[QGIS-Developer] Two proposals -- moratorium on LLM use, and requiring a "proof of life" for contributors

[Célia Buira]

What about implementing #2 proof of life first, see the effect of this new
policy on the github tracker, and only then implementing #1 if it's still
needed ?


About #2 I like the idea of the proof of life however requiring a financial
contribution is rubbing me the wrong way. Contributing efficiently to the
code of QGIS already required access to multiple thousands of dollars
hardware, often you come to qgis after higher degrees of education which
also adds inequality barriers. (I remember when I started to contribute to
qgis it would take a whole night to do a clean build of qgis on my laptop
at the time)

I think we should go for something simpler as in require new contributor to
screencast the end result of their PR and made them open the help > about
this way we can also check they compiled with the last Sha commit of the PR.


And for #1 My position is very much `wait and see`, I think it's too early
to tell where the balance between social benefits and social costs of these
tools will land in the end. And it would be too bad to remove a tool that
could genuinely be useful in the future. In the last discussion Stefanos
mentioned to allow contributor to use LLM once a certain threshold of PR is
reached I think we should explore this too before straight up ban LLM


And overall it sadden me that we collectively spent 3 decades writing free
software, free tutorials etc... Effectively creating commons. And LLM
companies took that from us, and make us pay twice. A first time at
individual level to access this technology, and a second time by putting
pressure on people and infrastructure.

I would like to float another ideas around even if it would be hard to
enforce in practice.
*Force AI companies to give back*.
Want to use Claude code? Sure but anthropic have to become a sustaining
member of QGIS.org first
Want to use codex, gemini? Then openAi and Google have to contribute to the
project financially and I'm talking geniully multiple thousands dollars
contributions.


In other words we should enter collective bargaining between open source
communities and AI companies with in mind the "polluter pays principle"

Cheers,
Célia


Le mer. 16 sept. 2026 à 05:44, Nyall Dawson via QGIS-Developer <
qgis-developer at lists.osgeo.org> a écrit :
>
> Hi list,
>
> It's quite clear that there's considerable hurt and disappointment
> within the QGIS developer community right now, and for very
> understandable reasons.
>
> I've been giving this a lot of thought over the last few days, and
> would like to propose two actions we could take that I think would
> make a positive difference to our community.
>
> #1. Place an immediate, total moratorium on all forms of LLM based
> contributions.
>
> We've tried gentle policies regarding this up till now, but clearly
> that's not helping. So I would like to propose a complete and total
> moratorium on any form of contribution assisted in any way (beyond as
> a replacement for a simple web search*).
>
> I think we should introduce a firm policy ASAP as a step toward
> repairing our community, and only after this could we start
> discussions about what form of LLM contribution may be acceptable.
>
> I.e. RIGHT NOW we default to a safe "NO AI" policy, and potentially
> later loosen this, rather than having a loose policy right now that
> maybe we'll correct in future.
>
> #2. Require a "proof of life" from all new contributors
>
> The above policy only really applies to existing contributors who we
> know and trust. Any policy we introduce will just be totally ignored
> or lied about by bots or karma farming AI sloppers. I've been
> wondering how to handle this. I've been thinking some form of "proof
> that you are a human and who you actually are" could be required, as
> some kind of document submitted to PSC for private/secure storage. But
> realistically, that's impossible in 2026, as any form of ID document
> could be forged in a few seconds, and it's clearly not possible for
> QGIS.org to police.
>
> So I'd propose that new contributors must FIRST make a financial
> donation to the QGIS project, before any contributions from that
> person are accepted in any form. This could be a small amount, just
> enough to deter the karma farmers who don't actually care about the
> project and what they're contributing. And any amount would be
> sufficient to block the bots.
>
> (Another solution could be to require a face-to-face, in person
> meeting with a contributor before they can submit changes)
>
> What do you all think? I believe we need to act immediately on #1. (I
> realise #2 may be more tricky and/or controversial)
>
> Nyall
>
>
>
> * because the web is broken in 2026. "simple" web searches don't work
anymore.
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