I think this move by Codeberg is lowkey genius. They're trying to build a community based on a set of shared values. Those who disagree with those values are now self-selecting out of the Codeberg community, which is exactly the point of passing these kinds of resolutions.<p>The fact that the rule is open for interpretation means that they can effectively shut down malicious actors (i.e those who intentionally misrepresent the degree of AI assistance in writing their code) before they become a problem. It becomes an exercise in judgement instead of a potentially exploitable/loophole-able set of hard and fast rules.<p>There's no issue with this. This isn't the supreme court. Your income is not on the line. It's a code hosting repository. Go to GitHub if it bothers you.<p>Only time will tell if this set of values holds up. Personally, I think they will, and that the rules will end up being less strict than people are making them out to be, and that relatively few projects will be removed from the platform.
Based on this precedence, if I'm accepted into the community today, how would I know I'll be accepted tomorrow? If you're literally just using Codeberg as a mirror, then sure, it doesn't really matter much. But like you said, that's not what they are building. They want people to invest in the community. So now, as an investor of my hard-earned free time, I'm faced with the question on whether all my investment can go up in flames on the whims of a shadow group.
You are effectively saying you do not trust the judgement of the community to accept you long term.<p>Why is that? Is it because you believe there would be a new policy that would exclude your workflow? What would such a policy be? Do you really, reasonably believe it would be implemented "tomorrow"? Do you think adapting to such a policy would be unreasonable?<p>Or is it because you don't trust the judgement of the people enforcing these new rules?<p>If not one of the two, what is the reason?<p>The point I'm trying to make here is that this just sounds like a slippery slope argument. If you don't have a concrete reason to believe you won't be welcome "tomorrow" then my mind has not been changed.
I think the burden of proof is on you to argue that Codeberg will stop at exactly two policies, given they haven’t said they will do that, but they have already banned things they don’t like. A slippery slope argument isn't a fallacy when you've already slipped down the slope twice.
I really don't understand the argument, to be honest. If somebody is participating in something with a perceived expectation, and then that expectation gets contradicted not once, but twice, why is it unreasonable to assume it might happen again? I'm not being facetious, I genuinely don't understand the line of thinking.
> You are effectively saying you do not trust the judgement of the community to accept you long term.<p>Correct. I was previously engaging with this community and had moved some repos over from GitHub. One of those repos deals with cryptography that has an intersection with "crypto" projects. Due to vagueness of the language ratified, it's unclear whether the repo now violates the ToS. This completely caught me off guard, and now my trust in the judgement of the Codeberg community has been weakened.<p>This feels like a reasonable reaction to me.
That seems like a completely different concern than what you originally stated? You're not worried about future policies, you're worried about the policy that was just passed.<p>And for what it's worth, it seems like they only care if the project is <i>directly</i> crypto related (e.g if you had a repo directly implementing a Monero node, that would probably not be allowed). If it's just a repo that implements a generic Cryptography concept that happens to be used both in crypto <i>and elsewhere</i>, then I don't see what the problem would be.<p>Again, the rules are judgement based. That means you can interact with the community to get clarification, and make your case that your project is worth keeping.
> That seems like a completely different concern than what you originally stated?<p>I started with a hypothetical. Then I used an actual real-world example. I have 100+ repos on GitHub spanning a wide array of technologies. If I moved all 100+ over, how do I know I won't fall afoul of whatever the community votes to ban next?<p>The point is Codeberg isn't a good fit for my situation which needs more continuity and less surprises, and that's been made readily apparent now. So I'm leaving, just like many other people who have been posting about it.
Hacker News recently banned LLM-generated comments due to a vague vibe check of the community. Do you feel the same way about the slippery slope of Hacker News moderation?
Did it get much attention? I don't know of a single person who finds value in LLM generated comments on social platforms. The fact that Codeberg is getting attention for this move is likely because it alienated a part of the community that was previously engaging, enough to generate constructive responses. I didn't see the same thing happening with this HN change.
<p><pre><code> I'm faced with the question on whether all my investment can go up in flames on the whims of a shadow group.
</code></pre>
What "shadow group" would that be? The paying members of Codeberg e.V. who voted to pass this motion?
And also like... this is how literally any community works? You "invest your free time" in it, then you do something that goes against the values of that community... yeah, of course that big bad "shadow group" (in other words, the admins/moderators) is going to do something.
I’ve seen so many variations of this where a community starts adding more rules that are open to judgment.<p>Removing the obvious rule breakers looks like an easy win at first. Then over time the list of rules grows. Small groups become good at navigating the rule making process and getting changes pushed through. Before you know it, small groups of highly invested people are wielding the rules and the rule making process against their enemies or competitors. The community was long since cleared out from anyone who got sick of the drama, leaving a weird internal battle where different in groups are fighting with each other over little things and turning the rules against each other.<p>Maybe Codeberg will be different. Maybe the rule making stops here and it’s reasonably enforced against only the really bad examples, with leeway granted to others generously. Maybe it doesn’t turn into a slippery slope of little dramas that exhaust everyone who isn’t invested in the constant background drama of their code hosting site. I hope it does for their sake.<p>But I also think enough people like me have seen what happens to communities that go down the path of generating a lot of rules like these and will choose to steer clear of this site. It always feels like a good idea when you and all your friends are on the right side of the rules, but it’s less fun when you find yourself making choices or tip toeing around to avoid triggering the Nth round of rules that were introduced 10 steps past where you thought the rules were in a good and balanced place.
I've been thinking along these lines more and more. Trying to specify exact limits and trying to account for every possible situation when making rules just encourages people to find holes and workarounds. It creates a game, a competition between the rule makers and everyone else.<p>When instead you state higher level values and ask for cooperation, it encourages us to work together. It's the Honor System instead of a deliberate competition between rule makers and everyone else.<p>Concrete example: sports<p>When you are playing with a group of friends and there's no referee, most everyone does their best to just play hard and follow the rules. It's not perfect, but it works for the most part because we all love the game and want to have a good time.<p>Once you introduce referees, the game within the game of "what can I get away with?" starts and you end up with players learning how to foul without getting caught and then players overreacting to fouls in order to make sure the rule breakers still get caught, and then it evolves into flopping to get a foul called even when there was none, and eventually people start to hate the sport altogether (see: NBA, FIFA)<p>Concrete example: government and police forces. Do I even need to elaborate on this one?
That's actually how EU law works! I think it's also why US companies keep getting in trouble here, they try to loophole-lawyer like at home, but it just... doesn't work that way.<p>I had a whole long conversation about this with another commenter a while ago if you're interested in learning more: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48707697">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48707697</a>
The goal is to reduce the amount of use of the platform, and I think imposing this rule is an excellent way to do that. Not sure I'd call it genius, though. There's a fair likelihood of unintended consequences.
This is a lesson I learned in life: When you want to build something social (in this case a community, but it could also be a romantic relationship, a friendship...), the best thing you can do is to polarize as quickly as possible.<p>Too many people are afraid to offend and waste everyone's time going along with things they don't really agree with and end up pretending to be somebody they're not to get along with people they don't really like.<p>No! Get your most polarizing takes out quickly. Either you and the other person stop wasting time because there's no fit, or you will deepen the relationship and both know it's a good fit. Either way, it's better for everyone involved.<p>There's enough people out in this big world that you don't need to always make everyone happy. It's much better to quickly comb through to find the gems.
Yup, there's no issue with this.<p>Because literally no one will use Codeberg for anything that matters. It was already niche, now Codeberg will just be a couple of unemployed nerds with their useless toy projects.<p>It's already dead, Jim.
That doesn't seem like a great take on this. You seem to be implying that only unemployed people choose not to use AI, and anything that doesn't use AI is a useless toy project.<p>There were decades of software written before modern LLMs, and a lot of people choose to hand write their software as a form of maintaining their skill. Just like people practice martial arts even though we have guns.<p>If you reflect on your words, you might see another side to this.
> Just like people practice martial arts even though we have guns.<p>The whole point of martial arts is the art itself.<p>The point of software isn't the process of creating software (it was never about that), it's the end result, and all people care about is that the end result is good. And if you don't like that, you can choose another industry.
There are obviously multiple ways people can see the act of making software. And many at once. Profession, craft, passion, art.<p>And the differing perspectives on that do at least in part explain a lot of the conflict here.<p>Personally, I think "AI" use in art is an abhorrent thing that warrants a highly negative response. And when I was younger and even more pretentious than I am now, I often thought my code as some kind of "art." So I can stretch my mind to see how people who see things that way would have that same gut reaction.<p>But many like you only see the point as being the end result, so to them this all looks like pointless theatre.<p>One of the many dramatic things the "AI" tooling has done is to make all these divisions in perspective more obvious and more dramatic.
Yes, that's exactly it. Now please go back to your githubs and leave us nerds who do not matter alone. We'll be fine, we promise!
1. Random dude self-hosts a Git instance<p>2. Gets mad that people he doesn't like DARE to sign up and use it<p>3. Announces that he won't allow people he doesn't like<p>4. Makes a big deal out of it like anyone cares<p>I dunno this is hilarious but pretty sad, the guy clearly has issues
I think introducing unpredictable new prohibitions is a much bigger problem than the specific bans on cryptocurrency or AI written code. Especially when it leads to existing code becoming unavailable and doesn't just ban new contributions violating the rules.
I have no particular problem with this decision/policy on the part of Codeberg.<p>I do have an issue with their "tainted code" project that labels various FLOSS projects as "AI tainted".<p>ardour.org has the follow AI policy statement:<p>---------<p>Using LLMs to generate code for Ardour<p>A word about licensing, copyright and LLMs ("AI"). We require all code contributed to Ardour to be licensed under the GPL (you may retain copyright, but the code must use the GPL). Currently, following Thaler vs. Perlmutter in March 2025, no LLM-generated code may be copyrighted in the USA. The GPL relies on copyright, and cannot function if copyright is not held. Consequently, if you use an LLM (Claude, Codex, CoPilot etc. etc) to create code, it cannot be included in Ardour.<p>If you want to use LLMs to explore and understand some of Ardour's source code, feel free. But we cannot accept PRs or patches or contributions that are not licensed under the GPL, and if you choose to be honest about it, this means that no LLM-generated code can be accepted by us.<p>---------<p>Yet this codeberg-adjacent project considers this project to be AI-tainted. If you're going to do something, do it right or don't do it at all.
I don’t even mind forges taking a stance on AI. That’s fine. But I agree with Armin Ronacher here: banning projects that “mostly consist of code written by generative AI tools” is like the infamous Supreme Court “I know it when I see it” line. Yes of course I know a project mostly written by generative AI when I see it.
Related:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49015635">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49015635</a> <i>Protecting our FLOSS commons from LLMs</i> (blog.codeberg.org) 1 day ago, 144 comments<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49003386">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49003386</a> <i>Codeberg bans vibe coded projects</i> (codeberg.org/codeberg) 2 days ago, 279 comments
It is a bad rule. Their community and their choice but I hope we get some fresh options in the open source universe.
> Since I want GitHub to face competition I have thoughts.<p>Github allows private repos, organization access control etc. I don't see how Codeberg is competition.
codefloe[1] also runs forgejo.<p>[1]: <a href="https://codefloe.com/" rel="nofollow">https://codefloe.com/</a>
> It can choose to be a smaller community with a stronger political identity, but that is a different ambition from being a broad and dependable European alternative to GitHub.<p>Wrong category. It doesn't want to. It's not a company. Might as well act on their beliefs.<p>Devs are so spoiled with free CI, running nonsensical workflows all the time for free. Imagine that multiplied by magnitudes thanks to AI. Just a waste of resources.
I see. We should not divide into camps so the Austrians can sell their AI startups.<p>The only people dividing and ruining open source are those paid for it by AI companies. Sometimes indirectly, like NumPy through its various sponsors. Then suddenly a bureaucrat appears on a mailing list or elsewhere and announces that AI contributions need to be allowed.
> But these tools are also becoming part of how software is made. The Open Source world needs to figure out how to engage with that future, not just divide into camps.<p>No. They don't. This isn't a "you just have to deal". You can say no. It's OK to decide that it's not worth the smaller amount of positives to deal with the massive amount of negatives. If you disagree, start your own community.
Is there any evidence of division? Are all the vibe-coders going to some codeberg2? One of the main complaints is that the banned projects don't have human users proportionate to their activity, so if they all go to codeberg2, then that forge would just be full of projects nobody cares about.<p>Are there any projects on codeberg that are getting banned and actually have significant human interest?<p>If codeberg decided to kick out spammers, nobody would decry the loss, so what's being lost here? Is it strictly slippery slope?
Nobody has been banned yet, AFAIK. So nobody can answer your second paragraph question. But plenty are choosing to leave.<p>The judgement you're talking about here ("banned projects don't have human users propostionate...") is going to require evidence? At this point the software community is absolutely full of these tools and people who use them.<p>If the specific thing banned was projects like that, fine. But that's not what the clause added in the PR said.
So are they going to have "AI" police this? Heuristics about check-in size and scope are still AI, albeit "classical AI."
That's the beauty of the internet, everyone can find their space. Even the buggy whip makers.
I'd rather have a way to quickly ID what deltas were generated and which were not but that will never happen if it becomes a weapon to ban a project.
Fully agree. I am against AI slop, LLM overhyping, and cryto scams, as much as anybody, however:<p>> the main property I need from infrastructure [is for] it to be predictable, dependable, and reasonably neutral towards the legal Open Source software hosted on it.<p>I do not like to build on a foundation that could be ripped away from under my feet at any moment for arbitrary reasons.
> I do not like to build on a foundation that could be ripped away from under my feet at any moment for arbitrary reasons.<p>Do you only build and publish software in a vacuum running on hardware you own? There is no online community in the western hemisphere that isn't subject to any kind of arbitrariness, be it internal (community, like here) or external (legal or infrastructurally, like on github).
A great way to ensure that most developer will not be using Codeberg going forward. While there's a ton of drama around LLM use right now, anybody who's actually used this tech in anger understands that these tools really do work, and that they will only be used more going forward. I guess Codeberg is angling to become a small artisanal community, and there might certainly be a niche for that.
Codeberg going down the path of Blueskyification
A notable surprise with Bluesky over the past few months is that the anti-AI sentiment has decreased slightly as it becomes harder to argue against impactful use cases.
At the start bluesky was actually pretty nice, but now it's just this weird bubble where disagreements don't exist and when I checked out like a month ago there was just so much damn p***.
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Agree substantially here, as I said elsewhere: the honest and respectful answer from the Codeberg community would have been: add resource limits, quotas, and a reviewed application form for new projects.<p>And maybe a statement that: <i>Pre-existing clearly "vibe coded" projects providing little value to the community may be subject to review. Our resources are limited. Don't abuse them.</i><p>Instead it got framed in moralistic terms in many places, the actual voting process actively resisted all calls for clarification ("if you're a vibe coder you'll know, so stop trying to ask for clarification", the tone in online forums became nasty, and the result is both ambiguous and culturally poisoned and I decided to move my project ("good riddance!" call out the victors, "we got one of them!")<p>I do think the one substantial argument that was made through the threads, was around IP ownership laws. However I remain unconvinced.<p>Frankly if there's anywhere where I would <i>most like</i> to see AI generated work -- which is frankly based on weights generated from the broad and indiscriminate harvesting of other people's works -- is in copylefted software that takes the distillations of the efforts of the community and makes it available as free software with free software protections.<p>I understand not everyone shares that opinion, and they're welcome to different interpretations.<p>Like the author of the article I'm saddened to see this split. I am honestly curious to see where we are in 2-3 years on this topic.
It's typical Berlin. Try with virtue signaling. Get overrun by reality. Impose Censorship. But for the good <3
> There are serious questions about copyright, labor, energy use, slop, and maintainers drowning in generated contributions. But<p>Way to not at all engage with any of that and just go on your merry way...<p>Sure, if you fail to acknowledge that the other side has valid points, it is easy to act like you're completely right and they are morons, and we all need to Kumbaya together, and forget about their views.
The way I read the article was not that the author disagrees with the concerns you mention, but instead that they believe Codeberg's recent actions fail to address these underlying concerns while adding uncertainty for users of their platform (which they fear will ultimately hurt codeberg). To me, it reads as a call for further discussion and clarification rather than a dismissal.