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

Sat Apr 11 04:28:28 PDT 2026

I've renamed to more neutral "AI assisted", with comment "AI assisted 
coding involved. Review with extreme scepticism"

Le 11/04/2026 à 08:14, DelazJ via QGIS-Developer a écrit :
> Hi,
> I'd like to sidestep a bit and actually comment on the project being 
> welcoming or not.
> As Alexander explained earlier, there are many efforts and many 
> resources out there to help anyone onboard and contribute (code?) to 
> QGIS. This is true. But easiness is a matter of experience. For 
> someone that made it the hard way, things may look easier today. For 
> someone that is beginning, there still may be difficulties that we no 
> longer see because we are already inside the circle. I've experienced 
> this a few times in recent years, having to collaborate and share 
> responsibilities in the docs repo.
>
> But being welcoming is not only a technical matter. It is also (and 
> mainly?) about interaction, how we talk to each other, how we help 
> each other, how we onboard new comers.
> In this thread, there have been concerns mentioned about the "Slop!" 
> label not being welcoming. I don't know if that word has different 
> meanings in English but the translation I am aware of is, at best not 
> tasty, and generally offending for an intellectual production. 
> Suggestion for relabeling and for a description have been made. Was 
> there any action to improve the situation? None. The label is still 
> there weeks later. The matter is not about whether you think it is not 
> offending someone that just drops code from an AI; it is about whether 
> it may offend someone that made some real efforts to contribute and 
> use the AI as support (the same thing some core devs claimed they do). 
> If there's a single person that can be offended, I'd say we must adapt 
> our vocabulary. We are not interacting with machines. (Not yet). And 
> as mentioned by some devs, that already happened to real and known 
> people, not first time contributors, we encourage at French users 
> meeting to open PR.
>
> So my question to core developers (or anyone that has rights on labels 
> editing in the code repo) : what does it take to you to reword 
> appropriately that label ?
>
> Let's keep being the most welcoming as possible!
>
> Kind regards,
> Harrissou
>
>
> Le 1 avril 2026 15:03:30 GMT+02:00, Stefanos Natsis via QGIS-Developer 
> <qgis-developer at lists.osgeo.org> a écrit :
>
>     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
>
>     On Wed, 1 Apr 2026 at 14:47, Greg Troxel via QGIS-Developer
>     <qgis-developer at lists.osgeo.org> wrote:
>
>         I should be clear that really I lean to "no AI contributions,
>         at least
>         for now" - the legal situation is unsettled, as is the social
>         situation,
>         and declining to engage while others figure it out seems best.
>
>         What I really meant is that compared to where we are now,
>         restricting
>         contributions to those with a track record and human
>         relationships is a
>         positive incremental step.  However, I see the lack of equal
>         treatment
>         as a a bug.
>
>
>         As for concern about new contributors and what amounts to "the
>         kids
>         these days just want to vibe code and if we aren't ok with
>         that they
>         won't play with us", I think that's ok to defer worrying
>         about.  If
>         that's really how it is, the Free Software world has much bigger
>         problems well beyond the scope of any one project.
>
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