Like so many large and popular open source projects these days, the Godot game engine struggles with an influx of pull requests. The situation has become increasingly dire due to the advent of AI-generated code. More specifically, the issue involves the inverse relationship between PR code quality and the number of PRs, which wastes a lot of time on the side of a limited number of (volunteer) reviewers. This has now forced the project to update its contribution policy.
An interesting point raised in the announcement article is that of the demoralizing effect of AI-generated PRs on reviewers. Often the human behind such a PR isn’t interested in being educated, or may even be an automated agent which isn’t capable of productive discussion on pros and cons of certain coding approaches — never mind in becoming a more permanent maintainer for the project.
This problem has led to new rules being instated, which include a ban on autonomous AI agents and vibe coding, a ban on substantial AI generating of code, and a ban on AI-generated text in human-to-human communication. It also codifies the requirement that all PRs are to be reviewed and approved by a human being before merging.
In many ways this new policy is similar to that of the Mesa project, which demands code comprehension on the side of the submitter, although it doesn’t go as far as NetBSD, which just outright treats LLM-generated code as ‘tainted’ due to potential licensing and other concerns. Other projects like the Linux kernel opt to make the human submitter responsible for any AI tool usage by forcing them to declare it.
Meanwhile there are also indications that such ‘AI tool’ usage is reducing useful interactions with open source projects. What the future will bring here remains to be seen, but at least as far as open source projects go these tools are clearly increasingly being banished.
