Tom Hert

Title:

Tipping Scales: Analyzing the impact of LLM on FOSS Maintainers

Biography:

Tom is a RIOT Maintainer and Master student at the HAW Hamburg. Previously working on the Raspberry Pi Pico 2 and Documentation Revamp in RIOT, currently working on general RIOT maintenance and leading the LLM policy effort.

Abstract:

Over the last years LLM has started significantly impacting Free Open Source Software, this is also true for RIOT. In 2026 we introduced our own LLM policy, including tracking AI usage in hopes of understanding this shifting trend.

In this talk we will look into how Contributor behavior has changed and also the resulting challenges for Maintainers by mapping the data, learning from past incidents and proposing the next steps.