Codeberg Divides

infecto

It is a bad rule. Their community and their choice but I hope we get some fresh options in the open source universe.

kccqzy

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.

Hendrikto

Fully agree. I am against AI slop, LLM overhyping, and cryto scams, as much as anybody, however: > 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. I do not like to build on a foundation that could be ripped away from under my feet at any moment for arbitrary reasons.

dmitrygr

> There are serious questions about copyright, labor, energy use, slop, and maintainers drowning in generated contributions. But Way to not at all engage with any of that and just go on your merry way... 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.

stock_toaster

codefloe[1] also runs forgejo. [1]: https://codefloe.com/

ItsABytecode

Codeberg going down the path of Blueskyification

Arainach

> 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. 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.

Zsfe510asG

I see. We should not divide into camps so the Austrians can sell their AI startups. 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.

TheJoYo

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.

neogodless

Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49015635 Protecting our FLOSS commons from LLMs (blog.codeberg.org) 1 day ago, 144 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49003386 Codeberg bans vibe coded projects (codeberg.org/codeberg) 2 days ago, 279 comments

CodesInChaos

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.

cmrdporcupine

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. And maybe a statement that: 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. 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!") I do think the one substantial argument that was made through the threads, was around IP ownership laws. However I remain unconvinced. Frankly if there's anywhere where I would most like 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. I understand not everyone shares that opinion, and they're welcome to different interpretations. 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.

_def

> 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. Wrong category. It doesn't want to. It's not a company. Might as well act on their beliefs. 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.

free_bip

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. 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. 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. 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.

ok123456

So are they going to have "AI" police this? Heuristics about check-in size and scope are still AI, albeit "classical AI."

ralph84

That's the beauty of the internet, everyone can find their space. Even the buggy whip makers.

nottorp

> Since I want GitHub to face competition I have thoughts. Github allows private repos, organization access control etc. I don't see how Codeberg is competition.

singron

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. Are there any projects on codeberg that are getting banned and actually have significant human interest? If codeberg decided to kick out spammers, nobody would decry the loss, so what's being lost here? Is it strictly slippery slope?

yogthos

A great way to ensure that most developers 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 in the future. I guess Codeberg is angling to become a small artisanal community, and there might certainly be a niche for that.

PaulDavisThe1st

I have no particular problem with this decision/policy on the part of Codeberg. I do have an issue with their "tainted code" project that labels various FLOSS projects as "AI tainted". ardour.org has the follow AI policy statement: --------- Using LLMs to generate code for Ardour 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. 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. --------- 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.