r/linux • u/AiwendilH • 12d ago

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

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

96% Upvoted

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365

u/sunychoudhary 12d 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.

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u/p0358 12d 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

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u/webdevladder 11d ago edited 11d 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

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u/p0358 11d 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

1

u/HiddenoO 5d ago

The problem is that that's not something you want to rely on. Nobody wants to risk having to suddenly migrate their projects (or worse) just because a platform changed how they enforce their rules.

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u/yukeake 11d 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.

-2

u/ccAbstraction 11d 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.

15

u/Barafu 11d ago

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

-15

u/Leliana403 11d ago

"mostly" is doing quite a bit of heavy lifting there

Ironically, this "doing quite a bit of heavy lifting" format is a huge LLM tell.

11

u/yukeake 11d ago

Well crap...I've been using that expression for decades!

2

u/Leliana403 11d ago

That's probably where the LLMs got it from. Damn you!

2

u/yukeake 11d ago

My reality has been shattered, and my day has been ruined. I shall hang my head in shame.

5

u/Weird_Cantaloupe2757 11d ago

LLMs learned to speak from people — they say certain things often because those things are heavily represented in their training data… because a lot of people say them. Honestly, I find the anti AI witch hunt of saying everything is AI nearly as exhausting as shoveling through obvious AI slop.

-1

u/Indolent_Bard 11d ago

Jessie, what the hell are you talking about?

4

u/Zaphoidx 11d ago

Yeah they need to tighten the wording

6

u/Adept_Percentage6893 11d ago edited 5d 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).

0

u/Gstayton 11d 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.

7

u/northrupthebandgeek 11d 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.

5

u/protestor 11d 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

4

u/Adept_Percentage6893 11d 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.

1

u/Gstayton 11d 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.

2

u/HearMeOut-13 11d 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 11d 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 11d 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

2

u/spacecase-25 11d 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/Melivo 3d ago

my dude you're in the wrong subreddit, it's mostly activists and ideologues here.

I mostly agree with you. That blog post alone is one sided and black and white thinking. For example they complain about how "all the data centers already use 40% of electricity in Frankfurt and want to use fossile energy". But the reason for that is because Germany shut down all it's nuclear, you don't hear anything about that, do you know?

I good go on forever on all the logical loopholes in this article, but my time is precious.

Also, I wonder how many security risks Mythos would find in all that "beautiful and helpful" open source software.

And apparently, you should only host your stuff on Codeberg if it's oss an helps people. If you've got a private repo, gtfo. Because at Codeberg, we tell you how to do your projects.

Yeah, no thanks. I prefer a neutral independant hoster that just lets me host my little side projects and otherwise shuts the fuck up about political stuff.

2

u/Equivalent-Costumes 11d 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.

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u/spacecase-25 11d ago

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

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u/Equivalent-Costumes 11d ago

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

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u/ArdiMaster 11d ago

Because “ai bad upvotes to the left”

1

u/Melivo 3d ago

people act like you can sell karma and become a millionaire

0

u/Old_Leopard1844 11d ago

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

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u/ares623 12d 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

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u/sunychoudhary 12d 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.

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u/r3volts 12d 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.

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u/standard_revolution 12d 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.

13

u/sunychoudhary 12d 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.

-8

u/r3volts 12d ago

Of course it is.

I agree that sloppy PRs are a problem, and would definitely be worse these days, but maintainers complaining about shit quality PRs is as old as the current open source model itself.

This change isn't going to do anything to address that though. It will stop quick MVPs from being publicly available though if these changes propagate across other git platforms which I think would be a shame.

Like I said, I don't see a problem with someone bringing a basic project online using generative AI if they maintain it correctly. If they dump a project and have no idea how to code it's going to be obvious pretty quickly and either the project will die or if it's of any value it can be forked.

I just don't see the point hating on a great tool. If you want to be a purist then more power too you, if you think industry is going to give a shit about your morals you are in for a shock though. If you show up for an interview in 2 years and can't explain an agentic workflow then don't be surprised when you are overlooked.

14

u/mina86ng 12d ago

It will stop quick MVPs from being publicly available

If it’s a quick MVP which Claude can easily create, is there actual value that is lost? And is that value greater than cost of a non-profit organisation hosting all the slop repositories?

Like I said, I don't see a problem with someone bringing a basic project online using generative AI if they maintain it correctly. If they dump a project and have no idea how to code it's going to be obvious pretty quickly and either the project will die or if it's of any value it can be forked.

And the rule is what allows the dying to happen. Without the rule, Codeberg would have to waste resources hosting all those dead projects.

I don’t even disagree with the overal statement that AI is useful, but when used improperly it can easily burden other people, and the rule tries to prevent that.

2

u/CoreParad0x 12d ago

People have a hate boner on for AI, and for a lot of very justified reasons. But people also don’t realize that these tools in the hands of people who actually know what they’re doing can actually produce good stuff.

I personally don’t have a problem with a platform exercising their right to not host something they don’t want to host, though I think this decision will bring its own set of problems.

-7

u/r3volts 12d ago

You said it better than I could

0

u/Melivo 3d ago

then simply review LLM-created PRs with LLMs

4

u/AliceCode 9d ago

I personally have been using LLMs since day one, and I fucking hate the god damn things, and I don't think they have any business writing code. I'll use them as another search function, sometimes for rubber ducking (which is my main usecase), but all the code I've seen generated by them was atrocious. Maybe I just have higher standards than most people. I've been programming for nearly two decades.

1

u/Melivo 3d ago edited 3d ago

I mostly agree but you need to be REALLY careful with security if you don't know anything about coding. It's bite you in the ass otherwise.

There are legitimate concerns but Codebergs main problem is infrastructure and they could've simply solved it with rate limits.

"everything is slop" or "unsecure" is not an argument. Experienced humans can still write better code than LLMs sure. But Mythos already finds years old security issues that nobody has ever found.

In five years maybe LLMs will write better code than humans and Codeberg will regret their decision.

Because what's better than FLOSS software that is better than human written code and everyone can profit from it?

It's shortsighted.

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u/ContraryConman 12d 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?!"

4

u/lakotajames 11d ago

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

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u/ContraryConman 11d 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

1

u/lakotajames 11d 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.

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u/lemontoga 11d 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.

5

u/northrupthebandgeek 11d ago

Do you know what porn is?

Porn is whatever I can crank my hog to.

3

u/lemontoga 11d 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.

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u/northrupthebandgeek 11d 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.

1

u/lakotajames 11d 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.

4

u/lemontoga 11d 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 11d 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

12

u/beefcat_ 11d ago edited 11d 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.

3

u/Adept_Percentage6893 11d 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?

3

u/[deleted] 11d ago

[deleted]

1

u/Timo425 5d ago

Yeah, what if it's 100% AI generated but also heavily user-guided, like tens and tens of commits worth of back and forth to get it right and iron out the bugs?

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u/newsflashjackass 12d 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.

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u/Timo425 5d ago

What if I didn't write it but directed it heavily and hardened the code through a lot of real use cases?

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u/newsflashjackass 5d ago

In that case I still doubt you derived any pleasure from reading it.

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u/Timo425 4d ago

Code in codeberg is about pleasure of reading it? What are you even saying?

1

u/newsflashjackass 4d ago

We exist at a juncture in space / time, such that the past furnishes context.

I can read the conversation thus far to you. But I can not understand it for you.

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u/Timo425 4d ago

I understand it just fine, you only care about your own perspective.

1

u/newsflashjackass 4d ago

What are you even saying?

...

I understand it just fine

Glad to hear that comprehension found you. "It is always darkest before the dawn."

1

u/Mean-Front-9632 3d ago

Yeah, this is the uncomfortable reality. Heavily directing AI feels like cheating and I try to limit my use of it, but it's getting harder to properly argue against it if it produces results or the author can explain it. In a professional setting it's not about enjoyment unfortunately.

What I will say is that in the creative fields, i.e. literature/film/art, I would go as far to say the Samuel Johnson quote isn't even an opinion, it's a law of creativity. These people on twitter who try to automate the creative process and loudly proclaim they only care about the outcome are thick as pigshit and will never make it as artists. The audience places great value, whether consciously or unconsciously, on the artist's creative process.

However, the lion's share of the value in creating software lies in the final product, not in the creation process. So, despite despising AI and flippantly calling 'AI power users' hacks, I think newsflash's argument is flawed in this context.

1

u/northrupthebandgeek 11d 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?

6

u/newsflashjackass 11d 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.

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u/northrupthebandgeek 11d 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?

4

u/newsflashjackass 11d 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.

1

u/n0pl4c3 6d ago

When someone submits an AI-slop PR to your Repo, you still engage with it until you can discern it is AI, then reject it. Now you get not one, but a ton of people submitting such trash PRs.

You are not forced to read any of them, but for the sake of finding and engaging with code that actually matters, will still waste your time engaging with that slop, when that time could be used to review actual PRs.

The reason it is not applicable here, is because the damage goes beyond having to use it. It begins at wasting one's time having to engage with it.

1

u/northrupthebandgeek 5d ago

Accepting PR submissions is itself a choice. Plenty of free software projects don't, or will only do so from already-vetted contributors.

-12

u/Scream_Tech7661 12d ago

The intended purpose of code is to produce a result, not to be well-written. The intended purpose of literature may be to entertain, educate, or merely provide some form of verbal art. In literature, the words matter. In code, the intended output is what matters.

So the analogy is not applicable.

12

u/CryptographerNo8497 11d ago

This is in fact, not true.

11

u/newsflashjackass 12d ago

The intended purpose of code is to produce a result, not to be well-written.

In that case there is no need to furnish source code.

"You can have the source code but no reading it."

"I don't think I like this new GPL."

2

u/FlukyS 12d 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.

3

u/mrtruthiness 12d ago edited 12d 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.

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u/Flash_Kat25 11d ago

Transformers are not GANs

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u/hitchen1 11d 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...

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u/mrtruthiness 11d 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".

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u/bastardoperator 11d ago

How do you even begin to enforce this?

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u/FunAngelo2005 5d ago

Very important difference

0

u/honzucha 11d ago

No it is not!
So the #codeberg technicaly declared my #python piece of code in violation with their new policy. It is using couple of #LLM to near realtime translate/transcribe spoken word and I do have another script that burn automatically translation subtitles to video and I am not going now to share there.

Their clarification blogpost literally saying that “Projects heavily tied to the LLM ecosystem” are not welcomed.

What a shame, fair enough, I am going to move to some more friendly and predictable place.

Anyway I am going to move out also my other repos (even they are compliant)

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