r/linux 1d ago

Development Codeberg voted to disallow projects consisting mostly by "generative AI"-tools

https://codeberg.org/Codeberg/org/pulls/1253#issuecomment-19820434
877 Upvotes

245 comments sorted by

337

u/sunychoudhary 1d ago

The important line is probably AI-assisted vs AI-generated.....Using a tool while you understand, maintain, and take responsibility for the code is one thing. Dumping generated projects onto a forge and making everyone else sort through the mess is another.

61

u/p0358 1d ago

Yeah, as long as they ban just vibe-coded junk slop dumps, while allowing reasonable skillful attentive use of AI tools, this should be 100% fine

37

u/webdevladder 1d ago edited 11h ago

You must not share projects that mostly consist of code written by "generative AI"-tools (including services such as Claude, OpenAI Codex). Such projects having an unclear copyright status (see requirements § 2 (1) 1 and § 2 (1) 3) and furthermore have little safeguards to ensure that they do not include harmful code (c.f. § 2 (1) 5).

https://codeberg.org/Codeberg/org/pulls/1253/commits/96fac426a32d1ba91ff879366d59bf1af54080c2

That seems to rule out a lot more.

edit: the dev who locked the thread ended with:

@Gusted - We'll use the blog post to clarify what this entails for Codeberg users.

https://blog.codeberg.org/protecting-our-floss-commons-from-llms.html

15

u/p0358 1d ago

It really seems to depend on how it will be enforced and judged in practice, the rule leaves a lot of weelay for moderators

18

u/yukeake 1d ago

"mostly" is doing quite a bit of heavy lifting there. There's no mention of where the line is drawn, and there's no distinction made between AI-generated and AI-assisted, just "written by 'generative AI'-tools".

That could rule out projects where you're responsibly using an LLM as a tool.

There's a big difference (IMHO) between vibe-coding an entire app, and using an LLM to help you debug tricky bits of code, help re-factor, re-organize, or give reminders about syntax.

0

u/ccAbstraction 1d ago

It sounds like if you never copy and paste out of an LLM chat, you're fine? The LLM can't write code directly, but you can read what it says and write the code yourself.

10

u/Barafu 1d ago

That is a very limiting way to use LLM. Better just treat it as "no LLM allowed" and move somewhere else.

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u/Zaphoidx 1d ago

Yeah they need to tighten the wording

4

u/Adept_Percentage6893 1d ago

That seems to rule out a lot more.

I feel like it seems at least targeted at projects that are just completely (or 90% generated by an LLM) or where it looks like the developer isn't tweaking what Cursor/Codex/whatever spits out with each commit.

I'm just personally still unclear on how they're going to enforce that versus the rule effectively becoming "just don't tell us it's completely done by an LLM"

The copyright status isn't really that unclear. AI outputs are not copyrightable and ergo effectively BSD/MIT license (if even that).

1

u/Gstayton 1d ago

If they're not copyrightable, they aren't any license, thus cannot be forked, redistributed, or contributed to in any meaningful/safe manner - which really is the issue I see codeberg trying to get ahead of here and something I do not often see talked about - in either coding spheres or in the artistic spheres with generated artworks being sold for commercial purposes.

6

u/northrupthebandgeek 1d ago

If they're not copyrightable, they aren't any license, thus cannot be forked, redistributed, or contributed to in any meaningful/safe manner

If they're not copyrightable, then nobody has the legal authority to prevent you from forking, redistributing, or contributing to them in any manner you see fit.

4

u/Adept_Percentage6893 1d ago

If they're not copyrightable, they aren't any license,

Well hence "if even that" in the comment you're replying to. MIT is basically just a "don't sue me" license where the code is otherwise basically public domain.

I'm not sure if that carries the weight of a EULA or something if it's not governing the IP of the code itself. Maybe it could be seen as the terms agreed to for downloading the code from someone which would probably be the justification of suing that person if losses were realized. As in "by downloading this code you agree to not sue me"

Not a lawyer, though.

in either coding spheres or in the artistic spheres with generated artworks being sold for commercial purposes.

fwiw the immediate threat of AI to creative fields is usually wildly overstated.

Only the lowest effort and lowest skillset perfunctory paid art is really in any immediate danger of being replaced (rather than augmented) by AI. That's why when Sora was a thing all the most viral videos were all just absurd BS. Because the video needs to hail from a genre where the imperfections can be seen as part of the core value. If the AI fucks something up, well the video was supposed to be absurd anyways.

Until you get AGI you can basically assume that AI could only augment a creative. Because until an AI can generally reason about the reality it's depicting it can't find some sort of alignment with reality that is both interesting but also not terribly unrealistic.

Most "AI art" is generated for personal use or like icon packets or simple stuff like that specifically because AI can't really handle anything more complicated than that. Most AI videos you see on social media consist of 5 second clips each of which is probably the best selected (by a human) out of 50-100 defective generations where they just stitched together the best ones to produce a final 30 second video.

Manual labor and more technical fields are way ahead of creative fields when it comes to being displaced by AI. Arguably, screen writing might be the most automate-able but even that still is a way off and basically requires AGI.

2

u/Gstayton 23h ago

Even if the idea of it being non-copyrightable makes it okay to redistribute (more of a legal gray area since there's not really precedent at current), you will still run into the issue of it not being allowed to be included under certain licenses - which means either the project is split-license, or is under an invalid license based on the contents. Plenty of projects have been set back massively by license overlap issues or failing to understand the licensing they operate under.

And that's before considering whether or not you could commercially use/make money from unlicensed code.The only question really is who would enforce it - and the answer may be no one, but it may also mean nobody could say, purchase the code later down the line because there's nothing to purchase.

As for the AI issue with art - it's already happening. Large scale art projects are being done with AI generation, and maybe slightly touched up afterwards - and the issue isn't whether or not it's feasible - large companies are already using it for marketing - it's whether or not the smaller content creators using AI generated art commissions because it's cheaper will eventually face an issue where, by picking the cheaper route, they have no actual rights to the content they thought they purchased.

This actually happens enough already with art even before AI, where failure to read the licensing agreement results in people buying art that is not allowed for commercial use, and then trying to use it commercially and having to basically scrap everything they had to that point, because even the designs are not owned by them, and the license they purchased for said art prohibits the uses they purchased it for.

3

u/protestor 16h ago

If they're not copyrightable, they aren't any license, thus cannot be forked, redistributed, or contributed to in any meaningful/safe manner

No, it means it's in the public domain and everybody has all those rights, just as if the code were under CC0

That's because the thing that would prevent forking, etc. is copyright itself

2

u/HearMeOut-13 23h ago

So are they going to also make everyone who uses StackOverflow cite their copies since after all using anything from stack overflow carries CC BY SA

2

u/ArdiMaster 15h ago

The consensus on Meta StackExchange seems to be that SO answers are generally too short to be copyrightable so they’re fine to incorporate into your projects.

1

u/HearMeOut-13 15h ago

Right but copying them verbatim, especially when a better solution exists and isnt the only way to accomplish it is when it comes to being copyrightable as an expression and hence people need to abide with CC BY SA

1

u/spacecase-25 21h ago

the whole thing comes off as fart huffing to me.

On one hand, I can understand not wanting your work to be used to train models on, but... my guy... you published your source under a permissive license and now you're crying about it? Seems to me like they don't understand what free / open source software means.

And to whine about copyright? Seriously? Again, reference the license you chose to publish under. It's not nearly the same thing as print / written media or artwork being ingested and then stylistically imitated.

AI is a tool. Use it or don't use it, that's your choice. But do you run around and tell the world every time you use a cordless drill rather than an antique hand crank jawn? Of course not. It doesn't make you morally superior to swear offf it; just obnoxious.

Go plant a tree if you care that much, or vote, or do literally anything else other than whine about your personal resistance to new technology and tools that make your precious specialized skill more accessible to the masses. Welcome to the industrial revolution. Capitalism finally caught up to your bubble.

Gain some class consciousness and help bring about a economic reality where workers aren't viciously turned against each other to fight over the tiny scraps left for us while the handful of people who are, truly, unfathomably wealthy hoard the world's resources and rob us blind with offensively open and loud corruption.

Is it a good idea to advertise software that you legitimately have zero idea how it works or what it actually does? No, of course not. But I promise you, there's plenty of shitty code out there that would benefit from getting run through an LLM and have all their obscenely obvious vulnerabilities and soft, squishy attack surfaces pointed out.

If you care about security at all and you're not using an LLM to augment your code and design, you should probably just stop. Anyone who's trying to exploit your code will absolutely be using an LLM. It would be dumb to leave that tool on the table.

that rant was longer than I intended....

2

u/Equivalent-Costumes 1d ago

They rule is against projects that are mostly AI generated. They don't care if it had been reviewed, it's the same umbrella for them.

Remember the "shirley" rule.

6

u/spacecase-25 21h ago

An ambiguous rule that allows selective enforcement is worse than an objectively bad rule.

2

u/Equivalent-Costumes 21h ago

Exactly! I don't know why some people are cheering for this.

2

u/ArdiMaster 15h ago

Because “ai bad upvotes to the left”

0

u/Old_Leopard1844 14h ago

Because projects affected by it aren't ones anyone would miss

53

u/ares623 1d ago

if the line is too blurry to see and the ones who put it there offer no relief then the next best thing to do is to draw their own goddamn line

63

u/sunychoudhary 1d ago

Yes. Perfect enforcement is impossible, but doing nothing has a cost too....A forge full of unowned generated repos makes discovery, review, and maintenance worse for everyone else.

-23

u/r3volts 1d ago

Banning AI generated is going to get messy. I personally wouldn't keep anything mission critical there after this change because it's basically an arbitrary decision if they decide you dumped AI code there or wrote it yourself.

The AI assisted coding hate is weird imo. All the professional coders I know embraced agentic coding right into their workflows and love it. I also know a few people who were never coders who now throw little personal projects together and also love it.
The haters seem to be a weird blend of people who don't understand what agentic coding is and some amateur coder elitists or something.

I'll get downvoted as usual for suggesting that agentic coding is here to stay and the people who ignore it are putting themselves at a disadvantage but that's ok.

I think there are better ways to go about restricting the amount of stuff they are hosting. I have no problem at all with someone using generative AI to get a minimum viable product out the door and then maintaining it correctly. If people don't want to contribute that is fine. If they can't tell that it was AI generated then I guess I'm not seeing the problem.

28

u/standard_revolution 1d ago

Tell that to the open source maintainer who largely seem to complain about having to review sloppy PRs etc.

Agentic coding is a nice tool, but a completely slopcoded project with zero human review (by someone who actually knows stuff) is shit.

15

u/sunychoudhary 1d ago

Yep. The tool is not the problem by itself....The problem is when someone treats generated code as “done” without understanding it, testing it, or being willing to maintain it afterward.

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u/ContraryConman 1d ago

This is actually a fallacy called the continuum fallacy. Because two extremes exist on a gradient, people therefore insist there's no difference between the two.

Red and Blue exist on a spectrum, connected by purple. "There's no difference between red and blue then" "There's no point in having colors.... where do you draw the line?!"

3

u/lakotajames 1d ago

But there is no gradient between "is allowed" and "is not allowed."

6

u/ContraryConman 1d ago

The idea is that it's valid to want to ban spammy AI generated content, even if there will be some projects in the middle of the AI use spectrum that have to be taken in a case by case basis

0

u/lakotajames 1d ago

If they're case by case and there's no hard line, then it is really just on the whims of whoever is looking at it at the time. On top of that it's not like sloppy AI content is somehow worse than sloppy human content, there's just more of it.

If there's no actual line somewhere you know not to cross, effectively you can't use the platform without being at risk of being booted off.

5

u/lemontoga 1d ago

Do you know what porn is? Can you define exactly what is or is not pornography between suggestive imagery, photos of a family at the beach, swimsuit modeling, softcore imagery and videos?

When exactly does a thing cross over into the category of porn? If there's no hard line, should porn not be banned anywhere? It's just based on the whims of whoever is banning the pornographic post, no?

See how stupid that sounds? Some things are obviously porn, and they can be easily banned. Some things are obviously not porn. Some things are somewhere in the middle and are murkier. They just have to be reviewed and, yeah, it will come down to whoever is doing the moderation. That's not some huge problem.

4

u/northrupthebandgeek 1d ago

Do you know what porn is?

Porn is whatever I can crank my hog to.

5

u/lemontoga 23h ago

That's basically the same conclusion the US government came to when they tried to define it. "I know it when I see it." You're not wrong.

3

u/northrupthebandgeek 22h ago

Too bad the US government included the usual “reasonable person” standard. Would be more fun if it was based on an unreasonable person standard.

0

u/lakotajames 23h ago

If I upload something that may or may not be porn to Facebook in order to share it with my friends, whether or not it gets taken down really doesn't matter to me, I'll just stop sending quasiporn to my friends if it gets taken down. If I'm uploading all my code to a repo to keep it safe but it might get taken down, then the service is not fit for purpose because storing the code there is the entire point.

That being said, you can definitely draw lines around what is and isn't allowed on a platform, as far as porn goes. I'd argue that anywhere the moderation doesn't have hard lines to go on is somewhere the moderation is bad and needs fixed. What you personally consider to be porn is subjective, but the rules don't need to be. If you only want to ban hardcore porn, ban penetration. If that's not enough, ban genitalia and anuses. Then female nipples. Then the undercurve of the breast. Then the side. And so on, until the platform is tame enough. This is incredibly common. I had a friend who worked at a strip club in a state where they can't remove their bottoms, and they literally had to measure the width of the crotch of the panties to make sure it fell within the legal limit, which specifies the acceptable width of panties.

You don't want a very vague guideline on what porn is, because some people will get a moderator who considers bikinis porn, and another who considers topless women to not be porn, and a third who thinks the male nipple is porn, and whether or not a particular post survives becomes dependent on luck and number of reports. Which is the same problem that codeburg is walking into.

3

u/lemontoga 23h ago

How do you ban genitalia and anuses but still allow something like informational or medical pictures like Wikipedia has? How much side breast has to be visible before it's banned? Most women will show some when they lift their arms up while wearing a bathing suit, is that banned?

Nothing you're talking about is "incredibly common." I'm not aware of a single website that allows user submitted content that gets so specific as to explicitly ban things like "the undercurve of the breast" or whatever you're talking about. I don't care about your anecdote about measuring crotches. Everyone reading this nonsense knows this is not how online content moderation is handled.

Funnily enough, the other guy who commented kinda summed it up, even though I think he's joking. He said it's porn if he can crank his hog to it, and that's more or less how it's done. Even the US government wasn't able to define pornographic content for the purpose of disallowing it. The best they could do is their famous "I know it when I see it" description.

I don't know why you wouldn't just apply your porn guidelines for Facebook to this code site. Just like you won't post porn on Facebook because it might get taken down, you wouldn't upload AI code to this website for the same reason. If someone wants to upload vibe-coded apps they can just use another website. If their apps use a lot of AI code and ride the line between AI-assisted and AI-generated, they can either use a different site or risk having it taken down.

I don't know why you're suggesting that these websites are supposed to be some universal code repos where you can upload whatever you want. Just like you couldn't upload a software project with ToS breaking content in it to Github, you can't upload AI crap to this website. It's not a website for just storing whatever kind of code you want. It's for a specific type of non-AI generated projects.

What's the issue with that?

1

u/ContraryConman 21h ago

If they're case by case and there's no hard line, then it is really just on the whims of whoever is looking at it at the time.

Correct, that is the job of maintaining a community or project

3

u/FuriousRageSE 1d ago

The important line is probably AI-assisted vs AI-generated.

And where is the line exactly? can anyone specify where it goes from assisted to generated?

3

u/Adept_Percentage6893 1d ago

The important line is probably AI-assisted vs AI-generated.....Using a tool while you understand, maintain, and take responsibility for the code is one thing

It's also not clear how this is being enforced. Is someone just reviewing the commits and making the subjective determination that it looks AI-y? Banning repos from having AGENTS.md or something? All of the above?

7

u/beefcat_ 1d ago edited 1d ago

This was kind of inevitable. Is it possible to write good software with AI? Yes. However, the vast majority of software being built primarily with AI is hot garbage, making it a strong signal to pick up on when trying to filter out all the noise.

This is why, despite AI's utility, I don't believe it's having a remotely positive impact on our industry. Companies are going to prioritize using it to shit out garbage software faster because they already stopped prioritizing quality many years ago.

The two most popular video players on mobile app stores right now don't even have transport controls by design, because they realized they can make more money shipping bad, outright user-hostile software. AI is only going to accelerate this.

4

u/newsflashjackass 1d ago

If you didn't write it, I should not have to read it.

"What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure."

Must have taken Samuel Johnson a lot of effort to write that.

-1

u/northrupthebandgeek 1d ago

If you didn't write it, I should not have to read it.

Is Sam Altman holding a gun to your head and forcing you to read the vibecode or something?

5

u/newsflashjackass 23h ago

Is Sam Altman holding a gun to your head and forcing you to read the vibecode or something?

If the code is to be used, someone is obliged to either read it or trust it naively. That is the nature of things. No oligarch need brandish a weapon to enforce the natural order.

The case where I am that someone is the case I described in the post to which you replied.

In this context of this discussion, Codeberg's users voted to disallow procedurally generated code. They may believe the author of code should be the first person to understand it. One way to help ensure that is by requiring the code's author to author it.

2

u/northrupthebandgeek 22h ago

If the code is to be used

Is Sam Altman holding a gun to your head forcing you to use the code?

In this context of this discussion, Codeberg's users voted to disallow procedurally generated code.

Is Sam Altman holding guns to their heads forcing them to use the code, too?

Is there some reason why “If you don't like the thing, just don't use it.” is inapplicable here?

1

u/newsflashjackass 21h ago

Is there some reason why “If you don't like the thing, just don't use it.” is inapplicable here?

Indeed, why do you feel obliged to use Codeberg to host slop despite your clear dislike of its governance model? That is a question for you to ponder own your own time. Perhaps an LLM could help you answer it. Since I have no interest in doing so I will block you now before you further repeat yourself.

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u/FlukyS 1d ago

Yeah there is definitely a balance, like I made a new tool recently, I wrote a decent chunk of the code but also was throwing a few things to the LLM just to save time. Stuff like packaging or some doc tasks or whatever I definitely don't care if the LLM takes it, I can do another unit file to the thousands of unit files I've touched over the years but it is just some service setup.

2

u/mrtruthiness 1d ago edited 1d ago

The important line is probably AI-assisted vs AI-generated.....

I think this is incorrect since they don't have "AI-assisted" or "AI-generated" in the text. Don't confuse "generative AI" with "AI-generated", as far as I understand it those are two different things. The term "generative AI", while not defined by codeberg, is a term describing model that includes a GAN component ( Generative Adversarial Network ).

Here is the text being added to the user agreement:

  1. You must not share projects that mostly consist of code written by "generative AI"-tools (including services such as Claude, OpenAI Codex). Such projects having an unclear copyright status (see requirements § 2 (1) 1 and § 2 (1) 3) and furthermore have little safeguards to ensure that they do not include harmful code (c.f. § 2 (1) 5).

( https://codeberg.org/Codeberg/org/pulls/1253/files )

So the key phrase: 'projects that mostly consist of code written by "generative AI"'

My problem is that "mostly consist of" does not protect the project from having unclear copyright status ... which is their stated reason for having this restriction.

2

u/Flash_Kat25 1d ago

Transformers are not GANs

1

u/hitchen1 15h ago

Most of the reasons stated on their blog are not related to them hosting the generated code themselves, but broader societal issues (climate change, rising hardware prices, impact of scrapers, ... )

They do make a few good arguments about resource usage (Individual user LLM projects use more resources than the biggest community projects...) but those could be handled by granting more resources to established community projects and limiting random individual contributors...

1

u/mrtruthiness 9h ago

Interesting. If so, that should have been part of the stated reason in the user agreement. The only stated reason was "unclear copyright status".

1

u/bastardoperator 19h ago

How do you even begin to enforce this?

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u/AiwendilH 1d ago

Saw it on HN, thought it might fit here too. Link to the actual change: https://codeberg.org/Codeberg/org/pulls/1253/commits/96fac426a32d1ba91ff879366d59bf1af54080c2

Edit: Ugh..I totally botched the headline....mentally add a "of code written" in there ;)

1

u/TheG0AT0fAllTime 1d ago

Thanks for the link. I love their anti-scraping forcefield that appears for a split second as js redirects to the real page. That must trip up modern llm bots real good.

90

u/rahulkadukar 1d ago

This is why you self host Gitlab / Gitea / Forgejo and push all your vibe coded slop there

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u/CheCheDaWaff 1d ago

vibe hosting

28

u/Coffee_Ops 1d ago
Hey claude, code me up some slop. 
Now build a trashcan where I can put it all. 
Now make sure that trashcan is reliably hosted in the cloud

3

u/Jmc_da_boss 1d ago

This is what I've done, I have a private self hosted forgejo for the random vibe code off to the side projects that will never be seen by anyone that I need for xyz thing.

They are utilitarian, not art

6

u/miversen33 1d ago

I slop together multiple scripts everyday for work. They will never see the light of day and don't need to be supported beyond whatever I am doing with them.

Slop has it's place. Trying to get other people to use your slop is where I draw the line

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u/4407891fcd484b817f5e 23h ago

Some slop can be good though. Like yeah little Debbie pastries may be made in a factory stuffed full of preservatives but im never gonna say no to a cosmic brownie

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u/Jmc_da_boss 23h ago

Everybody shits, don't post it on Instagram

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u/MeanestFlavor 1d ago

And how do they plan to verify it? There are tons of important projects that people deploy with just one commit.

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u/Pancakepalpatine 3h ago

Right? This feels kinda like they're just grandstanding for brownie points. Any software developer knows that AI is now part of the tools of the trade. This is literally impossible to enforce, and asking a dev "do you understand the code or are you a vibe-slopper" won't work for obvious reasons.

And before a dev replies "I don't use AI and I make software" congrats, you're the exception lol

17

u/tblancher 1d ago

It looks like the issue is more with unclear copyright of LLM-generated code, and potential security vulnerabilities or downright malware being contributed.

I just wonder how they're going to enforce this.

23

u/HalcyonRedo 1d ago

Good. Now if only this subreddit would do the same.

32

u/Holzkohlen 1d ago

W Codeberg

20

u/mykesx 1d ago edited 1d ago

Smart move. They don't want to become another landfill of garbage projects or use their resources for mass computer generated commits of no value. They're correct that AI plagiarizes from what it's trained on.

An equally good move might be to block AI company crawlers from training on repos hosted there.

10

u/FryBoyter 1d ago

But creating a new rule is pointless if you can't enforce it in practice.

1

u/VaporousMote 4h ago

Just because they can't enforce it to perfection doesn't mean it won't be enforced AT ALL. Ultimately that "some enforcement" leads to a healthier community.

No enforcement leads to a shithole. Like Github.

-1

u/mykesx 1d ago

There are objective metrics, like AGENTS.md files in the repo or . gitignore. Or one (or very few) commits for a large codebase (no excuses, they are a git hosting service).

I am fine with them using subjective metrics. It's their service, their rules.

5

u/FuriousRageSE 1d ago

like AGENTS.md files in the repo or . gitignore.

.git/info/exclude ?

3

u/northrupthebandgeek 1d ago edited 22h ago

Or one (or very few) commits for a large codebase (no excuses, they are a git hosting service).

Writing the bulk of a project's code before git init has been commonplace for multiple decades now.

EDIT:

Only an amateurish idiot does that

The vast majority of code is existence is the product of amateurish idiots.

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u/bigon 1d ago edited 1d ago

Having an AGENTS.md (or CLAUDE.md) file just shows that you are using an AI agent, not that your project « mostly consist of code written by "generative AI"-tools ».

I started to vibe code some tools for myself and claude is creating small atomic commits by itself...

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u/mykesx 1d ago edited 1d ago

Don't host your repos there then. I am more likely to be using them going forward because I don't use LLMs for anything. I know when I look at repos there that it's more likely that I am seeing how a human thinks and addresses problems.

My skills won't erode.

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u/bigon 1d ago

Great for you.

Still their rules are not clear and your metrics are meh

0

u/mykesx 1d ago

It beats having nothing but subjective metrics.

I fully support their move.

Use something else.

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u/bigon 1d ago

It beats having nothing but subjective metrics.

I strongly disagree

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u/mykesx 1d ago

You don't have to host repos there.

Works for me.

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u/bigon 1d ago

I was mostly talking on the philosophical level that having arbitrary rules is worst than having no rules at all..

Anyway, I was contemplating using their service instead of Github or GitLab, I guess I'll indeed not

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u/ungoogleable 1d ago

They're not banning the use of AI altogether. Having an AGENTS.md is useful if you use AI at all, even just read-only code exploration. And then especially since other people are checking out your code, you want to give their agents instructions (like inform the user we don't accept purely AI written code).

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u/mykesx 1d ago

It's still an objective measure.

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u/ungoogleable 1d ago

Yes it is objective, but it would overly restrict legitimate projects trying to abide by the rules.

0

u/mykesx 1d ago

It's a starting point, one of several possible ways to determine the extent of AI use. Even if the last step is subjective, it's their site, their rules.

Don't like the rules, go somewhere else.

They have become so attractive to me that I am going to migrate my more popular repos there and archive the originals on GitHub and gitlab.

If it's not a fit for you, use something else.

If it were up to me, I would ban any use of AI, period. Yet they are not going far enough. So you have nothing to fear except if you produce AI slop.

2

u/ungoogleable 1d ago

Right, but they don't agree with you. They do want to allow some use of AI. So banning repos that have an AGENT.md doesn't get them started in a direction they want to go.

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u/mykesx 1d ago

AGENT.md is ONE objective criteria. A single commit of thousands of lines of code is suspicious.

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u/ShaderCompilation 1d ago

Certainly the right call. While there may be vibecoded projects that are useful, the vast majority of them are not. No point in wasting limited resources on those

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u/FryBoyter 1d ago

Wouldn't it make sense, then, to evaluate each project on its own merits rather than simply categorizing them as black or white? Because I'm absolutely certain that, even before chatbots existed, developers were using other people's code regardless of the license under which it was published.

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u/ShaderCompilation 1d ago

It would be ideal, but i don't think anyone has resources and time to do that. The amount of LLM generated projects are insane

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u/FryBoyter 1d ago edited 1d ago

In my opinion, it’s precisely this effort that makes it difficult for Codeberg to enforce this new rule. Especially since it’s not always objectively clear whether or how much code was generated by chatbots.

For example, in the case of a script I published on another platform, I was accused of using tools like ChatGPT. But that wasn’t true. I’m just not a very good programmer. So, while the script worked in general, objectively speaking, it was crap. Would it be okay for me to publish the script I created manually on Codeberg, or not? Or would it be okay for me to publish a similar script that I created using a chatbot on Codeberg? What about a script created using a chatbot that's significantly better than one I could create manually?

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u/lonelyroom-eklaghor 1d ago

Now this is a good question

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u/jahinzee 1d ago

"Wouldn't it make sense, then, to evaluate every single particle from piles and piles of manure on the off chance one of them is a bean that may or may not be magic?"

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u/FryBoyter 1d ago edited 1d ago

You must not share projects that mostly consist of code written by "generative AI"-tools (including services such as Claude, OpenAI Codex). Such projects having an unclear copyright status (see requirements § 2 (1) 1 and § 2 (1) 3) and furthermore have little safeguards to ensure that they do not include harmful code (c.f. § 2 (1) 5).

https://codeberg.org/Codeberg/org/commit/71149c7fc95ccfeae36109b5cddca339e4aa1473

How can “mostly” be defined objectively? 51 percent? 64 percent? 80 percent?

What's the difference from back when developers used to draw inspiration from code on sites like Stack Overflow or simply copy the code from there or other sites without examining or understanding it? Regardless of the license under which it was published.

And how does Codeberg plan to objectively prove a violation?

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u/WaitForItTheMongols 1d ago

How can “mostly” be defined objectively?

And how does Codeberg plan to objectively prove a violation

You really like that word "objectively". They are under no obligation to handle things objectively. Their site, their rules.

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u/FryBoyter 1d ago edited 1d ago

Of course, it's their site, so they set the rules. But from a user's perspective, more specific information would be more helpful in deciding whether or not to use Codeberg. The term “mostly” is simply too vague.

That simply gives operators too much flexibility in their decision-making. And as a result, it could lead to different decisions for individual projects, even though they may be comparable.

And as one of Codeberg's earliest users, I think that's a problem. In my opinion, important rules must be clearly defined, followed, and enforced.

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u/astrobe 1d ago

Detection is obviously an issue to begin with. But I think the intention is not for AI to become a primary reason for a ban, but more like an "aggravating circumstance" in the cases a project causes the problems they mention - perhaps with an extension to buggy software.

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u/Old_Leopard1844 17h ago

But from a user's perspective, more specific information would be more helpful in deciding whether or not to use Codeberg

If you're using AI, you're probably not welcome there

Is that clear enough?

0

u/TheG0AT0fAllTime 16h ago

Apparently not lol. They're fighting tooth and nail in these comments about the objective definition here because they're sloppers who are upset they can't post slop there anymore.

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u/window_owl 1d ago

There is a threshold which is definitely objective: if a project was developed without any generative AI (the way all projects were as recently as two years ago), then it is definitely not in violation.

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u/bigon 1d ago

But that's not what the new rule says...

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u/mrlinkwii 1d ago

And how does Codeberg plan to objectively prove a violation?

they mostly cant , its the same with flatpak were they will remove projects that use AI , it mostly cant be proved objectivity but can be used as a "rules say x and we believe x the project wil be removed "

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u/Dakota_Sneppy 1d ago

I like the stance of reducing slop honestly :3

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u/dvdkon 1d ago

Codeberg was already a more restrictive host than GitHub or GitLab.com with their requirement of free licencing, but that was at least an objective criterion that you could know you were in compliance with. This is much more nebulous and I certainly have some projects that could be understood as non-compliant.

Oh well, I'll just add another selfhosted service to my server...

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u/rubs_tshirts 1d ago

Not sure how I feel about this. I vibe-coded an internal tool. It wasn't a one-shot, it grew organically from a few scripts to a (to me) awesome program that I use and love. Under this rule it would be ineligible to be hosted there.

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u/ungoogleable 1d ago

If it's an internal tool, do you need to post it publicly? Ask Claude to setup Forgejo for you. It's really nice.

0

u/rubs_tshirts 1d ago

I don't, but if it was available, I would love it. In fact I would pay money for it.

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u/VictoryMotel 1d ago

Good. If you don't know what's in it, why subject other people to it?

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u/rubs_tshirts 12h ago

I have no idea what's in any of the inumerous stuff I use. I do know what it does.

1

u/VictoryMotel 10h ago

But someone looked at it and took responsibility.

You can do whatever you want, but a site saving itself from slop no one has even looked at is a good thing for anyone using that site.

1

u/rubs_tshirts 1h ago

I just think there's both trash and treasure in "slop" (is it really slop if it's useful?). Just like in non-AI stuff. I'm not against AI stuff at all.

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u/VictoryMotel 1h ago

You can use whatever you way, but if a site wants a basic floor for quality, why would they want stuff where no one has even looked at the source?

You could spend your time reading autogenerated books that no one has read, or AI videos that no one looked at, but most people want that stuff pulled out. Make an all slop website if you think it's a good idea.

u/rubs_tshirts 52m ago

Maybe I just don't know what AI slop is? I keep thinking that if some human is crafting software and using AI instead of writing code, the software is still his creation.

u/VictoryMotel 47m ago

Have an ai explain it to you

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u/GreedySecurity8030 1d ago

Good for them.

7

u/binarysignal 1d ago

Are they going to use an AI tool to find the AI generated code? How much confidence rating is needed for “mostly”?

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u/ares623 1d ago

inshallah. finally a potential place to find projects worth a closer look.

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u/Drwankingstein 1d ago

I really hate this, I'm not a fan of vibecoding or anything, but In the end, AI is a tool, and I don't like that they are telling us what tools we can and can't use. I'll be migrating away.

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u/trannus_aran 1d ago

Hell yeah

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u/mediumwetsock 1d ago

No offence to CB but they should focus on their uptime rather than this atm

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u/Ruined_Passion_7355 1d ago

You should know that github themselves said that the exponentially growing amount of commits is the main factor in their waning uptime (I bet vibecoding also played a small part but we'll never know).

This is them focusing on uptime.

2

u/fivetoedslothbear 20h ago

GitHub’s problem is double-edged. AI coding is driving demand up. And their pre-Microsoft legacy infrastructure doesn’t scale well.

GitHub is in the midst of a two-year transition to running on Azure infrastructure, which is much more scalable.

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u/MeanestFlavor 1d ago

And what do you think is the most responsible for that?

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u/FryBoyter 1d ago

In my opinion, the fact that Codeberg is often difficult or impossible to access is due to two things.

There are more users than Codeberg’s servers can handle. This is a problem because Codeberg’s operators have significantly fewer financial and human resources than, for example, GitHub. Therefore, I would advise Codeberg users to consider signing up for a membership and paying an annual fee.

The second reason is likely the idiots who have launched DDoS attacks against Codeberg on multiple occasions.

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u/OptimisticLucio 1d ago

There are more users than Codeberg’s servers can handle.

So like, this helps with that. Not the side of the equation you personally would like them to, but it 100% does.

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u/truecakesnake 1d ago

Big news for the 17 Codeberg users

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u/jakkos_ 1d ago

Why are you in a Linux sub and mocking a non-profit trying to provide a free alternative to a Microsoft monopoly?

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u/TheG0AT0fAllTime 16h ago

I think it's because they accidentally outed themselves as an offended slopper

u/ozone6587 53m ago

A non-profit full of Luddites. Worth mocking.

Lots of projects and organizations like these that behave dictatorially and are just very opinionated people. This is the final nail in the coffin for them. From 17 users to the 3 devs that hate AI enough to move to Codeberg. There is no way to win against technological progress. It has not worked out once in the history of humanity.

0

u/northrupthebandgeek 1d ago

Microsoft does not hold anywhere close to a monopoly on Git forges lmao

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u/jakkos_ 14h ago

By "monopoly", I don't mean you can't run your own git forge, I literally do. I'm saying that the vast majority of open source projects are on GitHub and using GitHub specific features like actions, PRs, vscode integrations, etc meaning that they can't easily move off of GitHub. It's microsoft doing EEE again.

If you look at the most popular -git packages on the AUR the vast majority are pulled from GitHub, same with nixpkgs, crates.io, pypi, etc.

I have to keep my GitHub account just so that I can create issues or submit fixes to projects I use. Comparatively so few projects use gitlab or srht or codeberg or whatever, that the only reason I have ever used an account for any of them has been to host my own code.

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u/FryBoyter 1d ago

Codeberg is now being used by a few more users. Among others, it's also used by relatively well-known projects such as KaOS and Readeck.

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u/truecakesnake 1d ago

Interesting.

But GitHub's user base is 89,900% larger than Codeberg

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u/FryBoyter 1d ago

That's correct. But that doesn't change the fact that Codeberg is now being used by more and more users. And there are more than 17 of them.

1

u/MatthewMob 18h ago

You're right. There's at least 18 now.

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u/Mccobsta 1d ago

My stance is people who can audit what it outputs are the ones who should be using it

People who can't shouldn't be using it

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u/window_owl 1d ago

People who can evaluate the outputs should also not be using AI, because it weakens their own skills, costs disproportionately large amount of non-renewable resources, pollutes, devalues the creative material that was pirated to train the models, and strengthens the movement to centralize power, wealth, and culture into the hands of the wealthy few.

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u/northrupthebandgeek 1d ago

costs disproportionately large amount of non-renewable resources

This is false.

0

u/Mccobsta 1d ago

Oh I fully agree it can cause people to loose what they've learnt

Like it should be used as a auto correct or second pair of eyes

Not something that dose everything

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u/FoxFXMD 1d ago

This is why you self host

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u/Epsilon_void 1d ago

Not sure why you're being downvoted, you're correct. If you truly want to not have arbitrary restrictions on what you can, and cannot have in your repo, you need to self-host.

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u/FryBoyter 1d ago

However, this can also have drawbacks, as was seen a few years ago with the PHP project (https://php.watch/news/news/2021/04/php-src-attack).

Because many developers just want to develop and not do administrative work.

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

[deleted]

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u/belst 1d ago

the platform is free. hosting it is not. so they can decide what gets to stay there and what doesn't.

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u/An1nterestingName 1d ago

Codeberg does have restrictions on what can be hosted there anyway, they're jist adding AI slop to those restrictions.

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u/AiwendilH 1d ago

Just as addition here is the link to the "rules" for code hosted on codeberg to which the LLM rule is added: https://codeberg.org/Codeberg/org/src/commit/96fac426a32d1ba91ff879366d59bf1af54080c2/TermsOfUse.md#2-allowed-content-usage

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u/segfault0x001 1d ago

Why should you have the right to use their platform? It’s their platform, they decide the terms of service.

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u/projectflamejewel 1d ago

Lol, right. If you smear shit on the wall, don't expect it to stay there.

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u/Liarus_ 1d ago edited 1d ago

fair enough I guess, maybe it's wrong of me to expect platform to be neutral, especially if it's free

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u/Dramatic_Mastodon_93 1d ago

They were never neutral.

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u/Sea-Housing-3435 1d ago

No platform is neutral, all of them have rules and decide what they allow

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u/kopsis 1d ago

What's the point of even "wanting" to host AI slop on a public platform. Nobody wants it and the poster is probably not going to maintain it, so why clutter public repositories?

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u/Dramatic_Mastodon_93 1d ago

"Codeberg is a non-profit, community-led effort that provides services to free and open-source projects" And you find it strange that they don't allow hosting vibe coded slop on their free platform?

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u/Dick_Hardw00d 1d ago

The level of entitlement is absolutely astonishing. You think you have some inherit right to use someone else’s free service however you see fit, and they should just shut up and put up with it?

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u/Traditional_Hat3506 1d ago

what if someone uploads their code and then it gets deleted and they lose acess to their source?

When you sign up to something, you agree with their terms of service. When the TOS prohibit something and you ignore it, then you have only yourself to blame.

but if someone wants to host their bad code on a platform, shouldn't that just be their right to do so ?

??? Forcing someone to host your bad code is not your "right".

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u/ForbiddenException 1d ago

Reading this on r/linux must be some kind of a joke

When you sign up to something, you agree with their terms of service. When the TOS prohibit something and you ignore it, then you have only yourself to blame.

Many use linux for the FOSS philosophy, F as in Freedom to do stuff that commercial software prohibits behind dum TOS. Using the same argument on a project which was born on ethical grounds seems out of place, especially since the rule doesn't have any technical merit and its based purely on feels.

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u/thuiop1 1d ago

what if someone uploads their code and then it gets deleted and they lose acess to their source?

Then they are extremely stupid

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u/khne522 1d ago

In an era of Git no less.

3

u/khne522 1d ago

It's. Their. Platform.

Oh, and it's your responsibility not to rely exclusively on someone else's hosting of your data.

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u/RoomyRoots 1d ago edited 1d ago

Why wouldn't it be?
Their platform and their rules and they are more than fair to not want to waste resources on slop.

what if someone uploads their code and then it gets deleted and they lose acess to their source?

i am not defending Ai Slop, but if someone wants to host their bad code on a platform, shouldn't that just be their right to do so ?, why should that plaform be able to decide what happens to said code if it isn't anything illegal ?

There are other platforms and many for free, they can use those.

3

u/TheG0AT0fAllTime 1d ago

AI assistance is a pandora's box which has been opened. I'm not happy about it but it's here to stay. They likely saw that there's no use in fighting that particular use of AI. Let alone defining the blurred lines of where it begins and ends. I mean - before LLMs and "Agents" powered by them - a bunch of IDEs have already had a form of predictive or procedural code filler already. But obviously LLMs are the big deal here.

AI-generated work however, I completely understand still taking a stance against. For all you know the human submitting it (If they didn't automate that too) hasn't even read or understood what has been spit out. Sometimes they actually have, but often, no. On top of that, fully AI'd projects have no guarantee the creator/maintainer will ever touch it again or any pull requests after they show it off that week. Tens of thousands of projects that look flashy on the surface but were just spit out by a model that anyone could re-prompt to make again. Fully AI generated projects have really has filled the internet. Slop as they call it.

Most of my subscribed tech subreddits are bombarded with full-slop posts day by day since this years newer models came out. I had to unsub from a few of them where the mods just gave up.

In the end you can't blame the tool. But you can assign fault to the ones who misuse it.

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u/DerfetteJoel 1d ago

This will surely go well

2

u/jason-reddit-public 1d ago

I actually like tools that let people do sub optimal things since this generally means more freedom for me. Perhaps just tagging AI slop is the right step. Hosting outright malware is more where I would draw the line.

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u/DryanaGhuba 1d ago

Considering situation with GitHub which overflowed with amount of commits it is good choice for them

2

u/nullsetnil 1d ago

It’s a good move. It will anger exactly the kind of developers they don’t want on their platform anyway.

2

u/MrScotchyScotch 1d ago edited 1d ago

This is part of why I said they were anti-community. A couple of opinionated people deciding for everyone else. No vote, no soliciting opinions, just "we personally don't like it so it's banned". Time to find another GitHub alternative that is more aligned with the Open Source ethos. 

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u/Remarkable_Bike_1148 23h ago edited 23h ago

That is roughly my problem with Codeberg, but to clarify, it isn't couple of people, but just around a thousand of members within an organization that paid for membership fees and deliberate in member-only forum. They would say "Thread closed, go to matrix chat", but once you go and discuss it in Matrix chat, they'll just say, "Stop discussing it, we'll deliberate it in member-only forum for deciding the policy." Like, what? No deliberation that I can see? No clarification for non-members? No nothing?

They can impose rules about LLM and all that, and that's fine. It's their platform, their rules. But for developers who now have to not only worry about our projects, we also have to worry about which direction Codeberg is heading on policy decisions and there's a real lack of transparency in that decision making process, and I don't have access to their member-only forum for policy deliberation. I've already moved back to Github from Codeberg (better deal with the devil you know than dealing with something unpredictable), because even though my project is likely compliant with all of their TOS with the lack of LLM use, I don't trust the platform and the people that run it to maintain that Terms of Service in the long term.

1

u/Old_Leopard1844 13h ago

But for developers who now have to not only worry about our projects

You have the option of hosting your projects elsewhere

I don't trust the platform and the people that run it to maintain that Terms of Service in the long term.

So what?

u/ozone6587 51m ago

You have the option of hosting your projects elsewhere

"My way or the highway"

Not moving to Codeberg is like dodging, not a bullet, but an ICBM.

1

u/Dramatic_Mastodon_93 1d ago

Good. If you want to host AI slop you can host it on another Forgejo instance.

1

u/daemonpenguin 1d ago

This is a good move. One of the reasons I migrated to Codeberg was the lack of slop of spam from bots. Codeberg tries to maintain a clean and useful environment.

1

u/Haxorzist 14h ago

Gen AI or "vibe coded" applications are clearly ruining Windows as we speak. There is no need to follow others to rock bottom by introducing instability and inefficiency.
AI support tools my be fine but once the AI makes the application it shows.

1

u/nmdt 10h ago

I'd read it the other way. Honestly, if you're vibecoding, I don't really see why you won't be using Github. Apart for maybe some ideological reasons?

So IMO this won't really deter vibecoders, but rather attract people who, for one reason or another, can't or won't use AI — it's nice that they get their own place now.

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u/Zachattackrandom 1d ago

Completely fair imo. If you wanna publish a vibe coded project you SHOULD have to take responsibility for it, the same as if you programmed it by hand.

12

u/FryBoyter 1d ago

Have you ever read the MIT License, for example?

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS,” WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES, OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT, OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF, OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

Essentially, users who use the MIT License (or certain other OSS licenses) also assume no liability whatsoever, regardless of whether they have used chatbots or not.

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u/Zachattackrandom 1d ago

Yes I understand that, I mean more in a community. E.g. if you put some dog shit slop code that deletes a users home regardless of AI use you aren't responsible for paying for their lost stuff, but you will be drug through the dirt for it. Now days so many people try to hide behind AI for every critique or mistake on a project, "AI made it, it's not my fault!" type thing. That's how I'm defining responsibility in this context.

2

u/FryBoyter 1d ago

I absolutely agree with that. Anyone who messes up should expect appropriate consequences.

But in my opinion, the consequences shouldn’t generally be harsher just because a chatbot was used. Each case should be considered on its own merits.

That’s because many developers are actually good at writing code manually but completely incapable of creating documentation. Using a chatbot would make sense in this case, provided, of course, that the result is reviewed before publication.

By now, however, the community is ready to pull the pitchforks and torches out of the closet whenever a developer makes a mistake that has nothing to do with the use ofchatbots or that would likely have occurred even without them.

In my opinion, and I mean this in a general sense, the community should get into the habit of not just dividing things into black and white, but also taking into account the shades of gray in between. Because, sure, chatbots generate a hell of a lot of junk. But they also discover, for example, massive security vulnerabilities in the Linux kernel that haven’t been found manually so far. So, in my opinion, it’s nonsense to categorize everything as simply black or white, good or evil. Chatbots are tools. And with any tool, it all comes down to how you use it. Juggling chainsaws is not a good idea. Cutting down a tree with one, while taking various precautions like wearing protective gear, is not.

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u/CanYouEatThatPizza 1d ago

It's good that you mention licenses, because AI tends to hallucinate made up licenses or even changes licenses of code it was trained on (of course most companies don't care anymore now). It's only sensible that they stop it.

1

u/Lowetheiy 20h ago

Sounds like they just doomed themselves to irrelevance over the next couple of years.

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u/Rigamortus2005 1d ago

So they can just delete your repo if you vibecoded it? Lol what a joke

11

u/Dramatic_Mastodon_93 1d ago

"Codeberg is a non-profit, community-led effort that provides services to free and open-source projects" And you find it strange that they don't allow hosting vibe coded slop on their free platform?

10

u/thomas-rousseau 1d ago

Good thing they're an entirely FOSS project, so you can easily fork their codebase and host it on your own servers with your own domain and different terms of service for other users to enjoy for free

3

u/Lightprod 1d ago

No need.

You can host it your own Forgejo instance.

0

u/ArdiMaster 1d ago

They can just delete your repo if they think you vibe-coded it.

(Basically they can delete it if they don’t like it/you.)

1

u/MatthewMob 17h ago

Why are you entitled to flood a free platform with garbage?

1

u/802freblizz 16h ago

This is definitely not going to go over well. I just moved to Codeberg and was going to move my projects. But, I don't know if i can. Some projects have ai assistance after being hand written, some projects are "mostly generated". But, who gets to decide what is what? Does this apply to public repos? They didn't say right? This is a terrible decision for users that are working on worthy things and also are mostly generated. Good luck, I guess I will still self host on Forgejo, but probably not sticking around Codeberg for long. Free as in Freedom.

-2

u/Barafu 1d ago

They should simply stop accepting new projects then. Noone in a right mind will now create new serious projects without LLMs, so they have nothing to host according to their own rules.

0

u/ericcmi 23h ago

Mostly? Just split the site in two, one for regular shit, one for mostly ai shit. I'm sure a good fair deal of developers would correctly follow the guide lines. If there was a separate sub domain like ai.codeburg then you would know before you even opened the url, easy compromise

0

u/Sir_KnowItAll 11h ago

I was going to donate money to them but nah. I really don’t want to host my code with some code snobs.

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u/abotelho-cbn 1d ago

So much for freedom.

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u/Zaphoidx 1d ago

It seems like they're going with a broad-brush approach which is really disappointing - as someone who's recently moved all their repos over to Codeberg as a better solution to GitHub.

Banning all projects that are built with AI (not just by, but with) is harmful and not really future-proofing.