[QGIS-Developer] Tightening AI submission policy?

[David Signer]

> Do not contribute anything that you wouldn't have been fully capable of
writing on your own...

I really like this: You should be able to write it yourself and not only
understand it.
That's the point. I thought about that as well but the right wording didn't
come to my mind.

Thanks and cheers
Dave

On Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 07:11 Alessandro Pasotti via QGIS-Developer <
qgis-developer at lists.osgeo.org> wrote:

> Big +1
>
> It's probably hard to put in clear terms (and forgive my English), but
> I think that the criteria should be even stricter than "contribute
> only what you understand":
>
> "Do not contribute anything that you wouldn't have been fully capable

of writing on your own without any AI assistance."
>
> or
>
> "Contribute only what you could have done by yourself without any AI
> assistance."
>
> Tthis makes it more likely that you will be able to fix or improve
> your work if needed.
>
> On Tue, Jun 23, 2026 at 1:47 AM Nyall Dawson via QGIS-Developer
> <qgis-developer at lists.osgeo.org> wrote:
> >
> > Hi lists,
> >
> > Following recent discussions and conflict within the PostGIS community,
> I would like us to consider tightening our AI submission policy to
> hopefully avoid similar conflict arising in our community.
> >
> > I would propose that we move away from our current (quite permissive)
> "human in the loop" policy (see
> https://github.com/qgis/QGIS-Enhancement-Proposals/blob/master/qep-408-ai-tool-policy.md
> ) to something more restrictive, such as what the GDAL project has done.
> See
> https://github.com/OSGeo/gdal/blob/33399bf734f48a6727050ccd13a43575d43f6bf4/doc/source/community/ai_tool_policy.rst
> ).
> >
> > In short, GDAL's policy is:
> >
> > Contributors can make limited use of LLMs for contributions in GDAL,
> subject to details mentioned below:
> >
> > - Human contributors must be the primary author(s) of GDAL contributions
> > - All contributions including code, ticket comments, and commit messages
> should be fully understood by the author(s) submitting them to the project.
> > - Submission of vibe-coded contributions is banned.
> > - LLMs may only be used as an improved auto-completion mechanism, or for
> repeated tasks (mechanical refactoring) that could potentially be completed
> with a deterministic algorithm.
> > - Human-coordinated or uncoordinated (OpenClaw, etc) use of agents for
> submission of contributions to the GDAL repository is banned.
> > - Any LLM usage must be indicated by ticket label, comment, or commit
> message indication and account for what was written by whom/what.
> > - The contributing human author is ultimately responsible for every line
> of code, comment, or mailing list interaction they initiate, and all of it
> is subject to the project's :ref:`code_of_conduct`.
> > - The typical high verbosity of LLM code and text is actively
> discouraged. More code is more code to maintain. High verbosity
> contribution (tickets, code, messages, etc) will be seen as indication of
> LLM-generated content when not labeled otherwise and may be ignored,
> closed, left unmerged, or removed at maintainers' discretion.
> >
> >
> > I personally think a combination of GDAL policy + borrowing the
> "contribute only what you understand" term from Godot's current policy (see
> https://contributing.godotengine.org/en/latest/pull_requests/pull_request_guidelines.html#ai-assisted-contributions
> could be a good step forward. Specifically this clause:
> >
> > Contribute only what you understand
> > Only submit code that you fully understand and are prepared to explain
> to a maintainer. This especially applies if you implement the idea of
> another person, copy code from elsewhere, or if you use AI to assist you
> with your contribution. In all of these cases, you must disclose which part
> of your submission wasn't fully authored by you.
> >
> > Thoughts?
> >
> > Nyall
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> > QGIS-Developer at lists.osgeo.org
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>
>
>
> --
> Alessandro Pasotti
> QCooperative:  www.qcooperative.net
> ItOpen:   www.itopen.it
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