QGIS bans AI-assisted code contributions after its 'human in the loop' policy failed

QGIS, the free and open-source mapping software, has approved a new policy: "No LLM, AI or agent assisted code contributions are allowed" in its main repository. Contributors later found to have used AI face "code reversion and contributor rights sanctioning". The proposal was merged on 7 October 2026 after a vote. It replaces an earlier policy that allowed AI tools if a human reviewed everything. A reviewer on the pull request noted that under the old policy about 50 pull requests were tagged AI Assisted and about 40 were closed without merging. A maintainer said the project had already lost an extremely high value contributor. QGIS core developer Nyall Dawson described the change as a closed door that may be opened selectively later. On Hacker News (363 points, about 390 comments), opinion split. Of the 60 top-level comments, many backed the ban, citing overloaded reviewers and code quality, while many others criticised it as short-sighted or predicted AI-rewritten forks. A small group, about 5 of the 60, asked how "AI assisted" would even be defined or detected, a worry QGIS contributors also raised on the proposal itself. No consensus. Sorted take: this is a reviewer-capacity problem more than an anti-AI stance. Expect more volunteer projects to restrict AI contributions until they can review them properly.