Howard Chu @ Symas

In this environment, it's detrimental to a project to just openly accept all contributions. It's an unsustainable drain on maintainers' time, at the very least. The submitters have no actual interest in the health of the projects they submit to. They're a cancer.

That all started to change with the advent of bug bounties - people started poring thru code bases just looking for a quick payoff, not because they had any interest in the code, nor any desire to use it or participate in the project community.

And fast forward to today where we get deluged with AI-generated slop. Again, the humans driving the AIs have no interest in the projects themselves.

10, 15 years ago, it was normal that the only people poking around in your project's code were people who had a vested interest in it - users primarily, who also were competent developers. It made sense to welcome all contributions because they most likely came from people motivated to be active in the project community. Even if they were novices, putting in the effort to guide them was likely to pay off in the long run, growing the project's talent pool.

The #Monero Project uses Pieter Hintjens' Collective Code Construction Contract https://rfc.zeromq.org/spec/22/ as the basis of its project/contribution rules. With all respect to my friend Pieter who is sorely missed, I think this C4 contract was written for a different era, and is problematic today.

This clause in particular: "Everyone, without distinction or discrimination, SHALL have an equal right to become a Contributor under the terms of this contract." is harmful, IMO.