And sorry but "AI-assisted coding is here to stay" deeply goes into my
throat. That might be the actual outcome, but it fucking sucks. I hope
open source communities could resist more to that foolish trend that has
so many adversarial consequences on the whole society. Making coding
easier seems to be really futile.
Le 04/07/2026 à 21:03, Even Rouault via Discuss a écrit :
Hi,
At the conference I've also noticed one side effect of LLMs on
community building. I've discovered a new team of developers creating
a new project around one of our historic project, sometimes working
around its behavior instead of trying to improve it at the source, and
living in their own bubble with little incentive to participate to the
main project since their oracle apparently saves them from human
interactions. That kind of situation of course could have happened
before, but use of LLM technologies is likely to favor that type of
community split.
There's some parallel to draw with what happened with Tailwind
(https://www.businessinsider.com/tailwind-engineer-layoffs-ai-github-2026-1)
that has been cut off from most of its users because of LLM
interposition.
Even
Le 02/07/2026 à 21:32, Jeroen Ticheler via Discuss a écrit :
Dear all,
At FOSS4G Europe 2026 in Timisoara (Romania) we held a Birds of a
Feather session on the use of AI in OSGeo projects. Around 25 to 30
people joined, including many core developers who are well respected
in our community.
Opinions in the room were strong and differed a lot, which was the
point. We wanted to hear from people who use AI in their work and
from people who have concerns or bad experiences, and would rather
block AI contributions completely.
The problem is clear. Some projects now get many AI-generated pull
requests that land on the desks of a few core reviewers. They cannot
keep up. A lot of these PRs are long and give no useful reason for
the change. The tone can be pushy and cold. On top of that, there is
little human to human discussion behind these PRs, which makes the
whole process feel inhuman from the start. When this keeps happening,
trust drops, people feel worn down, and conflict becomes more likely,
because they hold different technical and ethical standards.
People shared their own stories
We heard what it is like to get an anonymous PR with no real person
behind it, where the sender seems to have done little more than press
submit.
We also heard positive experiences, where developers have taught AI
tools their own coding style and review habits, then used those tools
in two ways. One is to write new code that is hard to tell apart from
your own. The other is to fight fire with fire: let AI check incoming
PR’s and reject the ones that ignore the project rules, so those
never reach a human.
We also talked about newcomers. Many students and young developers
learned to code with AI from the start. Do they know enough to
contribute well, and how will they learn to write the kind of code an
OSGeo project needs? The room saw a link with earlier changes, like
the move to new programming languages. Each time the needed skills
changed, and each time people adapted.
A call on tone and community
The first outcome was a call to be careful with the way we talk to
each other. If we lose respect and stop being a welcoming community,
the harm lasts longer than any single PR. *We are in this together.*
AI-assisted coding is here to stay, and it also opens doors, for
example for people who do not code but want to help once good
guardrails exist. The room agreed on this and backed it.
A call to build shared AI practices
The second outcome was a call to start a new OSGeo effort where
developers build shared skills, agents, and contribution practices
that any project can use. This is not about copying one person’s
style. We have not yet decided if this should sit at OSGeo level or
inside each project.
If you code with AI or review PRs, we want you involved and I invite
you to start the conversation here on our discuss list or on our
Discourse General channel.
Thanks for reading!
Jeroen Ticheler
President of the board of directors of OSGeo
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My software is free, but my time generally not.
LLMs contribute to global warming and brain rot
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