AI-Farmed 'Drive-By' PRs Are Wasting Open Source Maintainers' Time

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Open source maintainers are increasingly dealing with 'drive-by' pull requests — contributions submitted with no intention of follow-through, often generated by AI tools pointed at repositories en masse. The pattern typically involves using a large language model to identify fixes, submitting the output across dozens of repos, and never responding to maintainer feedback. These abandoned PRs waste reviewer time and clog project queues, making repositories appear unmaintained to genuine contributors. Maintainers are advised to set explicit response deadlines, close stale PRs without hesitation, and state anti-drive-by policies clearly in contributing guidelines. Contributors are urged to read the code they submit, engage with feedback, and only open PRs they are prepared to see through to completion.

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