[QGIS-Developer] Tightening AI submission policy?

[Nyall Dawson]

On Tue, 23 Jun 2026 at 19:06, Julien Cabieces <julien.cabieces at oslandia.com>
wrote:
>
>
> Hi all,
>
> +1 as well
>
> > - 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.
>
> Shall we not also allow AI when it's used as a chatbot to answer
> specific/technical questions.

I think we should, but maybe we don't need to explicitly state that? It's
unfortunate, but I've personally found that the web in 2026 is a wasteland
and search engines are basically useless for finding out information
anymore. Where once we could turn to stackexchange or blogs (or even
upstream documentation) there's just nothing out there anymore. So
realistically, I don't think we should block this. 😭

Nyall


>
> I also seen contributors using it to identify where and how to fix an
> issue. I've never tried it myself and don't know if it's something that
> actually work. Would it be allowed ?
>
> Regards,
> Julien
>
>
>
> > 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
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > QGIS-Developer mailing list
> > QGIS-Developer at lists.osgeo.org
> > List info: https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-developer
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-developer
>
> --
>
> Julien Cabieces
> Senior Developer at Oslandia
> julien.cabieces at oslandia.com
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