3 ms·

Making a principled ban against LLM would seem to allow for more freedom and flexibility with usage limits. People who are creating more by hand would still be

Making a principled ban against LLM would seem to allow for more freedom and flexibility with usage limits. People who are creating more by hand would still be allowed to have more breathing room. With a hard limit of resources everyone would be more restricted. That's also a solution, but it's just a totally different approach. The LLM ban could help to allow for freedom without the resources getting overwhelmed.

eviks 3mo ago
> principled ban against LLM So was it about high resource use, or a principle? > People who are creating more by hand would still be allowed to have more breathing room. What about the breathing of people creating by hand with a sprinkle of an LLM? > but it's just a totally different approach. Indeed, a better one where you manage directly the issue you claim to care about
- layer8 3mo ago
  My interpretation is that the resource usage should be roughly proportional to the human activity involved. That wouldn’t restrict resource usage by any individual project, which might be a popular project with many contributors and a lot of activity, but the resource consumption needs to be justified by corresponding human effort and interest, which LLM usage doesn’t exhibit.
  - inigyou 3mo ago
    https://blog.codeberg.org/protecting-our-floss-commons-from-llms.html https://blog.codeberg.org/protecting-our-floss-commons-from-... In this corresponding blog post, one point made is that LLMs tend to LARP big-project infrastructure on small projects. They use the resources for something like GNOME but they aren't actually GNOME so they don't have any excuse for it.
- inigyou 3mo ago
  Both. They noticed the high resource usage of LLMs and decided that LLMs, in general, aren't worth supporting.
hibikir 3mo ago
Only if you can reasonably separate LLM from non LLM code, which is in no way a solved problem. Even if one agrees with their priorities 100%, it's just asking for non-automated enforcement. It's difficult to execute, and either lead to completely arbitrary enforcement, or a lot of resources being spent in exchange for this freedom you mention. It's just a very hard practical line to try to draw. And let's be real, most of the costs LLMs incur on hosting providers have little to so ln who makes commits. A popular project than bans LLMs from contributing, but is used often by LLMs that are using the project as a library is indistinguishable from one that allows LLM contributors. So from a practical perspective, it's a head scratcher
- bigfishrunning 3mo ago
  It's true that an LLM ban is really hard to enforce, but that doesn't mean it's worthless. If i make an image editor and say "It is my policy that serial killers and pedophiles cannot use my software" i can't really enforce that, but it still makes a (somewhat useless) statement. In my opinion, not allowing LLM code at least signals that codeberg (and forgejo) itself is unlikely to be majority LLM code, which raises its stock in my book; It signals what kind of people the maintainers are.
  - rpdillon 3mo ago
    > what kind of people the maintainers are. Can you elaborate on this? It's new that we're judging what kind of people we're dealing with based on what tools they use.
    - bigfishrunning 3mo ago
      I really meant -- are these maintainers passionate about the design and maintenance of their tools, are they trying to slop up a demo fast enough that some VC buys them out, is this project a goal in itself or the means to some other end, etc... Open source software that exists for its own sake is exceedingly rare, and understanding the goals of a community before becoming dependent on it is a good idea

eviks 3mo ago

> principled ban against LLM So was it about high resource use, or a principle? > People who are creating more by hand would still be allowed to have more breathing room. What about the breathing of people creating by hand with a sprinkle of an LLM? > but it's just a totally different approach. Indeed, a better one where you manage directly the issue you claim to care about

layer8 3mo ago
My interpretation is that the resource usage should be roughly proportional to the human activity involved. That wouldn’t restrict resource usage by any individual project, which might be a popular project with many contributors and a lot of activity, but the resource consumption needs to be justified by corresponding human effort and interest, which LLM usage doesn’t exhibit.
- inigyou 3mo ago
  https://blog.codeberg.org/protecting-our-floss-commons-from-llms.html https://blog.codeberg.org/protecting-our-floss-commons-from-... In this corresponding blog post, one point made is that LLMs tend to LARP big-project infrastructure on small projects. They use the resources for something like GNOME but they aren't actually GNOME so they don't have any excuse for it.
inigyou 3mo ago
Both. They noticed the high resource usage of LLMs and decided that LLMs, in general, aren't worth supporting.

hibikir 3mo ago

Only if you can reasonably separate LLM from non LLM code, which is in no way a solved problem. Even if one agrees with their priorities 100%, it's just asking for non-automated enforcement. It's difficult to execute, and either lead to completely arbitrary enforcement, or a lot of resources being spent in exchange for this freedom you mention. It's just a very hard practical line to try to draw. And let's be real, most of the costs LLMs incur on hosting providers have little to so ln who makes commits. A popular project than bans LLMs from contributing, but is used often by LLMs that are using the project as a library is indistinguishable from one that allows LLM contributors. So from a practical perspective, it's a head scratcher

bigfishrunning 3mo ago
It's true that an LLM ban is really hard to enforce, but that doesn't mean it's worthless. If i make an image editor and say "It is my policy that serial killers and pedophiles cannot use my software" i can't really enforce that, but it still makes a (somewhat useless) statement. In my opinion, not allowing LLM code at least signals that codeberg (and forgejo) itself is unlikely to be majority LLM code, which raises its stock in my book; It signals what kind of people the maintainers are.
- rpdillon 3mo ago
  > what kind of people the maintainers are. Can you elaborate on this? It's new that we're judging what kind of people we're dealing with based on what tools they use.
  - bigfishrunning 3mo ago
    I really meant -- are these maintainers passionate about the design and maintenance of their tools, are they trying to slop up a demo fast enough that some VC buys them out, is this project a goal in itself or the means to some other end, etc... Open source software that exists for its own sake is exceedingly rare, and understanding the goals of a community before becoming dependent on it is a good idea