The case for gatekeeping, or: why medieval guilds had it figured out
7 days ago
- #guilds
- #software-development
- #open-source
- Open source maintainers are overwhelmed by AI-generated, low-quality PRs that clutter repositories.
- Historically, high PR counts indicated community engagement; now they signal spam and resume-padding.
- Medieval guilds maintained quality through a decentralized web of trust and reputation.
- Open source once had organic reputation-building, but the scale now makes trust difficult.
- Stallman's 'open source' meant freedom to access/modify code, not abolishing quality filters.
- A modern 'guild' system could verify contributors via decentralized reputation (e.g., Debian's Web of Trust).
- GitHub/GitLab could implement trust rings to help maintainers filter PRs by contributor reputation.
- Mass-generated PRs waste maintainers' time, degrade codebases, and devalue GitHub's contribution graph.
- A guild system isn't perfect but addresses a problem medieval craftsmen would recognize.