[PROJ] More restrictive LLM policy - like in GDAL

[Javier Jimenez Shaw]

Hi Kurt

Sorry, it could not be clear enough.
This voting is about this PR
https://github.com/OSGeo/PROJ/pull/4912
to change the AI policy in PROJ.

I found it an easy step to start with it PROJ.

The initiative by Nyall to change the GDAL terms was happening as a
consequence of my first email (if I understood correctly. I didn't know
Nyall was in this mailing list!)

Of course, changing today PROJ conditions doesn't mean we can't change them
again tomorrow.

Javier.


On Sun, 18 Oct 2026, 20:03 Kurt Schwehr, <schwehr at gmail.com> wrote:

> Javier,
>
> What exactly are you voting on?
>
> For those not keeping up, please also see this discussion:
>
> https://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/gdal-dev/2026-October/061758.html
>
> I personally think both PROJ and GDAL need detailed AGENTS.md files to
> help control the situation and to let AI review tools better help all who
> use LLM agents in any part of their workflow.
>
> -Kurt
>
>
> On Sun, Oct 18, 2026 at 7:55 AM Javier Jimenez Shaw via PROJ <
> proj at lists.osgeo.org> wrote:
>
>> 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.
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>> PROJ mailing list
>> PROJ at lists.osgeo.org
>> https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/proj
>>
>
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