstrate that their work was independently produced through an acceptable clean-room process.
The project may reject any code, documentation, or other contribution whose provenance cannot be fully demonstrated as clean-room.
An inability or unwillingness to provide requested records may result in rejection, even when no specific act of contamination has been established.
8. Enforcement
Gravity Linux reserves the right to reject, revert, quarantine, or remove any contribution that appears inconsistent with this policy or whose provenance is uncertain.
Gravity Linux also reserves the right to restrict or disallow participation by any contributor, with or without prior warning, for actual or suspected violations of this policy.
The project will make a reasonable effort to communicate concerns, explain decisions, and act transparently. However, protection of the project’s clean-room integrity takes priority over continued acceptance of any particular contribution or contributor.
Acceptance of earlier contributions does not prevent later review or removal if new provenance concerns arise.
9. Conservative Interpretation
Where this policy is ambiguous, contributors must choose the interpretation that most strongly preserves clean-room separation and verifiable provenance.
When there is uncertainty about whether a model, contributor, document, or implementation is tainted, the material must not be used until the issue has been reviewed and resolved.
10. Condition of Contribution
By contributing to Gravity Linux, you represent that:
- you have complied with this policy;
- your contribution is based only on permitted information and processes;
- all relevant LLM use has been disclosed;
- you have not used LLM laundering;
- you can provide reasonable evidence of clean-room provenance; and
- you accept that the project may reject or remove work when provenance cannot be established.