r/opensource banned every AI-built project from its pages on Oct. 24, 20261. The rule covers code, documentation and bug reports. Readers answered with about 1,400 comments in a day. The vote on the announcement landed at a net score of zero.
That number is the real story. A forum this size rarely lands on an exact tie, on any subject. Readers who maintain, fund or depend on open-source code now face the same question r/opensource just put to a vote.
What the New Rule Actually Bans
The new rule bars three kinds of work, PPC Land reported from the moderator's post1. AI-built code is out, AI-targeted tools are out, and so is code that uses AI anywhere inside it.
New submissions also need a year of active work behind them, plus three or more contributors, under the same rule1. A member who argues the point by message after posting risks a permanent ban, PPC Land reported.
Exceptions stay open in narrow cases. AI-made accessibility features can still apply. Automatic captions, for instance, get judged case by case, AI Brainer reported2.
Members reacted fast anyway. One broke away within hours to start a rival forum, r/TrueOpenSource, for the projects the new rule turned down1. Seven separate threads carried the same news to other forums within one day, PPC Land counted.
Why Moderators Reached for a Hard Line
About 98,000 people visit r/opensource each week. The forum sees roughly 2,100 contributions in that same span, PPC Land reported1. Its four moderators had grown tired of a flood too big for a small team to screen by hand. The lead moderator put the daily count at about 20 messages from people defending rejected AI projects.
That flood reaches well past one forum. A Linux Foundation survey found maintainers rate 25 percent of incoming pull requests as low-quality AI work3. That share climbs to 31 percent on the largest projects. "Open source projects need to design for a growing AI-generated contributor base, not simply react to it," said Hilary Carter, the foundation's senior vice president of research, in its own announcement.
Open Source's AI Ban Wave Builds for 10 Months Before It Reaches Reddit
Dated AI contribution policy moves across open-source projects, January to October 2026
Each pin marks one project's AI policy move; the pin's position follows the calendar, and the gap before Oct. 24 shows how fast the question reached r/opensource.
Sources: PPC Land [1]; Linux Foundation [3]; GitHub [4]; Heron's Perch [5]; The Register [6]; Mitchell Hashimoto on X [8]. Chart by Ryan Elliott Dennis.
The numbers behind this chart
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| Jan. 22, 2026 | Ghostty AI policy. Hashimoto limits AI PRs to approved issues |
| Aug. 4, 2026 | GNUstep debates a ban. Chisnall argues against a blanket refusal |
| Oct. 7, 2026 | QGIS bans AI outright. Maintainers pass QEP428, 109 to 34 |
| Oct. 9, 2026 | Kernel drops AI tag. Maintainers deprecate the Assisted-by tag |
| Oct. 20, 2026 | LF survey measures slop. 31% of large-project pull requests rated AI slop |
| Oct. 24, 2026 | r/opensource bans AI. 390,000-member forum ties its own vote |
Daniel Stenberg feels a version of that weight too. He maintains curl. Nearly every connected device relies on it somewhere.
An avalanche of AI-assisted vulnerability reports pushed his small team to move low-level bug reports into public view on Oct. 26, 20269. "We are struggling as a project as all key maintainers feel strained, overloaded and brought to the brink of what we can muster," Stenberg told The Register.
The Case for Drawing a Hard Line
QGIS reached r/opensource's conclusion first. It is open-source mapping software used by governments and researchers worldwide4. Its maintainers passed an outright AI ban on Oct. 7, 2026, after a proposal Nyall Dawson opened two weeks earlier on GitHub.
Julien Cabieces, who sits on QGIS's project steering committee, argued for it on that same page. "AI use from external contributors puts a massive and unbearable pressure on the shoulders of our maintainers, who already had a though job before the era of LLM's," he wrote4.
QGIS's own contributors backed him by a wide margin. The proposal passed with 109 thumbs-up reactions against 34 thumbs-down, a net favor of 754. QGIS calls its new stance a closed door, open again only through narrow, case-by-case exceptions.
QGIS's AI Ban Wins a 75-Reaction Margin. Reddit's Vote Splits Evenly.
Net favorable reactions on each project's AI ban announcement, October 2026
Each column is the net count of favorable reactions minus unfavorable ones on that project's own ban announcement; QGIS counted GitHub thumbs-up and thumbs-down, r/opensource counted Reddit's up and down votes.
QGIS's reactions came from a small circle of named contributors on GitHub; r/opensource's vote came from a forum near 390,000 mostly anonymous members, so the two totals measure different groups.
Sources: PPC Land [1]; GitHub [4]. Chart by Ryan Elliott Dennis.
The numbers behind this chart
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| QGIS | 75 |
| r/opensource | 0 |
Mitchell Hashimoto chose a narrower version of the same idea for Ghostty, the terminal app he built. "AI assisted PRs are now only allowed for accepted issues. Drive-by AI PRs will be closed without question," he posted on X8.
Mitchell Hashimoto@mitchellhGhostty is getting an updated AI policy. AI assisted PRs are now only allowed for accepted issues. Drive-by AI PRs will be closed without question. Bad AI drivers will be banned from all future contributions. If you're going to use AI, you better be good. https://t.co/AJRX79S8XD
The Case Against One
David Chisnall shares the worry and picks a different fix. He chairs the GNUstep project and raised the same proposal there months earlier, in August.
"But a blanket refusal to use generative AI is the wrong response. It does not solve the hardest problems," Chisnall wrote on his own blog5. Free software, he argued, would lose its say in AI's future the moment it refused the technology altogether.
Linus Torvalds makes a related point from the other side of the keyboard. Kernel maintainers dropped a rule requiring an "Assisted-by" tag on AI-aided patches on Oct. 9, 2026, rather than add a ban6. "I really think we want competent people to use AI as a tool," he told The Register. He wants a different line, aimed at "the drive-by patches" from people who just want to feel like they sent something.
He named two separate problems worth that line. One is real bugs AI finds inside old code. The other is contributors who paste in patches they barely understand6.
What to Do
Test a rule against your biggest dependency before you publish it. Read literally, r/opensource's rule would turn away one surprising project. Linux's own kernel once required an AI-assisted tag on patches, the exact system its maintainers just dropped.
Count who actually voted before trusting a margin: QGIS passed its ban through a small circle of named maintainers. r/opensource asked close to 390,000 mostly anonymous members and got a tie.
Build the exception into the rule while it is still a draft. QGIS and r/opensource both wrote narrow carve-outs for accessibility work and translation from day one.
By the Numbers
- 98,000 people visit r/opensource in an average week, PPC Land reported1.
- About 1,400 comments landed under the ban announcement within roughly a day1.
- A net vote score of zero is what that same announcement carried1.
- About 20 messages a day reached moderators from people defending rejected AI projects, the lead moderator estimated1.
- 109 thumbs-up reactions beat 34 thumbs-down on QGIS's own AI ban, a margin of 754.
- 31 percent of pull requests on the largest open-source projects now count as AI slop, the Linux Foundation found3.
- Close to 390,000 members belong to r/opensource, reddapi.dev counted, well under the 500,000 figure one report used7.
What to Watch
Watch whether other large, anonymous forums split the way r/opensource did. Or watch whether a tie like this belongs only to crowds too big to vote as a team.
See too whether r/TrueOpenSource grows into a real alternative or stays a protest with a name1. Follow QGIS and Ghostty too. Both show whether a narrower, named group of maintainers keeps reaching the agreement a mass forum just missed48.
Sources
- Luis Rijo, "r/opensource bans AI-built projects for its 98,000 weekly visitors," PPC Land, Oct. 25, 2026, https://ppc.land/r-opensource-bans-ai-built-projects-for-its-98-000-weekly-visitors/
- AI Brainer, "Strict AI ban on r/opensource subreddit causes division," AI Brainer, Oct. 25, 2026, https://ai-brainer.com/news/strict-ai-ban-on-r-opensource-subreddit-causes-division-2026-10-25
- Linux Foundation, "New LF Research Survey Shows Generative AI Cuts Open Source Coding Time in Half, but 25% of Incoming Pull Requests are Considered AI Slop," Linux Foundation, Oct. 20, 2026, https://www.linuxfoundation.org/press/new-lf-research-survey-shows-generative-ai-cuts-open-source-coding-time-in-half-but-25-of-incoming-pull-requests-are-considered-ai-slop
- Nyall Dawson and Julien Cabieces, "Add QEP428: No ai contributions permitted," GitHub, Sept. 24, 2026, https://github.com/qgis/QGIS-Enhancement-Proposals/pull/387
- David Chisnall, "Open Source Is Hobbling Itself Over Generative AI," Heron's Perch, Aug. 4, 2026, https://heronsperch.blogspot.com/2026/08/open-source-is-hobbling-itself-over.html
- Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, "Torvalds: AI is fine for competent devs, but spare us the 'drive-by' patches," The Register, Oct. 23, 2026, https://www.theregister.com/columnists/2026/10/23/torvalds-ai-is-fine-for-competent-devs-but-spare-us-the-drive-by-patches/5304357
- reddapi.dev, "r/opensource Subreddit Insights," reddapi.dev, accessed Oct. 25, 2026, https://reddapi.dev/subreddits/opensource/insights
- Mitchell Hashimoto (@mitchellh), "Ghostty is getting an updated AI policy," X, Jan. 22, 2026, https://x.com/mitchellh/status/2014433315261124760
- Paul Kunert, "Swamped curl maintainers take low-level flaws public to survive vulnerability 'avalanche'," The Register, Oct. 20, 2026, https://www.theregister.com/security/2026/10/20/swamped-curl-maintainers-take-low-level-flaws-public-to-survive-vulnerability-avalanche/5304198