I might be wrong but my perspective here is that the entire AI industry never bothered to show any respect to anything we do. Not our work, our time, our values or our licenses. And now we shall be those who should show more respect? This is a bit ridiculous. The rise of LLMs is actively destroying our long-valued ways of building the community and I am tired of pretending it opens to door to new participants. It does not.
Take the Google Summer of Code as an example. For years we have been happily participating, we even recruited new maintainers though it, and other super valuable members of the community. What happened this year is an absolute disaster. First, back in winter before the application period started, we were practically DDoS'ed by a wave of AI generated PRs with an aim “to get involved before applying”. Already then I had thought of pulling from GSoC but no, I was respectful and wanted to give a chance to a student who seemed good. Well, we just failed him during the midterm evaluation (this has never happened before as far as I remember) as he was clueless about his own code and when questioned admitted that he used AI “more than he wanted”. And while use of AI is not against our policy (remember, we’re respectful to pro-LLM crowd), not acknowledging that and not understanding the outcome is. This is not a unique experience. It is one of many examples showing how the rising use of LLMs hurt communities. I don’t need to produce more code for our projects. I need to produce more people who care to sustain them. And it seems that the usual pathways are now blocked by slop. Martin > On 8. 7. 2026, at 20:27, Iván Sánchez Ortega via Discuss > <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hey Jeroen, > > I disagree with your point of view, because (from where I'm sitting) it seems > biased. You say: > >> If you code with AI or review PRs, we want you involved and I invite you to >> start the conversation [...] > > Reading between the lines, it'd seem that people who do **not** use LLMs for > coding or reviews are not equally invited. The anti-LLM and LLM-skeptical > folks deserve the same voice as encouragement than the pro-LLM folks. I don't > think that's currently the case. > > >> 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, [...] > > You seem to be asking that the anti-LLM camp should show more respect towards > the pro-LLM camp, and I have to ask for the opposite. When a maintainer says > "no LLM PRs", the submitter should respect and welcome that. If we don't aim > for that, I bet that people are going to feel disrespected and burn out. > > > > -- > Iván Sánchez Ortega <[email protected]> https://ivan.sanchezortega.es > > > _______________________________________________ > Discuss mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
