Re: [paho-dev] AI contributions - policy needed?

["james.parrott" <james.parrott@xxxxxxxxx>]

Thanks Greg.  

Some of these PR authors are apparently clicking through the buttons for the CLA signing process now.  Those are great suggestions though.

James.


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On Monday, 21 September 2026 at 13:09, Greg Troxel via paho-dev <paho-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> "james.parrott via paho-dev" <paho-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
> 
> > I'm not sure the problem is AI per se - I do use it myself. The
> > problem's going to become more akin to spam, and 'contributers' that
> > feel suspiciously like chatbots when you interact with them. I guess
> > I'm not pushing for a ban, I'm just pushing for an understanding, that
> > there's no longer an expectation, that any PR submitted without the
> > tests being run on the fork, must be read.
> 
> I don't think any project has ever had a rule that all PRs must be
> reviewed to any particular standard.  I think it's always been the case
> that a reviewer can say quickly that the contribution doesn't meet
> standards or isn't in condition such that expenditure of review
> resources is reasonable.
> 
> It seems easy to have some text to paste in to anything that looks
> suspicious
> 
>   Please explain if this PR contains any LLM-generated text.
> 
>   Please review the contributor guidelines and explain what testing you
>   have done.
> 
>   Please close this PR and rebsubmit when ready, with text and code
>   changes that are minimal and concise, in the way a human who
>   understands the codebase would craft them.
> 
> or something like that.  The example of many PRs in a few hours that on
> 10 minute reading would seem to be properly many fewer and organized
> better is the kind of thing that should just be rejected with a note
> that the human should re-organize and trim.
> 
> There is a longstanding concept of "entry criteria" to inpsection
> (inspection ~== formal/careful peer review) as a software engineering
> process.
> 
>   https://archive.org/details/softwareinspecti0000gilb
> 
> The details are paged out, but the basic concept is that cursory,
> high-speed quality checks (by a human, back then) must show that the
> code/whatever is good enough that it's a sensible use of resources to
> conduct an inpsection.
> 
> We haven't really dug into this in the open source world because
> pre-LLMs, incoming PRs were often reasonable enough, or were few in
> number.
> 
> 
> It would also be reasonable to require that any PR that seems to use LLM
> must have a CLA on file before any review at all.  Or perhaps that PRs
> may only be submitted if CLA is on file, except for one PR that does not
> involved LLM use.  Humans starting out often submit a PR before CLA, and
> wheen it's thoughtful and just one, that's fine.
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