[gdal-dev] Tightening AI based submission policy

[Daniel Baston]

> I'd argue that the policy is too permissive and is placing too much
burden on project maintainers.

As one of the maintainers, I am comfortable with the current policy. While
I wish we did not live in a world of low-quality AI-assisted pull requests,
they are not at the top of my personal list of burdens. If a PR appears to
be slop, I simply do not spend time reviewing it. We clearly have had
submissions that aren't compatible with the policy, and that will be the
case with whatever policy we choose. Fortunately, we have moderation tools
available through GitHub to:

- limit the number of pull requests a user can open (I recently fixed a
loophole in this)
- require pre-approval for CI workflows to run, to avoid wasting resources
on PRs that do not appear to be valuable
- ban users who do not comply with the policy

So far, these tools have been sufficient to prevent the PRs from being a
burden to me. Others may have different experiences.

Dan

On Thu, Oct 15, 2026 at 7:13 PM Nyall Dawson via gdal-dev <
gdal-dev at lists.osgeo.org> wrote:

> Hi list,
>
> I'd like to propose that the GDAL project tighten its current policy
> regarding submission of AI assisted contributions.
>
> Currently the proposal is per
> https://gdal.org/en/stable/community/ai_tool_policy.html#ai-tool-policy,
> which sounds like a fair and safe policy. However, we've seen the GDAL
> community torn apart recently even with this policy in place, so I'd argue
> that the policy is too permissive and is placing too much burden on project
> maintainers.
>
> I'd also argue strongly that there's been a net loss in the
> sustainability, stability and security of the GDAL project in recent
> months, as a direct result of this.
>
> For reference, the QGIS project introduced a moratorium on all forms of AI
> developed submissions (see
> https://github.com/qgis/QGIS-Enhancement-Proposals/blob/master/qep-408-ai-tool-policy.md),
> which is now quite a blunt policy: "No LLM, AI or agent assisted code
> contributions are allowed in the https://github.com/qgis/qgis repository.
> If we subsequently discover that you have used an AI, LLM, or any
> agent-based workflow for your contribution, you will be subject to code
> reversion and contributor rights sanctioning.".  This is intended as a way
> to block all forms of ai based submissions, until the project has had time
> to properly step back and thoughtfully see how they impact on open-source
> development (at which stages interested parties are invited to start
> discussions on how to suitably and sustainably loosen this policy).
>
> Perhaps a similar stance could be adapted for GDAL? To reiterate -- this
> may not be a permanent, forever ban on AI based submissions. It's a
> moratorium designed to protect the project and community until we can move
> forward safely.
>
> Thoughts?
>
> Nyall
>
>
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