Maintainers restrict pull requests to manage AI code volume

Jonathan Ellis notes a significant shift in open source maintenance dynamics due to the proliferation of AI-generated pull requests. Ellis states that the Bifrost repository has turned off direct PRs, allowing only issues, because it is faster for maintainers to drive changes with their own agents than to review external contributions. He attributes this to the low barrier to entry for non-professional developers using AI to submit code, which overwhelms maintainers with low-quality or unreviewed PRs. Ellis draws a historical parallel to the Free Software Foundation in the 1980s, which did not accept external patches. He suggests the industry is moving toward a 'shared source' model where maintainers retain control over implementation while keeping source code available. Ellis argues that the most important job of a maintainer is saying no, a task that has become significantly more critical in the AI era. He contends that traditional open source collaboration models are unsustainable under the current volume of AI-generated contributions, necessitating stricter gatekeeping by maintainers.