[QGIS-Developer] Tightening AI submission policy?

[Julien Cabieces]

> 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?

Yes, we don't. But if we start to list all the things that are accepted
(auto-completion, refactoring), we need to list this one too. I think it
would be better to not list any accepted way of using LLM and stay with the "Don't
vibe-code, Don't generate too verbose code, Understand every line you
propose".

Regards,
Julien


> 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
>> >
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>>
>> --
>>
>> Julien Cabieces
>> Senior Developer at Oslandia
>> julien.cabieces at oslandia.com

-- 

Julien Cabieces
Senior Developer at Oslandia
julien.cabieces at oslandia.com