[PROJ] More restrictive LLM policy - like in GDAL

[Javier Jimenez Shaw]

Let's vote

I start with my +1
Javier

On Fri, 16 Oct 2026, 10:57 Kristian Evers, <kristian at evers.dev> wrote:

> Thanks for starting this discussion, Javier! I think everyone that follows
> the activity on GitHub will have been overwhelmed by recent activity. I
> certainly have. It’s’ clear to me that we need to change something but it
> is not clear to me what the best way forward is. Having given the topic
> some though over the last week I think my priorities are as follows:
>
> * Community building
> * Human interactions
> * Avoiding maintainer burnout
> * Producing a useful software package
>
> At the moment we are struggling in the three first bullets. In particular
> regarding human interaction. There are quite a few cases where you can
> rightfully doubt if a human was even involved at all. Really discouraging.
> The influx of new dubious contributors is driving maintainer burnout at the
> moment and is not doing wonders for the community either. That said, access
> to LLM tools has also lowered the barrier for entry[0] to our community
> which can be seen in the increased number of contributions in the
> cartographic parts of PROJ. An area that hasn't seen much focus over the
> last few years. The LLMs are helping bridge the gap between web-based
> cartography and our ancient ways of C and C++. I think it is fantastic to
> see some of the innovation in the Javascript-space find its way into PROJ
> but it is not worth anything if it causes the regular maintainers to burn
> out.
>
> I can agree to adopt the GDAL policy but I don’t think it will fix
> everything. I expect we will end up spending quite some time policing the
> policy and new contributors trying to circumvent it. Probably that’s better
> than doing nothing but still not particularly fun.
>
> Let’s finish this debate at the policy first and once that is settled I
> would like to propose a few extra ideas on how to avoid bot accounts and
> increasing community engagement. Stay tuned.
>
> /Kristian
>
>
> [0] Two-edged sword, I know.
>
> On 15 Oct 2026, at 19.45, Javier Jimenez Shaw via PROJ <
> proj at lists.osgeo.org> wrote:
>
> Hi
>
> Recently there has been a relative explosion of PRs (and issues) in PROJ.
> I would say that many of them were LLM generated, by people (well, probably
> not people) that do not know the project, do not care about it, and very
> likely do not have any connection with it. Just to get some "points" as
> contributors I guess.
> I don't want to know how much energy and tokens they burned for such PRs
> and issues.
> You can go to the repository and have your own opinion.
>
> I created this PR that is a copy of the GDAL AI policy:
> https://gdal.org/en/stable/community/ai_tool_policy.html
>
> I don't know if it will keep slope code out of PROJ, but it is another
> step.
> https://github.com/OSGeo/PROJ/pull/4912
>
> Cheers
> Javier.
>
>
>
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