Linux Foundation Survey: A Quarter of Open Source Pull Requests Are AI Slop, Rising to 31% on Large Projects
Published · updated · curated by AI Is Going Just Great
Source: theregister.com ↗
We are struggling as a project as all key maintainers feel strained, overloaded and brought to the brink of what we can muster.
A Linux Foundation survey found that open source maintainers estimate roughly 25% of incoming pull requests are low-quality AI-generated submissions, a figure that climbs to 31% on larger projects. GenAI cut code-authoring time by 52% on average for contributors, but the savings are unevenly distributed: maintainers absorb the cleanup cost, with only 35% of projects having any formal policy on AI-generated contributions.
The downstream effects are already concrete. The curl project announced it will move low and medium severity vulnerabilities to public disclosure early, because its security team is nearly overwhelmed by AI-assisted bug reports. Maintainer Daniel Stenberg described key contributors as "strained, overloaded and brought to the brink of what we can muster." The Linux Foundation's prescribed remedy is better tooling and clearer contributor policies, though 32% of projects currently have no policy and no plans for one.