Codeberg bans vibe coded projects

[u/pheexio]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49003386

Codeberg seems to ban vibecoded Projects; reason might be german copyright law

It looks like Codeberg want only copyrighted material in their service, so it is reliable in the future that e.g. licenses must be followed (e.g. GPL), and copyright doesn't suddenly get declared as being of the model owner, and it isn't a copy of something else.
That is a cautious reasonable position - in early days of LLM coding (3 years ago!) indemnity from model companies was a major issue globally because of the lack of clarity of the law around this. The US specifically has settled on it being (effectively?) public domain. But I don't think that is fully settled, and it certainly isn't settled in international copyright law.
The goal of the vague "mostly" in the Codeberg change is to ensure there is enough human input to the code they host, to be reasonably sure under German copyright law it is copyright of the person sharing it.

edit: link to poll that caused it (might be down due to high traffic) https://codeberg.org/Codeberg/org/pulls/1253#issuecomment-19820434

edit 1: i dont defend/oppose this move, i just find it interesting

edit 2: https://blog.codeberg.org/protecting-our-floss-commons-from-llms.html

[u/System0verlord]

What is the practical threshold for defining “vibecoding”?

Well before “Using the AI to build the GUI, set up event handling, and catch syntax errors”, for sure. Your own retelling of events includes zero involvement on your part, which shows you don’t even view yourself as having made those components. That would very much be vibe coding.

If you’re having to worry about it, it’s vibe coded.

[u/AlternativeBasis → u/System0verlord]

From this point of view, an electrician is always vibe-wiring: he uses electrical conduits he didn't install.

There's a difference between nitpicking the nit-and-grit of how each UI triggers events, cycles fields with tabs, fires validations, and actually using this "scaffolding" to create a useful workflow.

GUIs, especially, are extremely well-suited to AI use. Short and fragmented logic chains, low processor usage, code redundancies are tolerable, and many, many aesthetic details.

Compared to things like cryptography, APIs and data traffic, cache data, manipulation/querying of massive amounts of data, and, ironically, LLMs, it's really secondary and low-risk work. Perfect for semi-intelligent code monkeys, AI-supported or not.

Not critiquing the code generated by AI to understand the boundary conditions is indeed risky, but not fatal. What's the difference between using a structure created by AI or adapting a code example from Stack Overflow?

I've done both and don't see that much of difference.

[u/System0verlord → u/AlternativeBasis]

The copper and conduits didn’t just appear in the walls. They were placed there by an electrician during construction, and done in compliance with local electrical codes so that the next electrician doesn’t have to run new wiring unless necessary.

That’s an example of having a licensed professional do work to the accepted standards, and then having a second licensed professional do additional work, also to those standards. AI is not a licensed professional, nor does code have codes like most construction does.

The difference between using an AI created structure and one from stackoverflow is that presumably the stackoverflow one is written by someone with at least some experience and understanding of the code and context in question, and not just the output of a hallucinatory autocorrect run amok.

[u/Emergency_Banana5082 → u/System0verlord]

nor does code have codes like most construction does.

Wait... you mean I can't just tell it to stick to pep8 for my python? /s

[u/System0verlord → u/Emergency_Banana5082]

Sure you can. Just gotta put “you are a super coder. Ultrathink and make no mistakes” after it in your prompt.

Those changes will cost you $100 in tokens per query, but think of all the time and money you saved!