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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 no

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.

qweqwe14 2mo ago
[flagged]
- pferde 2mo ago
  Yes, that's exactly it. Now please go back to your githubs and leave us nerds who do not matter alone. We'll be fine, we promise!
  - qweqwe14 2mo ago
    1. Random dude self-hosts a Git instance 2. Gets mad that people he doesn't like DARE to sign up and use it 3. Announces that he won't allow people he doesn't like 4. Makes a big deal out of it like anyone cares I dunno this is hilarious but pretty sad, the guy clearly has issues
    - pasquinelli 2mo ago
      how did you even come to know about this story no one cares about?
  - card_zero 2mo ago
    It's balkanization! We'll be Montenegro, you can have Moldova.
    - inejge 2mo ago
      One out of two isn't catastrophic, but dear gods, wouldn't it be nice if people consulted the map instead of going off by the vibes. Poor Moldova, it got roped into the Balkans just by being a small impoverished country in the general neighborhood.
- gregdaniels421 2mo ago
  That doesn't seem like a great take on this. You seem to be implying that only unemployed people choose not to use AI, and anything that doesn't use AI is a useless toy project. There were decades of software written before modern LLMs, and a lot of people choose to hand write their software as a form of maintaining their skill. Just like people practice martial arts even though we have guns. If you reflect on your words, you might see another side to this.
  - qweqwe14 2mo ago
    > Just like people practice martial arts even though we have guns. The whole point of martial arts is the art itself. The point of software isn't the process of creating software (it was never about that), it's the end result, and all people care about is that the end result is good. And if you don't like that, you can choose another industry.
    - cmrdporcupine 2mo ago
      There are obviously multiple ways people can see the act of making software. And many at once. Profession, craft, passion, art. And the differing perspectives on that do at least in part explain a lot of the conflict here. Personally, I think "AI" use in art is an abhorrent thing that warrants a highly negative response. And when I was younger and even more pretentious than I am now, I often thought my code as some kind of "art." So I can stretch my mind to see how people who see things that way would have that same gut reaction. But many like you only see the point as being the end result, so to them this all looks like pointless theatre. One of the many dramatic things the "AI" tooling has done is to make all these divisions in perspective more obvious and more dramatic.
    - mariusor 2mo ago
      > The point of software isn't the process of creating software (it was never about that), it's the end result Just because you think that, it does not make it so.
- delfinom 2mo ago
  Funny enough if you read their blogpost on this, they don't want people with useless toy projects, they want projects with communities...(subtext: to leech off of). That blog post while on the LLM topic also started throwing the OSS bathwater out and went straight-on leech mode in between the lines.
aliasxneo 2mo ago
Based on this precedence, if I'm accepted into the community today, how would I know I'll be accepted tomorrow? If you're literally just using Codeberg as a mirror, then sure, it doesn't really matter much. But like you said, that's not what they are building. They want people to invest in the community. So now, as an investor of my hard-earned free time, I'm faced with the question on whether all my investment can go up in flames on the whims of a shadow group.
- free_bip 2mo ago
  You are effectively saying you do not trust the judgement of the community to accept you long term. Why is that? Is it because you believe there would be a new policy that would exclude your workflow? What would such a policy be? Do you really, reasonably believe it would be implemented "tomorrow"? Do you think adapting to such a policy would be unreasonable? Or is it because you don't trust the judgement of the people enforcing these new rules? If not one of the two, what is the reason? The point I'm trying to make here is that this just sounds like a slippery slope argument. If you don't have a concrete reason to believe you won't be welcome "tomorrow" then my mind has not been changed.
  - johnfn 2mo ago
    I think the burden of proof is on you to argue that Codeberg will stop at exactly two policies, given they haven’t said they will do that, but they have already banned things they don’t like. A slippery slope argument isn't a fallacy when you've already slipped down the slope twice.
    - aliasxneo 2mo ago
      I really don't understand the argument, to be honest. If somebody is participating in something with a perceived expectation, and then that expectation gets contradicted not once, but twice, why is it unreasonable to assume it might happen again? I'm not being facetious, I genuinely don't understand the line of thinking.
rpdillon 2mo ago
The goal is to reduce the amount of use of the platform, and I think imposing this rule is an excellent way to do that. Not sure I'd call it genius, though. There's a fair likelihood of unintended consequences.
vrganj 2mo ago
This is a lesson I learned in life: When you want to build something social (in this case a community, but it could also be a romantic relationship, a friendship...), the best thing you can do is to polarize as quickly as possible. Too many people are afraid to offend and waste everyone's time going along with things they don't really agree with and end up pretending to be somebody they're not to get along with people they don't really like. No! Get your most polarizing takes out quickly. Either you and the other person stop wasting time because there's no fit, or you will deepen the relationship and both know it's a good fit. Either way, it's better for everyone involved. There's enough people out in this big world that you don't need to always make everyone happy. It's much better to quickly comb through to find the gems.
Aurornis 2mo ago
I’ve seen so many variations of this where a community starts adding more rules that are open to judgment. Removing the obvious rule breakers looks like an easy win at first. Then over time the list of rules grows. Small groups become good at navigating the rule making process and getting changes pushed through. Before you know it, small groups of highly invested people are wielding the rules and the rule making process against their enemies or competitors. The community was long since cleared out from anyone who got sick of the drama, leaving a weird internal battle where different in groups are fighting with each other over little things and turning the rules against each other. Maybe Codeberg will be different. Maybe the rule making stops here and it’s reasonably enforced against only the really bad examples, with leeway granted to others generously. Maybe it doesn’t turn into a slippery slope of little dramas that exhaust everyone who isn’t invested in the constant background drama of their code hosting site. I hope it does for their sake. But I also think enough people like me have seen what happens to communities that go down the path of generating a lot of rules like these and will choose to steer clear of this site. It always feels like a good idea when you and all your friends are on the right side of the rules, but it’s less fun when you find yourself making choices or tip toeing around to avoid triggering the Nth round of rules that were introduced 10 steps past where you thought the rules were in a good and balanced place.
- kps 2mo ago
  >Before you know it, small groups of highly invested people are wielding the rules and the rule making process against their enemies or competitors. Now that you mention it, Wikipedia also has a policy against LLM contributions.
  - zamadatix 2mo ago
    Importantly, Wikipedia's policy is a bit more detailed about what LLM contributions are and aren't allowed. There is always ambiguity, but going through specific cases and examples up front in the policy went a long way.
- Pay08 2mo ago
  Not to mention what happens when these rules cease to be rules on purely technical matters. What if they make a rule against the site allowing hosting the code *of* AI agents for example?
krupan 2mo ago
I've been thinking along these lines more and more. Trying to specify exact limits and trying to account for every possible situation when making rules just encourages people to find holes and workarounds. It creates a game, a competition between the rule makers and everyone else. When instead you state higher level values and ask for cooperation, it encourages us to work together. It's the Honor System instead of a deliberate competition between rule makers and everyone else. Concrete example: sports When you are playing with a group of friends and there's no referee, most everyone does their best to just play hard and follow the rules. It's not perfect, but it works for the most part because we all love the game and want to have a good time. Once you introduce referees, the game within the game of "what can I get away with?" starts and you end up with players learning how to foul without getting caught and then players overreacting to fouls in order to make sure the rule breakers still get caught, and then it evolves into flopping to get a foul called even when there was none, and eventually people start to hate the sport altogether (see: NBA, FIFA) Concrete example: government and police forces. Do I even need to elaborate on this one?
- vrganj 2mo ago
  That's actually how EU law works! I think it's also why US companies keep getting in trouble here, they try to loophole-lawyer like at home, but it just... doesn't work that way. I had a whole long conversation about this with another commenter a while ago if you're interested in learning more: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48707697 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48707697
  - Imustaskforhelp 2mo ago
    Very interesting discussion, thanks for sharing that. India has a different system where generally speaking, it behaves more like UK/US courts (common law) over civil law. But if Supreme Court reads fundamental rights are violated then Supreme Court can read the constitution in a similar way but Supreme Court has used it sometimes to force the government hands. For example, when the Bhopal Gas tragedy happened where people died because of the accident (Rest in peace), instead of having individual people try to sue the govt. and fight for years with no end in sight, the supreme court used article 142 to impose single lump sum settlement and centralized compensation scheme. So it can force a govt to do something. The Sahara-SEBI Case is even more direct when supreme court forced a company to refund amount and fast-tracked it in a more civil-law style case. But Indian Supreme court is very slow and from my understanding, does try to use it rarely and only the Indian Supreme court can invoke article 142 and its more so done to prevent genuine gaps rather than already existing provisions I found this whole discussion really interesting In theory this split between common law and civil law is about who you trust more: judiciary or legislature. Civil law leaves more to interpretation for judiciary whereas common law leaves very little to interpretation. There doesn't seem to be very wide consensus on which system is necessarily better to be honest.
zahlman 2mo ago
> 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. Codeberg is best known as a place for people to go when they're fed up with GitHub. People who are fine with GitHub's various issues wouldn't be looking at Codeberg in the first place, as far as I can tell. There is GitLab, though. And Forgejo and a bunch of others.
- data-ottawa 2mo ago
  The big thing I read is Codeberg is for community projects explicitly now, not just your random non-commercial code. Personal use cases are now “might go unnoticed” and therefore not encouraged. Jeff’s dotfiles repo will probably never have a community, so it’s technically against the rules for some future cleanup initiative. Most of my repos are random personal projects that are not supporting any larger open source thing, so I couldn’t look at (or recommend Codeberg) as a GitHub alternative for anything but an established project. I think that’s all an acceptable choice, but it’s not being discussed much.
chasd00 2mo ago
these things always end with community disintegration. Eventually, some high profile user will cross the undefined line or leaders change and want to rewrite the rule then half the community will side with them and half will not.
- inigyou 2mo ago
  Yes, every community disintegrates. Eventually. Individuals also disintegrate. Over the long run, planets and stars disintegrate. Best not to think about it too much lest you go insane.
znpy 2mo ago
> The fact that the rule is open for interpretation means that they can effectively shut down malicious actors This also mean that some kind of charismatic leader can become a de-facto tyrant. And btw, lone leader on top, bending the rules at will… that’s a trait all dictatorships have in common (hitler, mussolini, stalin, mao, etc). Just saying.
- inigyou 2mo ago
  Ans that's why I don't use Python or Linux.
duxup 2mo ago
Seems like a recipe for endless division and meta arguments rather than doing anything useful. Reminds me of internal political disagreements.
062570864389 2mo ago
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exiguus 2mo ago
I think we should point out that Codeberg is a e.V. and that they have a Mission Statement [1] > The mission of Codeberg e.V. is to build and maintain a free collaboration platform for creating, archiving, and preserving code and to document its development process. [1] https://docs.codeberg.org/getting-started/what-is-codeberg/#our-mission https://docs.codeberg.org/getting-started/what-is-codeberg/#... As I understand it, they do not ban Crypto. Crypto is just an example for a category of projects that harm there reputation. The formulation for AI generated code is different. It does not point out AI / LLMs as example for copyright issues. It does it the other way around.

qweqwe14 2mo ago

[flagged]

pferde 2mo ago
Yes, that's exactly it. Now please go back to your githubs and leave us nerds who do not matter alone. We'll be fine, we promise!
- qweqwe14 2mo ago
  1. Random dude self-hosts a Git instance 2. Gets mad that people he doesn't like DARE to sign up and use it 3. Announces that he won't allow people he doesn't like 4. Makes a big deal out of it like anyone cares I dunno this is hilarious but pretty sad, the guy clearly has issues
  - pasquinelli 2mo ago
    how did you even come to know about this story no one cares about?
- card_zero 2mo ago
  It's balkanization! We'll be Montenegro, you can have Moldova.
  - inejge 2mo ago
    One out of two isn't catastrophic, but dear gods, wouldn't it be nice if people consulted the map instead of going off by the vibes. Poor Moldova, it got roped into the Balkans just by being a small impoverished country in the general neighborhood.
gregdaniels421 2mo ago
That doesn't seem like a great take on this. You seem to be implying that only unemployed people choose not to use AI, and anything that doesn't use AI is a useless toy project. There were decades of software written before modern LLMs, and a lot of people choose to hand write their software as a form of maintaining their skill. Just like people practice martial arts even though we have guns. If you reflect on your words, you might see another side to this.
- qweqwe14 2mo ago
  > Just like people practice martial arts even though we have guns. The whole point of martial arts is the art itself. The point of software isn't the process of creating software (it was never about that), it's the end result, and all people care about is that the end result is good. And if you don't like that, you can choose another industry.
  - cmrdporcupine 2mo ago
    There are obviously multiple ways people can see the act of making software. And many at once. Profession, craft, passion, art. And the differing perspectives on that do at least in part explain a lot of the conflict here. Personally, I think "AI" use in art is an abhorrent thing that warrants a highly negative response. And when I was younger and even more pretentious than I am now, I often thought my code as some kind of "art." So I can stretch my mind to see how people who see things that way would have that same gut reaction. But many like you only see the point as being the end result, so to them this all looks like pointless theatre. One of the many dramatic things the "AI" tooling has done is to make all these divisions in perspective more obvious and more dramatic.
  - mariusor 2mo ago
    > The point of software isn't the process of creating software (it was never about that), it's the end result Just because you think that, it does not make it so.
delfinom 2mo ago
Funny enough if you read their blogpost on this, they don't want people with useless toy projects, they want projects with communities...(subtext: to leech off of). That blog post while on the LLM topic also started throwing the OSS bathwater out and went straight-on leech mode in between the lines.

aliasxneo 2mo ago

Based on this precedence, if I'm accepted into the community today, how would I know I'll be accepted tomorrow? If you're literally just using Codeberg as a mirror, then sure, it doesn't really matter much. But like you said, that's not what they are building. They want people to invest in the community. So now, as an investor of my hard-earned free time, I'm faced with the question on whether all my investment can go up in flames on the whims of a shadow group.

free_bip 2mo ago
You are effectively saying you do not trust the judgement of the community to accept you long term. Why is that? Is it because you believe there would be a new policy that would exclude your workflow? What would such a policy be? Do you really, reasonably believe it would be implemented "tomorrow"? Do you think adapting to such a policy would be unreasonable? Or is it because you don't trust the judgement of the people enforcing these new rules? If not one of the two, what is the reason? The point I'm trying to make here is that this just sounds like a slippery slope argument. If you don't have a concrete reason to believe you won't be welcome "tomorrow" then my mind has not been changed.
- johnfn 2mo ago
  I think the burden of proof is on you to argue that Codeberg will stop at exactly two policies, given they haven’t said they will do that, but they have already banned things they don’t like. A slippery slope argument isn't a fallacy when you've already slipped down the slope twice.
  - aliasxneo 2mo ago
    I really don't understand the argument, to be honest. If somebody is participating in something with a perceived expectation, and then that expectation gets contradicted not once, but twice, why is it unreasonable to assume it might happen again? I'm not being facetious, I genuinely don't understand the line of thinking.

rpdillon 2mo ago

The goal is to reduce the amount of use of the platform, and I think imposing this rule is an excellent way to do that. Not sure I'd call it genius, though. There's a fair likelihood of unintended consequences.

vrganj 2mo ago

This is a lesson I learned in life: When you want to build something social (in this case a community, but it could also be a romantic relationship, a friendship...), the best thing you can do is to polarize as quickly as possible. Too many people are afraid to offend and waste everyone's time going along with things they don't really agree with and end up pretending to be somebody they're not to get along with people they don't really like. No! Get your most polarizing takes out quickly. Either you and the other person stop wasting time because there's no fit, or you will deepen the relationship and both know it's a good fit. Either way, it's better for everyone involved. There's enough people out in this big world that you don't need to always make everyone happy. It's much better to quickly comb through to find the gems.

Aurornis 2mo ago

I’ve seen so many variations of this where a community starts adding more rules that are open to judgment. Removing the obvious rule breakers looks like an easy win at first. Then over time the list of rules grows. Small groups become good at navigating the rule making process and getting changes pushed through. Before you know it, small groups of highly invested people are wielding the rules and the rule making process against their enemies or competitors. The community was long since cleared out from anyone who got sick of the drama, leaving a weird internal battle where different in groups are fighting with each other over little things and turning the rules against each other. Maybe Codeberg will be different. Maybe the rule making stops here and it’s reasonably enforced against only the really bad examples, with leeway granted to others generously. Maybe it doesn’t turn into a slippery slope of little dramas that exhaust everyone who isn’t invested in the constant background drama of their code hosting site. I hope it does for their sake. But I also think enough people like me have seen what happens to communities that go down the path of generating a lot of rules like these and will choose to steer clear of this site. It always feels like a good idea when you and all your friends are on the right side of the rules, but it’s less fun when you find yourself making choices or tip toeing around to avoid triggering the Nth round of rules that were introduced 10 steps past where you thought the rules were in a good and balanced place.

kps 2mo ago
>Before you know it, small groups of highly invested people are wielding the rules and the rule making process against their enemies or competitors. Now that you mention it, Wikipedia also has a policy against LLM contributions.
- zamadatix 2mo ago
  Importantly, Wikipedia's policy is a bit more detailed about what LLM contributions are and aren't allowed. There is always ambiguity, but going through specific cases and examples up front in the policy went a long way.
Pay08 2mo ago
Not to mention what happens when these rules cease to be rules on purely technical matters. What if they make a rule against the site allowing hosting the code *of* AI agents for example?

krupan 2mo ago

I've been thinking along these lines more and more. Trying to specify exact limits and trying to account for every possible situation when making rules just encourages people to find holes and workarounds. It creates a game, a competition between the rule makers and everyone else. When instead you state higher level values and ask for cooperation, it encourages us to work together. It's the Honor System instead of a deliberate competition between rule makers and everyone else. Concrete example: sports When you are playing with a group of friends and there's no referee, most everyone does their best to just play hard and follow the rules. It's not perfect, but it works for the most part because we all love the game and want to have a good time. Once you introduce referees, the game within the game of "what can I get away with?" starts and you end up with players learning how to foul without getting caught and then players overreacting to fouls in order to make sure the rule breakers still get caught, and then it evolves into flopping to get a foul called even when there was none, and eventually people start to hate the sport altogether (see: NBA, FIFA) Concrete example: government and police forces. Do I even need to elaborate on this one?

vrganj 2mo ago
That's actually how EU law works! I think it's also why US companies keep getting in trouble here, they try to loophole-lawyer like at home, but it just... doesn't work that way. I had a whole long conversation about this with another commenter a while ago if you're interested in learning more: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48707697 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48707697
- Imustaskforhelp 2mo ago
  Very interesting discussion, thanks for sharing that. India has a different system where generally speaking, it behaves more like UK/US courts (common law) over civil law. But if Supreme Court reads fundamental rights are violated then Supreme Court can read the constitution in a similar way but Supreme Court has used it sometimes to force the government hands. For example, when the Bhopal Gas tragedy happened where people died because of the accident (Rest in peace), instead of having individual people try to sue the govt. and fight for years with no end in sight, the supreme court used article 142 to impose single lump sum settlement and centralized compensation scheme. So it can force a govt to do something. The Sahara-SEBI Case is even more direct when supreme court forced a company to refund amount and fast-tracked it in a more civil-law style case. But Indian Supreme court is very slow and from my understanding, does try to use it rarely and only the Indian Supreme court can invoke article 142 and its more so done to prevent genuine gaps rather than already existing provisions I found this whole discussion really interesting In theory this split between common law and civil law is about who you trust more: judiciary or legislature. Civil law leaves more to interpretation for judiciary whereas common law leaves very little to interpretation. There doesn't seem to be very wide consensus on which system is necessarily better to be honest.

zahlman 2mo ago

> 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. Codeberg is best known as a place for people to go when they're fed up with GitHub. People who are fine with GitHub's various issues wouldn't be looking at Codeberg in the first place, as far as I can tell. There is GitLab, though. And Forgejo and a bunch of others.

data-ottawa 2mo ago
The big thing I read is Codeberg is for community projects explicitly now, not just your random non-commercial code. Personal use cases are now “might go unnoticed” and therefore not encouraged. Jeff’s dotfiles repo will probably never have a community, so it’s technically against the rules for some future cleanup initiative. Most of my repos are random personal projects that are not supporting any larger open source thing, so I couldn’t look at (or recommend Codeberg) as a GitHub alternative for anything but an established project. I think that’s all an acceptable choice, but it’s not being discussed much.

chasd00 2mo ago

these things always end with community disintegration. Eventually, some high profile user will cross the undefined line or leaders change and want to rewrite the rule then half the community will side with them and half will not.

inigyou 2mo ago
Yes, every community disintegrates. Eventually. Individuals also disintegrate. Over the long run, planets and stars disintegrate. Best not to think about it too much lest you go insane.

znpy 2mo ago

> The fact that the rule is open for interpretation means that they can effectively shut down malicious actors This also mean that some kind of charismatic leader can become a de-facto tyrant. And btw, lone leader on top, bending the rules at will… that’s a trait all dictatorships have in common (hitler, mussolini, stalin, mao, etc). Just saying.

inigyou 2mo ago
Ans that's why I don't use Python or Linux.

duxup 2mo ago

Seems like a recipe for endless division and meta arguments rather than doing anything useful. Reminds me of internal political disagreements.

062570864389 2mo ago

[dead]

exiguus 2mo ago

I think we should point out that Codeberg is a e.V. and that they have a Mission Statement [1] > The mission of Codeberg e.V. is to build and maintain a free collaboration platform for creating, archiving, and preserving code and to document its development process. [1] https://docs.codeberg.org/getting-started/what-is-codeberg/#our-mission https://docs.codeberg.org/getting-started/what-is-codeberg/#... As I understand it, they do not ban Crypto. Crypto is just an example for a category of projects that harm there reputation. The formulation for AI generated code is different. It does not point out AI / LLMs as example for copyright issues. It does it the other way around.