QGIS Bans All AI-Assisted Code From Its Repository, Stricter Than GDAL

QGIS, the open-source mapping application, now forbids any code written with an LLM, AI tool or agent in its main repository. The rewritten policy was merged on Oct. 7, 2026, thirteen days after the pull request opened on Sept. 24.

The pull request, titled "Add QEP428: No ai contributions permitted" and opened by contributor Nyall Dawson, describes itself as a change that "formally changes the AI policy to a strict 'NOT ALLOWED' policy." It edits the existing file qep-408-ai-tool-policy.md, which becomes version 2.0 of the policy rather than a new document.

What the policy text says

The operative paragraph, as it stands in the policy file on the master branch, is two sentences long:

No LLM, AI or agent assisted code contributions are allowed in the https://github.com/qgis/qgis repository. If we subsequently discover that you have used an AI, LLM, or any agent-based workflow for your contribution, you will be subject to code reversion and contributor rights sanctioning.

There is no carve-out for autocomplete and no disclosure tier. The first version of the file is dated Jan. 31, 2026 and credits Even Rouault as author; the 2.0 header is dated Sept. 24 and credits "the QGIS project contributors."

How it got stricter than GDAL

The starting point was a June thread on the QGIS developer list titled "Tightening AI submission policy?". Dawson wrote there that he wanted to "move away from our current (quite permissive) 'human in the loop' policy" toward something like what GDAL, the geospatial library QGIS builds on, had adopted. Alessandro Pasotti replied with a stricter test: "Do not contribute anything that you wouldn't have been fully capable of writing on your own without any AI assistance."

The merged text went further than either. GDAL's policy page still allows limited use: LLMs "may only be used as an improved auto-completion mechanism, or for repeated tasks," and any use must be labelled in a ticket, comment or commit message. QGIS now allows none, and the labelling requirement disappears because there is nothing left to label.

Policy	Autocomplete	Agent submissions	Disclosure
QGIS before Oct. 7	"Human in the loop"	"Human in the loop"	Not stated on the page
GDAL	Limited use only	Banned	Required
QGIS from Oct. 7	Banned	Banned	Not applicable

The QGIS "before" row rests on Dawson's description of the old rule as a permissive "human in the loop" policy. The pull request page does not reproduce the old text, so the table goes no further.

The objections on the pull request

The thread shows real dissent. The opening post collected 83 thumbs-up reactions against 23 thumbs-down, 15 hearts and five eyes.

1. Thumbs up83 reactions
2. Thumbs down23 reactions
3. Heart15 reactions
4. Eyes5 reactions

Source: GitHub pull request 387, accessed 2026-10-12

Commenter kannes objected to the scope, arguing the rule could also ban LLM use for code review, auditing and security work. Commenter uclaros asked what the policy protects against and wrote that the earlier policy's extractive tag was never created, while about 40 AI-tagged pull requests had been closed.

Supporters pointed at reviewer time. Commenter haubourg cited maintainer workload and the volume of AI-generated pull requests. Dawson said the old policy "had clearly not worked" and that the strict version is a starting point that could later be opened case by case. Commenter rouault-on-strike approved it as a stop-gap while the AI situation settles.

Enforcement is honour-based. Commenter timlinux said compliance turns on whether a contributor wrote the code "in good conscience" and that the project will not inspect anyone's machine.

Voting and what comes next

The pull request was labelled Accepted and merged after votes from four GitHub users: rouault-on-strike, alexbruy, signedav and elpaso.

The scope may widen. Pull request 389, "QEP 430: Extend AI Policy to all texts in the QGIS repo," was opened on Oct. 12 by a contributor using the handle ptitjano and is still open. It would carry the ban from code to issue text, comments and documentation, an extension commenter adamjstewart had already suggested on pull request 387.

Related coverage: an agent-driven decompilation project put copyright questions on the table, and HashiCorp archiving Boundary's free edition was another open-source project changing its terms.