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

Patrick Dunford enzedrailmaps at gmail.com
Mon Sep 21 14:41:58 PDT 2026 

I think, and I'm just an observer watching this all play out with all 
the angles and ramifications:

It's not that you actually need AI for Qgis, or any software.

It's that people out there who aren't any kind of coder suddenly believe 
they can become one overnight by using AI to generate the code for them, 
and the term "vibe coding", if you look it up, implies much of this code 
is of poor quality.

The issue in general of using AI to generate anything is such a vast can 
of worms that the discussion at the level of just one open source 
project like this one is being repeated all over the internet at the moment.

Even for someone like me who has programming experience in several 
languages, the leap of skill and experience that it would take to 
contribute at that level to any project such as this one would be a 
massive step up from where I am now, which is writing Pyqgis scripts to 
do nice and really useful things in the console editor for various map 
projects I author. (A very useful capability BTW, which has saved me 
countless hours in automating some quite complex and/or repetitive tasks 
but that's another story). It's not just coding experience and innate 
knowledge of the software, API and object models that are required, but 
also innate knowledge of what GISes do and how they work, from people 
who I presume have major GIS industry experience. (For which they 
rightly have earned a great deal of respect in this community)

The AI coding debate is just a microcosm of the whole AI issue across 
society and I'm not going to say any more, I'll leave that one to the 
reader to consider.

On 22/09/2026 03:22, David Signer via QGIS-Developer wrote:
> Hi everyone
>
> I think #1 to get time until we have a good solution for #2 won't 
> hurt. The QGIS project worked well before AI. I kind of miss the big 
> argument for why we need to use AI for QGIS immediately. I am not 
> against using new technology, but I think we risk nothing by 
> proceeding with a careful deliberation. Regarding #2 I am not a big 
> fan of validating a new contributor's credibility through financial 
> donations, but with #1 we would have time to find a good solution there.
>
> Thanks and cheers
> Dave
>
>
> On Sat, Sep 19, 2026 at 8:28 PM Célia Buira via QGIS-Developer 
> <qgis-developer at lists.osgeo.org> wrote:
>
>     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.
>     > _______________________________________________
>     > 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
>     _______________________________________________
>     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
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/qgis-developer/attachments/20260922/099117e8/attachment-0001.htm>

More information about the QGIS-Developer mailing list