[QGIS-Developer] Floating an idea: ban AI based contributed from non-core developers?

[Alexander Bruy]

Hi all,

I'm not sure what would be the best solution here. While I support
Nyall and Stefanos statements about reducing SNR, I also agree with
Alessandro that ban of AI use is not enforceable.

I also second Stefanos' disagreement about the statement that QGIS has
a problem with being welcoming to new contributors. As someone who
started contributing when one had to send patches to a core developer
by email or attach them to a ticket in Trac, I'd say currently
barriers for newcomers are much lower. There are a lot of guides,
documentation, code reviewing tools that help and make things much
easier. As for the code review process, I always see how core devs
help new contributors to finalize and polish their work, not
discarding or gatekeeping them.

While I do not have a strong opinion on what would be the best
solution here: a complete ban of the AI tools or something else. But l
can't agree with the statement that enforcing some limitations will
drive people from disclosing AI use. From what I can see, some already
do this despite the fact that we have a corresponding checkbox in the
PR template, for example at least some of these pull-requests

 - https://github.com/qgis/QGIS/pulls?q=is%3Apr+author%3Aabinayasiva29-web+is%3Aclosed,
 - https://github.com/qgis/QGIS/pulls?q=is%3Apr+author%3Asidhansu10+is%3Aclosed

were submitted after we started to ask for AI use disclosure and
authors often were not open about it even when asked directly in the
comments.

Probably, as proposed in previous emails, we can ask contributors to
confirm that they have checked and understand code, but again there is
no real way to enforce this. We will be relying on their good will and
honesty anyway, as we do now.



ср, 1 квіт. 2026 р. о 14:03 Stefanos Natsis via QGIS-Developer
<qgis-developer at lists.osgeo.org> пише:
>
> Hi all,
>
> I'm on the same page with Nyall on this one. While not perfect, a no AI policy will improve the SnR of new PRs and that's important granted that we already struggle with a queue of ~100 PRs!
>
> > QGIS already has a problem with welcoming new contributors, and a policy giving more special rights to core contributors will only make the situation worse.
>
> I strongly disagree with this opinion, especially before the inflow of AI assisted PRs. It's actually quite the contrary, QGIS is so welcoming to new contributors that we are starting to face issues with AI contributions! Yes, sometimes PRs stay in the queue for too long, however reviews are helpful and not dismissive.
>
> It is sane and healthy to not treat core contributors or seasoned veterans the same as newcomers. Core contributors are by definition trusted so they can use the 'risky' tools. This is not gatekeeping in the same way that it is not gatekeeping to limit commit rights to core contributors only. We could still adapt this to requiring a minimum of let's say 50 merged PRs before AI tools are allowed.
>
> Of course, since this is not enforceable, practically anyone can still use AI tools to review his code, or even generate new code and we won't know, and that will be OK, as long as the code is good!
> Overall SnR will be improved though, as anyone wanting to contribute will need to put more effort into it.
>
> Best
> Stefanos

-- 
Alexander Bruy