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Open source maintainers are drowning in AI-generated, low-quality pull requests that mimic real contributions but add no value. Drawing a parallel to medieval guild systems, the author argues that open source needs a reputation-based trust mechanism — similar to Debian's Web of Trust — where existing contributors vouch for newcomers and bear reputational cost if those vouched-for contributors turn out to be bad actors. The proposal envisions layered contributor rings on platforms like GitHub, giving maintainers a signal to filter PRs by trust level without blocking anyone from forking or submitting entirely.

The case for gatekeeping, or: why medieval guilds had it figured out

The guild system solved exactly this problem

What a modern guild would actually look like