[PROJ] More restrictive LLM policy - like in GDAL

Tue Oct 20 06:20:27 PDT 2026

-0 from me for the reason that it doesn't do anything to change the major complaint. We have a constant onslaught of LLM-generated content in the project that we must react to that is impeding maintainer's ability to manage the project effectively without feeling as if they're existing to satisfy the machine. The policy doesn't change that, but if it gives maintainers permission to close stuff without remorse, I would argue they've always had it.

Much of the recent projection formula PR churn is clearly LLM-originated. It was either found by LLMs exercising lightly tested code paths, or found by someone prompting an LLM to look for obvious formula bugs. We're adapting and merging them because they are specific enough, small enough to reason about, and valuable because they fix real issues. A "No AI" policy is incongruent with this kind of contribution which from a practical standpoint is already happening in PROJ.

I think we should invest more to harden the project against slop, protect our CI allocation by gatekeeping PRs to only run the simple linux test runner before workflowing a more substantial, maintainer-initiated CI loop, and be ruthless about closing anything we don't like for whatever reason. The old model of open source was to be accommodating in the face of contributors. It must now be the other way – contributors must be accommodating in the face of maintainers. Maybe that means they'll have to rework or recreate a PR two or three times to get enough attention on the topic to get it merged.

The alternative is "Which PROJ?", which is going to happen regardless because a fork is now so easy to make, but it is not so easy to build up 43 years of trust. PROJ and its code is what's trusted. We should not be in a hurry to break that trust. Not fixing obvious bugs because an LLM found them instead of a person weakens that trust, but we don't need to be accommodating of contribution that makes convenient distribution of capability for the contributor at the cost of diligence, review, agony of the maintainers.

> On Oct 20, 2026, at 7:23 AM, Kristian Evers via PROJ <proj at lists.osgeo.org> wrote:
> 
> It's a +0 from me.
> 
> I think the current GDAL policy is okay but I am not sure it will change much without further changes to how we handle new contributors and what expections we set to contributions. My feeling is that we will still get unwanted contributions no matter what policy we put in place. 
> 
> I am not sure what to make of the lack of votes though. Is it a silent acceptance or do we have community members that are against the policy but don't feel like disturbing the peace? 
> 
> /Kristian
> On Sunday, October 18th, 2026 at 20:16, Javier Jimenez Shaw <j1 at jimenezshaw.com> wrote:
>> 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 <mailto: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 <mailto: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 <mailto: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 <mailto: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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> 
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