Re:OSS projects banning AI-generated contributions
by JoshTriplett on Wednesday November 11, 2026 @04:44AM
(#50451456)
> I expect the problem isn’t necessarily the AI generation itself, but the difficulty to distinguish between someone that’s really understood the problem domain versus someone with LLM-induced “Dutch courage”.
Some of that. Also sometimes there isn't even a person, just a bot opening a pull request that doesn't hear feedback.
There's also the problem that many projects put disproportionate effort into mentoring new contributors and helping them get things right, and that's valuable when there's a human learning something, but not when you're just correcting someone's LLM slop.
And that's leaving aside all the other problems, like "these things took all our FOSS code, ignoring its licenses, and then used it to compete with us and drown us out", or "these things are going to turn us all into paperclips".
Some of that. Also sometimes there isn't even a person, just a bot opening a pull request that doesn't hear feedback.
There's also the problem that many projects put disproportionate effort into mentoring new contributors and helping them get things right, and that's valuable when there's a human learning something, but not when you're just correcting someone's LLM slop.
And that's leaving aside all the other problems, like "these things took all our FOSS code, ignoring its licenses, and then used it to compete with us and drown us out", or "these things are going to turn us all into paperclips".