Ah, the Codeberg Drama

Posted by tomgag 16 hours ago

4152Original

Comments

Comment by jbreckmckye 15 hours ago

I want to ask this in good faith

Why do the very vocal "AI people" online have this thing where they are simultaneously:

- proclaiming their thing to be inevitable and massive and a bulldozer of productivity;

- responding to any negative reaction like they are almost like a persecuted group

It seems paradoxical to me. If your LLM-written project is so amazing, who cares about the critics?

Let them have their corner of the internet. There are plenty of other sites that will host your project.

Perhaps if you are a heavy codeberg user it is annoying to move onto Forgejo. I get that. But ultimately Codeberg has the right to decide these things

Comment by Ekaros 15 hours ago

And also if AI is so great creating your own community or place to host stuff should be trivial. Zero effort really. So I really see no reason to co-opt existing place. As they are already making money with AI so hosting costs are really nothing either. So there is no excuses not to have their own free community.

Comment by tclancy 15 hours ago

Seriously. And you know they would want hookers and blackjack anyway, so why don't they? Maybe because blackjack has fairer odds than the games they rig.

Comment by tom_ 15 hours ago

It's definitely a theme, but some people are just like that (as has always been the case), and maybe they're the ones most inclined to comment on this matter.

Another theory: https://lobste.rs/s/omq8rt/vibecoding_gets_emacs_patch_rejec... (posted very much not because of the chatbot psychosis aspect, which doesn't seem relevant in this case, more the part about possible minor personality changes from long-term communing with LLMs)

Comment by cmrdporcupine 15 hours ago

It's not good faith if you start right away by defining a group of people called "AI people" and then putting words in their mouths.

Starting your comment by saying "in good faith" doesn't make it in good faith.

Making straw-men is not honest debate.

And what you're not mentioning here is that there are people who actually felt they had their own corner of the Internet, didn't/don't consider themselves "AI people", just happened to use a tool, and now retroactively having a judgement applied to them.

That's fine if you think it's okay to do that. I think you're being dishonest in your framing of the discussion though, by creating a "two sides" scenario to justify in-group / out-group behaviours.

Comment by tom_ 15 hours ago

I assume "AI people" is in quotes to indicate that it's kind of a term of art. Like Car People. Or Computer People. Some visible, bothersome subset of the (much larger (like, how many people these days don't use a car? (ok, so it's not zero, but it's hardly the opposite either))) category of people that use the thing in question.

Comment by cmrdporcupine 15 hours ago

That's still making a strawman?

Comment by jbreckmckye 15 hours ago

If I said "AI enthusiasts" would that feel like less of an attack?

> I think you're being dishonest in your framing

Asking without malice: why are you telling me this?

This is an open internet forum. You can suspect my sincerity but also, I can suspect yours.

Neither of us can ever prove we mean what we say. We just have to muddle on and ignore anything we think is trolling

Comment by cmrdporcupine 14 hours ago

Because having been "voted off the island" and having to spend the last 3 days grinding away reworking my entire documentation, release process, community outreach, and hosting situation, I am naturally irritated by people then mischaracerizing motives about why I and others might be complaining? And then having the nerve to try to bucket me in some fictitious category of AI people to justify these aspersions? And then having the nerve to frame it as fair presentation.

"AI enthusiast" is an equally crude word for people who happened to use a tool in authoring their project.

That answer your question?

Or maybe you don't actually have stakes in this situation and don't understand why people who put their passion into their projects might be frustrated? Or does your bucket of "AI people" not include people who put heart and soul into their work?

You asked the question in your opening comment and framed it as "fair question", so I'm not sure why you're surprised by the answer.

Comment by 14 hours ago

Comment by jbreckmckye 14 hours ago

You are clearly very angry about this.

Codeberg wants to protect their hosting from the large volume of AI projects.

What do you think the right solution is here?

Comment by cmrdporcupine 14 hours ago

The honest and respectful answer from the Codeberg community would have been: resource limits, quotas, and a reviewed application form for new projects.

And maybe a statement that: "Pre-existing vibe coded projects providing little value to the community may be subject to review."

Instead we got a Lord Of the Flies moment.

... Personally I was planning up to that point on donating once I got paying work again.

Comment by orwin 15 hours ago

To whom it may concern: codeberg is explicitly _not_ for private repo and your ai game pet project. It's aim is to host FOSS tools and libraries.

To me, this is a good decision. I already got burned by an Asdf 'clone' that was in rust and allegedly lightweight. Never again I will install on my computer a rust-written tool written in a month that merge 5 pr per day. I know what to look for now, but IMHO having a platform where those kind of projects are forbidden is great. If an AI generated tool is so great and wonderful I cannot miss it, I will get it from word of mouth.

Comment by jalev 16 hours ago

So who are you actually angry at? There was a vote, by people, in a democratic process, and Codeberg are adhering to it. Why is it Codeberg's problem that they don't defy the will of their members? Are you angry at them because the members put a motion against your particular special interests? If so, go make a new motion to reinstate them.

Comment by microtonal 15 hours ago

It is of course in the right of voting members to do this. However, it undermines Codeberg as a stable repo hosting platform. If you are hosting a repo there for an open source project, it may suddenly be in violation after a whim of the voting members.

The signal is now that Codeberg is an activist platform. That is fine, but that makes it unfit for many projects that want a largely neutral hoster.

Just as they are free to do this, I am free to move my repositories elsewhere and stop donating.

(And I'm nothing near a vibe oder, but the way the terms are now formulated, even doing LLM-assisted programming could be a violation.)

Comment by jackb4040 15 hours ago

> Just as they are free to do this, I am free to move

It doesn't seem like you're amicably moving your projects away. It seems like you're going around tech forums arguing with the democratic decision and fear-mongering about how legitimate projects will be removed next.

Comment by microtonal 14 hours ago

It doesn't seem like you're amicably moving your projects away.

I am moving my projects away because I will be in violation of the new rule:

You must not share projects that mostly consist of code written by "generative AI"-tools

While my projects are currently not 'mostly code generated by "generative AI"-tools', most new code for some of my projects is, so at some point in the not-too-far future I will cross the threshold where this becomes true.

around tech forums arguing with the democratic decision

Don't be so dramatic. What tech forums am I going around aside from a comment here? Also, I acknowledged that this is a democratic decision. That does not mean that I have to agree with it and if I don't agree with it, I can move my repositories somewhere else. I am just flagging that this can be a problem for existing open source projects.

fear-mongering about how legitimate projects will be removed next.

My projects are legitimate and have been used for years by many people and some will be in violation of this rule once enough LLM-assisted code has been added.

Comment by logifail 15 hours ago

> It seems like you're going around tech forums arguing with the democratic decision and fear-mongering about how legitimate projects will be removed next.

If we're going to argue that a platform is free to make decisions, aren't its [ex-]users also free to make decisions, too?

Comment by Defletter 15 hours ago

Yes obviously, and they've already said that. What they're pointing out is that people are being petulant whiners about it. If we can all agree that Codeberg is free to make its decisions, and a decision has been made that you don't like, then just choose another provider. Going around slandering Codeberg is being a petulant whiner.

Comment by microtonal 14 hours ago

I think one of the issues is that people who already have repositories there have to migrate them, migrate the issues, existing pull requests, community, etc. For larger projects this can be quite a large time sink.

I think it would have been more palatable to people if the terms said something like "Additionally, for repositories after July 24, the following additional requirements apply:".

Comment by Levitz 15 hours ago

>fear-mongering about how legitimate projects will be removed next.

Fear-mongering?

What were legitimate projects are getting removed already. This is not fear-mongering, it's just not being incredibly shortsighted.

Comment by jdiff 14 hours ago

Where will this slope slide next? It doesn't seem all that slippery to me. First they came for the LLMs, Lord knows plenty of people are speaking up, but who will they come for next in the dead of night after a majority of voting members publicly decide to boot them?

Comment by Levitz 13 hours ago

You've got perfectly reasonable and predictable scenarios if you read the post.

CoC drama is already a much too known vector of problems, this adds fuel to possible fires.

Comment by jdiff 13 hours ago

All are quite large leaps.

Comment by Levitz 15 hours ago

Well, for starters, banning content that is already present on the platform is a very aggressive measure. You are, in practice, kicking people out, and it's perfectly reasonable for those people to be upset at either Codeberg or its community.

For seconds, this proves that Codeberg may in the future ban any project. The platform is, flat out, without a doubt, not reliable long term, and I reckon about anyone should be pretty upset at that.

Third, this reeks of children playing politics. If you are going to put measures as strong as these on the table, you better have very defined lines on which to act upon, and you better have a good rationale for them. This doesn't seem to be the case in one account or the other, which paints the administration as not only incompetent, but delusional on their competency. This may not warrant anger, but it sure does warrant frustration and disappointment.

It is perfectly fine to take politics seriously. I reckon more people should do it. There is a huge problem though in which people mix that up with taking political action, without actually putting the work on what to do, why, how and what are the consequences. That is the actually hard part, and this looks more like "we are anti-bad stuff" than that.

Comment by bramhaag 16 hours ago

You are simply not the target audience of Codeberg. That's okay.

If you are on Arch, you can do this simple fix (instructions are similar for other distros):

  sudo pacman -S forgejo
  sudo systemctl enable --now forgejo

Comment by bytejanitor 15 hours ago

I wasn't that interested in Codeberg until now, but this actually looks like a wise decision.

Comment by chrisandchris 16 hours ago

> I notice that both PRs were filed after the assembly and after the ballots went out

At least in Switzerland, you can not vote (well, you can but it does not have any effect) on things that are not mentioned within the agenda published and sent to members with the invitation. So IMHO these votes will not have any effect itself, just serve as an "indication".

IANAL.

Comment by openmarkand 16 hours ago

The best thing I've seen in 2026. Thank you codeberg.

Comment by jmclnx 16 hours ago

I agree, I went from github to gitlab. I should start looking at codeberg.

Comment by pixelesque 16 hours ago

Only if you host public FOSS projects - it's not a replacement for private repos.

It seems a lot of people on here don't understand that.

Comment by ursuscamp 16 hours ago

I don't want to host my code on a platform that has activist goals beyond open source advocacy, but I'm glad it exists because it's a useful filter, like the X/Bluesky divide.

Comment by iamnothere 15 hours ago

I agree, and I’m hopeful that the people who leave will consider truly decentralized alternatives like Radicle. Especially for projects that might be more vulnerable/at risk to the whims of gatekeepers.

Comment by jackb4040 15 hours ago

I really don't think you want to make an example of the "free speech app" that militantly censors pro-Palestine accounts while allowing AI-generated CSAM

Comment by fkdk 16 hours ago

Time will tell whether Codeberg's approach of Valetudo-like community-building will work out.

Comment by customguy 16 hours ago

> unbridled hatred for AI and Web3 reeks of neo-Luddism

> distrust in other areas, such as quantum computing

you haven't even begun getting to the point and already lost me

> fear of the unknown

Unknown what, lol?

"we don't like X, Y Z for A, B, C reasons"

"Luddites, fear of quantum computing.. oh no I'm confused, they're so afraid of the future."

That is like someone mumbling at their shoes that someone is afraid of something. No notes.

At any rate: Are you afraid of a control group? Are you afraid of a surface not covered in slop, so it may keep slop knowable? Are you afraid to sink alone?

Comment by bagol 16 hours ago

Banning LLM or crypto currency related projects is very bad. I think it's better to flag them or mark them, but let them be.

Comment by c048 16 hours ago

They're not banning code written and maintained with the use of LLM's. They're banning projects entirely created by LLM's and heavily (or solely) maintained by LLM's.

It's basically not allowing junkfood on their platform. Now that code is easier than ever to barf out, so will the amount of junk.

As for tossing out any and all crypto projects... how is anyone still willing to associate themselves with that pile of garbage?

Comment by wyldfire 16 hours ago

I tend to agree but you can't deny that the widespread use of LLMs means that codeberg will expend more resources overall for projects taking advantage of them. And its members have spoken. We might disagree about the conclusion they came to and even how they went about it but their stance is clear now so we might as well just move on.

Comment by Yokohiii 15 hours ago

Yeah but if it's about the hardware resources, why not just establish an option to ban projects that use them unreasonably for their projects relevance? In their explanation they say each project will be evaluated individually and the whatever-AI-allegations are not the primary reason to eventually ban.

They could have established a direct way to protect hardware resource with an option to ban users that cause unreasonable load. Maybe not great but understandable considering they are an e.V.

Comment by classified 15 hours ago

> Banning LLM or crypto currency related projects is very bad.

No, it's actually very good.

Comment by calvinmorrison 16 hours ago

we should also flag any projects to do with the enshittification of the world. Probably banning all JS, node, bun, loaf or any other related projects would be good.

Since we're talking about my opinions here, which should be construed as laws of my hosting platform, i always hated ruby so lets ban ruby.

In fact codeberg shall only accept Perl programs going forward that are written using emacs

Comment by cyberjar 16 hours ago

Whilst I think that criticism of such heavy-handed decision making is valid, I can't help but feel this blog post is littered with unhelpful and snide culture war remarks, and a smug attitude that this is the definitive end of Codeberg. If Codeberg truly has gone woke, people who espouse 'anti-censorship at any cost', like the author, will leave. But many others will remain.

Comment by mmaunder 16 hours ago

Had to read this one twice: “Projects "written and maintained with heavy use of LLMs".”

Isn’t that almost everything these days? If you’re using vscode or codex or Claude CLI you’re in that category.

Comment by 15 hours ago

Comment by classified 15 hours ago

You're absolutely right.

Comment by q2dg 15 hours ago

Can Gitlab be an alternative?

Comment by 16 hours ago

Comment by VCFundedGenYer 7 hours ago

I'm baffled by people who are getting upset at this. Let it go. There's way too much AI slop out there, to have at least one island free of it would be lovely enough.

Comment by krapp 15 hours ago

Stop complaining and get Claude or whatever to one-shot a competing service that only hosts AI and crypto with blackjack and hookers.

If AI is inevitable then it's guaranteed infinity money.

Show the lowly morlocks how it's done.

Comment by ChrisArchitect 15 hours ago

Codeberg bans vibe coded projects

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

Codeberg Bans Cryptocurrency Projects

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49015588

Protecting our FLOSS commons from LLMs

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49015635

I regret migrating to Codeberg