"Verbose changes. Nonsensical descriptions. Pull requests contributors can’t explain. AI is DDoS-ing open source software (OSS) with slop, and some maintainers are calling it quits.As Steve Croce, field CTO at Anaconda, a Python data science platform, tells The New Stack, “It’s having a profound effect on maintainer workload.” In response, maintainers are canceling bug bounty programs and introducing stricter contributor guidelines, he adds.Some projects, like Jazzband, have been forced to sunset altogether. Jannis Leidel, the lead maintainer and Python Software Foundation chairperson, writes that the “flood of AI-generated spam PRs and issues” made his project unsustainable. According to Kate Holterhoff, Ph.D., a senior analyst at the consultancy Red Monk, the barrier to entry is now extremely low, making it easier to game the traditional incentive model for participating in open source. As she tells The New Stack, “It’s putting the contract between maintainers and contributors in peril in ways that haven’t existed before.”For example, Rémi Verschelde, who oversees the open source Godot game engine, shares on BlueSky that dealing with AI slop is “draining and demoralizing.” Other project maintainers report growing apathy and wasted time responding to the deluge. To be fair, nearly all software developers now use AI, and many communities rely on it to produce legitimate fixes and contributions. But the volume of low-quality submissions is becoming unsustainable, especially given that 60% of maintainers are unpaid volunteers."thenewstack.io/ai-slop-open-so#OpenSource #FLOSS #AI #AISlop #VibeCoding #Programming #SoftwareDevelopment