Add a AI/LLM tool policy page

en/community/ai_tool_policy.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,99 @@
+.. _ai_tool_policy:
+
+*****************************************************************************
+AI/LLM tool policy
+*****************************************************************************
+
+Rationale
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+LLMs are changing software development in many ways. What was once scarce, the
+time and expertise to *write* software, is now plentiful. This scarcity was a
+choke point that limited consumption of related resources in open source
+projects. With that scarcity effectively gone in 2026, the dynamics and economics
+of a project like MapServer are being disrupted.
+
+A project like MapServer is not simply code. It is also design, review, coordinated
+refactoring, deprecation scheduling, coordinated communication, distribution,
+and historical outlook. The plentiful convenience of code writing LLMs do not
+effectively replace the human maintainers, architects, and documenters doing
+the jobs that provide much of the value MapServer users actually derive. If they
+did, LLM contributors would not need to bother to upstream activity to the
+project at all.
+
+With the explosion of LLM usage in software development, the constrained
+resource is now "maintenance". It is the time to review your contribution, the
+time to make it concise, the time to refactor it in to a larger system, and the
+time to protect the larger software system from disruption, breakage, and
+performance degradation. Indiscriminate usage of LLMs in open source projects
+*consume* maintenance, and the MapServer LLM tool policy attempts to conserve that
+resource.
+
+Additionally, legal systems across the world (including US and EU) have not
+definitely determined whether LLM outputs are derived works of training data or
+if LLM-written code can even be copyrighted by a human. This is despite it
+being latently extracted and originated from open source software in the first
+place.
+
+Policy
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Contributors can make **limited use** of LLMs for contributions in MapServer,
+subject to details mentioned below:
+
+    * **Human contributors must be the primary author(s) of MapServer contributions**
+
+    * All contributions including code, ticket comments, and commit messages
+      should be fully understood by the author(s) submitting them to the
+      project.
+
+    * Submission of `vibe-coded <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vibe_coding>`__ contributions is *banned*.
+
+    * LLMs may only be used as an improved auto-completion mechanism, or
+      for repeated tasks (mechanical refactoring) that could potentially be
+      completed with a deterministic algorithm.
+
+    * Human-coordinated or uncoordinated (OpenClaw, etc) use of agents for
+      submission of contributions to the MapServer repository is *banned*.
+
+    * *Any* LLM usage must be indicated by ticket label, comment, or commit
+      message indication and account for what was written by whom/what.
+
+    * The contributing human author is ultimately responsible for every line of
+      code, comment, or mailing list interaction they initiate, and all of it
+      is subject to the project's code of conduct.
+
+    * The typical high verbosity of LLM code and text is actively discouraged.
+      More code is more code to maintain. High verbosity contribution (tickets,
+      code, messages, etc) will be seen as indication of LLM-generated content
+      when not labeled otherwise and may be ignored, closed, left unmerged, or
+      removed at maintainers' discretion.
+
+
+Violations
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+If a maintainer judges that a contribution does not comply with this policy,
+they should paste the following response to request changes:
+
+.. code-block:: text
+
+    This PR does not appear to comply with our policy on tool-generated content,
+    and requires additional justification for why it is valuable enough to the
+    project for us to review it. Please see our developer policy on
+    AI-generated contributions:
+    https://gdal.org/community/ai_tool_policy.html
+
+If a contributor fails to rectify their contribution to comply with the policy,
+maintainers may lock the conversation and/or close the pull request/issue/RFC.
+In case of repeated violations of our policy, the MapServer project reserves itself
+the right to temporarily or permanently ban the infringing person/account.
+
+Mitigation
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+MapServer donations are one way your organization can help buffer the cost and
+disruption of LLMs in projects such as MapServer. The constrained resource is
+maintenance, not adding more code/capability. Donations financially support
+operation of MapServer as an ongoing open source software project, and without
+it, much of the activity MapServer users take for granted would simply not happen.

en/community/index.txt

@@ -19,7 +19,15 @@ Matrix / IRC
    :maxdepth: 2
 
    matrix-irc
-
+
+AI/LLM tool policy
+------------------
+
+.. toctree::
+   :maxdepth: 2
+
+   ai_tool_policy
+
 MapServer Service Providers
 ---------------------------
 
@@ -42,4 +50,4 @@ Contributors
 .. toctree::
    :maxdepth: 2
 
-   contributors
+   contributors