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<p>I think, and I'm just an observer watching this all play out with
all the angles and ramifications:</p>
<p>It's not that you actually need AI for Qgis, or any software.</p>
<p>It's that people out there who aren't any kind of coder suddenly
believe they can become one overnight by using AI to generate the
code for them, and the term "vibe coding", if you look it up,
implies much of this code is of poor quality.</p>
<p>The issue in general of using AI to generate anything is such a
vast can of worms that the discussion at the level of just one
open source project like this one is being repeated all over the
internet at the moment.</p>
<p>Even for someone like me who has programming experience in
several languages, the leap of skill and experience that it would
take to contribute at that level to any project such as this one
would be a massive step up from where I am now, which is writing
Pyqgis scripts to do nice and really useful things in the console
editor for various map projects I author. (A very useful
capability BTW, which has saved me countless hours in automating
some quite complex and/or repetitive tasks but that's another
story). It's not just coding experience and innate knowledge of
the software, API and object models that are required, but also
innate knowledge of what GISes do and how they work, from people
who I presume have major GIS industry experience. (For which they
rightly have earned a great deal of respect in this community)</p>
<p>The AI coding debate is just a microcosm of the whole AI issue
across society and I'm not going to say any more, I'll leave that
one to the reader to consider.</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 22/09/2026 03:22, David Signer via
QGIS-Developer wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CAETFtHnxBVwKtYCLeX5AD=xdY9+9HBmpz=pVQhHZ15nDgLbTvA@mail.gmail.com">
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<div dir="auto">
<div dir="ltr">
<div>Hi everyone </div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>I think #1 to get time until we have a good solution for
#2 won't hurt. The QGIS project worked well before AI. I
kind of miss the big argument for why we need to use AI for
QGIS immediately. I am not against using new technology, but
I think we risk nothing by proceeding with a careful
deliberation. <span style="background-color:transparent">Regarding
#2 I am not a big fan of validating a new contributor's
credibility through financial donations, but with #1 we
would have time to find a good solution there.</span></div>
<div><span style="background-color:transparent"><br>
</span></div>
<div>Thanks and cheers</div>
<div>Dave</div>
</div>
</div>
<div dir="ltr"><br>
</div>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">
<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Sat, Sep 19, 2026 at
8:28 PM Célia Buira via QGIS-Developer <<a
href="mailto:qgis-developer@lists.osgeo.org" target="_blank"
rel="noreferrer" moz-do-not-send="true"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext">qgis-developer@lists.osgeo.org</a>>
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote"
style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
<div dir="auto">What about implementing #2 proof of life
first, see the effect of this new policy on the github
tracker, and only then implementing #1 if it's still needed
?
<div dir="auto"><br>
<br>
About #2 I like the idea of the proof of life however
requiring a financial contribution is rubbing me the wrong
way. Contributing efficiently to the code of QGIS already
required access to multiple thousands of dollars hardware,
often you come to qgis after higher degrees of education
which also adds inequality barriers. (I remember when I
started to contribute to qgis it would take a whole night
to do a clean build of qgis on my laptop at the time)
<div dir="auto">
<div dir="auto"><br>
</div>
<div dir="auto">I think we should go for something
simpler as in require new contributor to screencast
the end result of their PR and made them open the help
> about this way we can also check they compiled
with the last Sha commit of the PR.</div>
<div dir="auto"><br>
</div>
<div dir="auto"><br>
</div>
<div dir="auto">And for #1 My position is very much
`wait and see`, I think it's too early to tell where
the balance between social benefits and social costs
of these tools will land in the end. And it would be
too bad to remove a tool that could genuinely be
useful in the future. In the last discussion Stefanos
mentioned to allow contributor to use LLM once a
certain threshold of PR is reached I think we should
explore this too before straight up ban LLM</div>
<div dir="auto"><br>
</div>
<div dir="auto"><br>
</div>
<div dir="auto">And overall it sadden me that we
collectively spent 3 decades writing free software,
free tutorials etc... Effectively creating commons.
And LLM companies took that from us, and make us pay
twice. A first time at individual level to access this
technology, and a second time by putting pressure on
people and infrastructure. </div>
<div dir="auto"><br>
</div>
<div dir="auto">I would like to float another ideas
around even if it would be hard to enforce in
practice.</div>
<div dir="auto">*Force AI companies to give back*.</div>
<div dir="auto">Want to use Claude code? Sure but
anthropic have to become a sustaining member of
QGIS.org first </div>
<div dir="auto">Want to use codex, gemini? Then openAi
and Google have to contribute to the project
financially and I'm talking geniully multiple
thousands dollars contributions. </div>
<div dir="auto"><br>
</div>
<div dir="auto"><br>
</div>
<div dir="auto">In other words we should enter
collective bargaining between open source communities
and AI companies with in mind the "polluter pays
principle"</div>
<div dir="auto"><br>
</div>
<div dir="auto">Cheers,</div>
<div dir="auto">Célia</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<br>
<br>
Le mer. 16 sept. 2026 à 05:44, Nyall Dawson via QGIS-Developer
<<a href="mailto:qgis-developer@lists.osgeo.org"
rel="noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext">qgis-developer@lists.osgeo.org</a>>
a écrit :<br>
><br>
> Hi list,<br>
><br>
> It's quite clear that there's considerable hurt and
disappointment<br>
> within the QGIS developer community right now, and for
very<br>
> understandable reasons.<br>
><br>
> I've been giving this a lot of thought over the last few
days, and<br>
> would like to propose two actions we could take that I
think would<br>
> make a positive difference to our community.<br>
><br>
> #1. Place an immediate, total moratorium on all forms of
LLM based<br>
> contributions.<br>
><br>
> We've tried gentle policies regarding this up till now,
but clearly<br>
> that's not helping. So I would like to propose a complete
and total<br>
> moratorium on any form of contribution assisted in any
way (beyond as<br>
> a replacement for a simple web search*).<br>
><br>
> I think we should introduce a firm policy ASAP as a step
toward<br>
> repairing our community, and only after this could we
start<br>
> discussions about what form of LLM contribution may be
acceptable.<br>
><br>
> I.e. RIGHT NOW we default to a safe "NO AI" policy, and
potentially<br>
> later loosen this, rather than having a loose policy
right now that<br>
> maybe we'll correct in future.<br>
><br>
> #2. Require a "proof of life" from all new contributors<br>
><br>
> The above policy only really applies to existing
contributors who we<br>
> know and trust. Any policy we introduce will just be
totally ignored<br>
> or lied about by bots or karma farming AI sloppers. I've
been<br>
> wondering how to handle this. I've been thinking some
form of "proof<br>
> that you are a human and who you actually are" could be
required, as<br>
> some kind of document submitted to PSC for private/secure
storage. But<br>
> realistically, that's impossible in 2026, as any form of
ID document<br>
> could be forged in a few seconds, and it's clearly not
possible for<br>
> QGIS.org to police.<br>
><br>
> So I'd propose that new contributors must FIRST make a
financial<br>
> donation to the QGIS project, before any contributions
from that<br>
> person are accepted in any form. This could be a small
amount, just<br>
> enough to deter the karma farmers who don't actually care
about the<br>
> project and what they're contributing. And any amount
would be<br>
> sufficient to block the bots.<br>
><br>
> (Another solution could be to require a face-to-face, in
person<br>
> meeting with a contributor before they can submit
changes)<br>
><br>
> What do you all think? I believe we need to act
immediately on #1. (I<br>
> realise #2 may be more tricky and/or controversial)<br>
><br>
> Nyall<br>
><br>
><br>
><br>
> * because the web is broken in 2026. "simple" web
searches don't work anymore.<br>
> _______________________________________________<br>
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