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| 1 | +.. _ai_tool_policy: |
| 2 | + |
| 3 | +***************************************************************************** |
| 4 | +AI/LLM tool policy |
| 5 | +***************************************************************************** |
| 6 | + |
| 7 | +Rationale |
| 8 | +-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| 9 | + |
| 10 | +LLMs are changing software development in many ways. What was once scarce, the |
| 11 | +time and expertise to *write* software, is now plentiful. This scarcity was a |
| 12 | +choke point that limited consumption of related resources in open source |
| 13 | +projects. With that scarcity effectively gone in 2026, the dynamics and economics |
| 14 | +of a project like MapServer are being disrupted. |
| 15 | + |
| 16 | +A project like MapServer is not simply code. It is also design, review, coordinated |
| 17 | +refactoring, deprecation scheduling, coordinated communication, distribution, |
| 18 | +and historical outlook. The plentiful convenience of code writing LLMs do not |
| 19 | +effectively replace the human maintainers, architects, and documenters doing |
| 20 | +the jobs that provide much of the value MapServer users actually derive. If they |
| 21 | +did, LLM contributors would not need to bother to upstream activity to the |
| 22 | +project at all. |
| 23 | + |
| 24 | +With the explosion of LLM usage in software development, the constrained |
| 25 | +resource is now "maintenance". It is the time to review your contribution, the |
| 26 | +time to make it concise, the time to refactor it in to a larger system, and the |
| 27 | +time to protect the larger software system from disruption, breakage, and |
| 28 | +performance degradation. Indiscriminate usage of LLMs in open source projects |
| 29 | +*consume* maintenance, and the MapServer LLM tool policy attempts to conserve that |
| 30 | +resource. |
| 31 | + |
| 32 | +Additionally, legal systems across the world (including US and EU) have not |
| 33 | +definitely determined whether LLM outputs are derived works of training data or |
| 34 | +if LLM-written code can even be copyrighted by a human. This is despite it |
| 35 | +being latently extracted and originated from open source software in the first |
| 36 | +place. |
| 37 | + |
| 38 | +Policy |
| 39 | +-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| 40 | + |
| 41 | +Contributors can make **limited use** of LLMs for contributions in MapServer, |
| 42 | +subject to details mentioned below: |
| 43 | + |
| 44 | + * **Human contributors must be the primary author(s) of MapServer contributions** |
| 45 | + |
| 46 | + * All contributions including code, ticket comments, and commit messages |
| 47 | + should be fully understood by the author(s) submitting them to the |
| 48 | + project. |
| 49 | + |
| 50 | + * Submission of `vibe-coded <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vibe_coding>`__ contributions is *banned*. |
| 51 | + |
| 52 | + * LLMs may only be used as an improved auto-completion mechanism, for |
| 53 | + repeated tasks (mechanical refactoring) that could potentially be |
| 54 | + completed with a deterministic algorithm, or to assist in identifying |
| 55 | + potential coding errors. LLM output is advisory only and must not |
| 56 | + replace human code review or testing. |
| 57 | + |
| 58 | + * Human-coordinated or uncoordinated (OpenClaw, etc) use of agents for |
| 59 | + submission of contributions to the MapServer repository is *banned*. |
| 60 | + |
| 61 | + * *Any* LLM usage must be indicated by ticket label, comment, or commit |
| 62 | + message indication and account for what was written by whom/what. |
| 63 | + |
| 64 | + * The contributing human author is ultimately responsible for every line of |
| 65 | + code, comment, or mailing list interaction they initiate, and all of it |
| 66 | + is subject to the project's code of conduct. |
| 67 | + |
| 68 | + * The typical high verbosity of LLM code and text is actively discouraged. |
| 69 | + More code is more code to maintain. High verbosity contribution (tickets, |
| 70 | + code, messages, etc) will be seen as indication of LLM-generated content |
| 71 | + when not labeled otherwise and may be ignored, closed, left unmerged, or |
| 72 | + removed at maintainers' discretion. |
| 73 | + |
| 74 | + |
| 75 | +Violations |
| 76 | +-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| 77 | + |
| 78 | +If a maintainer judges that a contribution does not comply with this policy, |
| 79 | +they should paste the following response to request changes: |
| 80 | + |
| 81 | +.. code-block:: text |
| 82 | + |
| 83 | + This PR does not appear to comply with our policy on tool-generated content, |
| 84 | + and requires additional justification for why it is valuable enough to the |
| 85 | + project for us to review it. Please see our developer policy on |
| 86 | + AI-generated contributions: |
| 87 | + https://mapserver.org/community/ai_tool_policy.html |
| 88 | + |
| 89 | +If a contributor fails to rectify their contribution to comply with the policy, |
| 90 | +maintainers may lock the conversation and/or close the pull request/issue/RFC. |
| 91 | +In case of repeated violations of our policy, the MapServer project reserves itself |
| 92 | +the right to temporarily or permanently ban the infringing person/account. |
| 93 | + |
| 94 | +Mitigation |
| 95 | +-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| 96 | + |
| 97 | +MapServer donations are one way your organization can help buffer the cost and |
| 98 | +disruption of LLMs in projects such as MapServer. The constrained resource is |
| 99 | +maintenance, not adding more code/capability. Donations financially support |
| 100 | +operation of MapServer as an ongoing open source software project, and without |
| 101 | +it, much of the activity MapServer users take for granted would simply not happen. |
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