Proposal: Adoption of Official AI Contribution & Copyright Policy

[gbartolini]

Problem Statement

In recent months, the CloudNativePG project has seen a significant increase in Pull Requests and Issues that appear to be primarily AI-generated. While some are helpful, a growing number are "low-effort" or "shotgun" contributions that:

1. Lack architectural alignment with the project's roadmap.
2. Include unvetted code or "hallucinated" features.
3. Increase the cognitive load on maintainers who must spend time debunking or explaining why an AI-generated PR is incorrect.
4. Raise potential long-term copyright and licensing concerns.

Proposed Solution

I propose we adopt a formal AI Policy (to be added as AI_POLICY.md in our core repositories and referenced in CONTRIBUTING.md). This policy shifts the burden of proof back to the contributor, requiring full human accountability for any AI-assisted work.

The goal is not to ban AI entirely, but to ensure that every line of code committed to CNPG is understood and owned by a human being who is prepared to maintain it.

Draft Policy Content

Important

Summary of the proposed policy:

• Accountability: The human contributor is 100% responsible. "The AI did it" is not a valid defence for bugs or poor design.
• Intentionality: Prohibits "random" refactoring or AI-scout PRs without prior maintainer approval.
• Legal Safety: Contributors must warrant that AI usage complies with our Apache 2.0 licensing and does not violate third-party IP.
• Transparency: Significant AI usage must be disclosed in the PR description.

Inspiration & Strategic Alignment

• Community Leadership: This policy is inspired by the Ghostty project's proactive stance on maintainer burnout and AI noise.
• Ecosystem Guidance: We have integrated educational guidance from the CNCF and the Linux Foundation regarding the legal and ethical implications of AI-generated code. This ensures CloudNativePG remains a responsible citizen of the CNCF ecosystem.
• Transparency: In line with the transparency this policy promotes, please note that an initial draft of this document was produced using Google Gemini. The maintainers have since refined and vetted the text to ensure it meets the specific needs of the CloudNativePG ecosystem.

Action Required

We request the Maintainers/Steering Committee to review the proposed policy and cast their vote.

/vote-governance

[git-vote]

Vote created

@gbartolini has called for a vote on Proposal: Adoption of Official AI Contribution & Copyright Policy (#45).

The members of the following teams have binding votes:

Team
@cloudnative-pg/maintainers

Non-binding votes are also appreciated as a sign of support!

How to vote

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The vote will be open for 28days. It will pass if at least 66% of the users with binding votes vote In favor 👍. Once it's closed, results will be published here as a new comment.

[gbartolini]

I have added a proposal with PR #46, to give you an idea about where I think we should go.

Obviously, the CONTRIBUTING.md file must be adjusted if we decide to go ahead.

[gbartolini]

/vote-check

[git-vote]

The requested configuration profile was not found in the configuration file.

[gbartolini]

/check-vote

[git-vote]

Vote status

So far 71.43% of the users with binding vote are in favor and 0.00% are against (passing threshold: 66%).

Summary

In favor	Against	Abstain	Not voted
5	0	0	2

Binding votes (5)

User	Vote	Timestamp
armru	In favor	2026-01-24 17:53:23.0 +00:00:00
gbartolini	In favor	2026-01-23 22:05:42.0 +00:00:00
leonardoce	In favor	2026-02-02 19:42:10.0 +00:00:00
mnencia	In favor	2026-01-28 17:55:05.0 +00:00:00
sxd	In favor	2026-01-24 10:39:25.0 +00:00:00
@phisco	Pending
@fcanovai	Pending

[git-vote]

Vote closed

The vote passed! 🎉

71.43% of the users with binding vote were in favor and 0.00% were against (passing threshold: 66%).

Summary

In favor	Against	Abstain	Not voted
5	0	0	2

Binding votes (5)

User	Vote	Timestamp
@armru	In favor	2026-01-24 17:53:23.0 +00:00:00
@gbartolini	In favor	2026-01-23 22:05:42.0 +00:00:00
@leonardoce	In favor	2026-02-02 19:42:10.0 +00:00:00
@mnencia	In favor	2026-01-28 17:55:05.0 +00:00:00
@sxd	In favor	2026-01-24 10:39:25.0 +00:00:00