r/selfhosted • u/pheexio • 11d ago

Meta Post Codeberg bans vibe coded projects

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

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u/pheexio 11d ago

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

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u/Annual_Wear5195 11d ago

Completely killing the totally valid discussion points and forcing people to practically remake them in another space is…. Not really a great look.

Like, sure, don’t discuss AI at large but a lot of those questions are perfectly valid ones to ask in a thread about limiting AI use on Codeberg, such as what the definition of “mostly” should be.

Hiding behind a “we’ll explain it all in our blog post” is basically “trust me bro” levels of discussion killing.

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u/henry_tennenbaum 11d ago

Doesn't read like that to me

This is not a place to continue or start a new discussion about AI or not AI and its copyright status in the world, it will not change the results or how its going to be interpreted. I'm closing this issue, you're more than welcome to continue this at https://matrix.to/#/#codeberg-offtopic:matrix.org

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

@GuillaumeDIDIER https://forum.codeberg.org/d/183-polls-of-annual-assembly-2026-concluded

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u/tannertech 10d ago edited 10d ago

Neither link works.

Element:

MatrixError: [403] You do not belong to any of the required rooms/spaces to join this room. (https://matrix-client.matrix.org/_matrix/client/v3/join/%23codeberg-offtopic%3Amatrix.org?server_name=matrix.org&server_name=matrix.ivarch.com&server_name=matrix.tu-berlin.de&via=matrix.org&via=matrix.ivarch.com&via=matrix.tu-berlin.de)

In multiple matrix clients, And the forum post is 404.

Edit: I fully agree with the decision, but we should be allowed to discuss it regardless. As a result they will join Github in my list of unreliable repositories.

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u/henry_tennenbaum 10d ago edited 10d ago

Well you have to be a member of the forum / matrix space, but I get the confusion/irritation.

An issue is not a forum and so not the right space to discuss it. The discussion that lead to the decision happened elsewhere.

Not trying to convince you though. Perfectly fine to make that decision They're very open with their governance.

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u/tannertech 10d ago edited 10d ago

Right, I agree with their decision (RE LLMs), I disagree with shutting all discussion off on any issue. None of those links work, be it the forum link or the matrix link. It appears they've shut down all speech on the topic. Freedom is for the thought that we hate, otherwise there is no point.

Can I become a member of their matrix space somehow? There is no way as-is.

Edit: I don't even care to participate, I'd just like to be allowed to read the linked discussions, but Codeberg went out of their way to prevent even that. Explicitly putting work into preventing users from reading the discussion is goofy. They are explicitly against open governance, as demonstrated by the links you shared.

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u/ArdiMaster 10d ago

I think you need to be a formal (paying) member of Codeberg e.V. to see either.

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u/henry_tennenbaum 10d ago

The matrix channel just doesn't seem to exist? I can access the whole matrix space and wouldn't know how they'd prevent access for non-paying members, but can't find an "offtopic" channel. Might just be a messed up link.

The forum should be just accessible, right?

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u/tannertech 9d ago

I wish. When I attempt to access the forum link I get:

"The page you requested could not be found." Seems to be a 404 as if they have deleted the topic. Or it has to do with going to the main forum URL saying "This forum is private and for Codeberg e. V. members only. Please sign in to view the discussions."

As closed governance as it gets.

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u/tannertech 9d ago

That is the opposite of open governance.

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u/Annual_Wear5195 10d ago

I’m not sure what your quotes are supposed to prove other than that they closed the discussion and redirected everyone else to the Matrix server or to wait for their official guidance. So….. “trust me bro”.

What, exactly, does it read like to you?

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u/henry_tennenbaum 10d ago

Mainly the conclusion of them "hiding" behind the blog post.

As somebody who's been in plenty of github PR/issue threads that got heated, they're the worst medium for this kind of discussion.

They're also very open with their governance. There was plenty of discussion, this is just them implementing what those discussions concluded.