8 ms·

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.

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.
- nmz 2mo ago
  1. This precedence is based on law or on the abscence of it. 2. Slippery slope fallacy. 3. Anarchy or Tyranny are not the only modes of operation. -- See point 2
- 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.
      - johnfn 2mo ago
        I think I agree with you, so maybe you meant to ask someone else? Or you’re just supporting my argument, in which case I appreciate it :-)
      - card_zero 2mo ago
        If they have a coherent set of values, then that's why. Then you have a theory of mind about the admins, and they weren't behaving erratically, but it was your original expectations that were incorrect.
        no-name-here 2mo ago
        Codeberg has existed since 2018. Was it clear to you a few years ago that things like 1) projects tied to AI, 2) mostly AI code, and 3) crypto would be banned? If not, then what makes you believe you now know their future actions if you didn’t before?
    - nmz 2mo ago
      They won't. No company will, I think the best quote I've heard this week is from the proton CEO on the Decoder podcast. "No company is going to jail for you." If vibe code is of questionable legality, then the best thing to do is to remain guarded until its legal standing is determined. It is simply an added bonus that it prevents slop that consumes data on servers for projects that nobody cares about enough to not have vibe coded.
- lowsong 2mo ago
  I'm faced with the question on whether all my investment can go up in flames on the whims of a shadow group. What "shadow group" would that be? The paying members of Codeberg e.V. who voted to pass this motion?
  - squigz 2mo ago
    And also like... this is how literally any community works? You "invest your free time" in it, then you do something that goes against the values of that community... yeah, of course that big bad "shadow group" (in other words, the admins/moderators) is going to do something.
    - cmrdporcupine 2mo ago
      The point is that the stated values of said group changed.
      - squigz 2mo ago
        Yes, this happens with most communities. It's called growth. As an example, HN now has this in the guidelines: > Don't post generated text or AI-edited text. HN is for conversation between humans. Does this signify the end of HN? Or does it represent understandable growth in an evolving world?
        cmrdporcupine 2mo ago
        It's not analogous at all. I moved my project to codeberg because the values were one way, and GitHub didn't match my values. I pour my heart and soul and time into my project. I also used AI tooling in a fashion as I saw fit. Now I'm reading I'm not welcome -- retroactively -- because I touched "bad" tools. So I had to spend the last 3 days dealing with all the fall out from that and moving my project -- which was not insignificant -- docker images, debian package hosting, documentation references, existing in-flight pull requests, blog posts, build/release processes, my CI configuration, etc. etc. I'm nowhere near done. An individual making an AI slop comment on HN loses that one comment to moderation and moves on.
- kalleboo 2mo ago
  Hacker News recently banned LLM-generated comments due to a vague vibe check of the community. Do you feel the same way about the slippery slope of Hacker News moderation?
  - aliasxneo 2mo ago
    Did it get much attention? I don't know of a single person who finds value in LLM generated comments on social platforms. The fact that Codeberg is getting attention for this move is likely because it alienated a part of the community that was previously engaging, enough to generate constructive responses. I didn't see the same thing happening with this HN change.
    - ThrowawayR2 2mo ago
      > "Did it get much attention? 4229 points and 1716 comments at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47340079 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47340079
      - aliasxneo 2mo ago
        Interesting. Two things stand out to me: 1. dang specifically posted a comment saying the rule has been around for _years_ [1] 2. I browsed the top upvoted comments and they seem to almost universally lean towards this being a good thing. That's about what I would of expected. Although the "being around for years" thing was news to me and doesn't really make the OP's argument a good comparison for Codeberg's case. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47341726 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47341726
- bastawhiz 2mo ago
  > how would I know I'll be accepted tomorrow This question exists for any service. Unless you host things yourself, there's a baseline amount of trust you have to have in any service.
  - saghm 2mo ago
    Yes, and the baseline amount of trust seems to be substantially reduced for Codeberg for a lot of people in the wake of this change relative to most of the other options. I don't even necessarily think the new policy is bad in a vacuum, but if the strongest argument for why you can trust a service is "well can you really trust anyone 100%?", it's hard not to be a little wary. Would you use a bank if their response to the question of "How would I know I'll be able to access my money tomorrow?" is "This question exists for any bank" rather than actually giving any sort of reassurances?
    - skydhash 2mo ago
      It does exists for any bank. Where I'm at, the assurance is given by the national bank, not the individual banks. Anything else is just probability and marketing. In Codeberg case, what I would be looking at is the actual banning process, not "assurance" they won't ban me later. It's a Germany-based institution, if Germany applies a whole sanction to my country, I'm gone anyway.
      - saghm 2mo ago
        > It does exists for any bank. No one is disputing the existence of the question. > In Codeberg case, what I would be looking at is the actual banning process, not "assurance" they won't ban me later. Okay, so then, what actually is the banning process? The recent changes sound like the banning process has been expanded to cover a lot of new things that it didn't before, and stating "well anyone can ban you" isn't particularly helpful information, which was the point I was making.
        skydhash 2mo ago
- pooploop64 2mo ago
  Did you know GitHub removes things they deem to be malware? Malware is a very subjective classification, so who watches the watchmen? How do we know they won't start removing things that are deemed harmful just for competing with Microsoft products? Hell, letting them have a mechanism to moderate the site's content at all is a huge risk to society's freedom and continued existence. Aliens could arrive any time and shoot mind control beams at the GitHub admins which compel them to delete everything at once. The only way to prevent the future holocaust is if I'm allowed to typo squat GitHub repos to distribute viruses and someone else has to pay for it. If it's not safe for me to do that, GitHub is not safe for anyone.
  - jujube3 2mo ago
    Removing malware or illegal content is very different than removing things for political reasons.
    - anonymous_user9 2mo ago
      What is and isn't illegal is the very definition of political
      - jujube3 2mo ago
        Generally following the law in the country you're located in is not considered a highly political act.
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.
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.
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.

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.

nmz 2mo ago
1. This precedence is based on law or on the abscence of it. 2. Slippery slope fallacy. 3. Anarchy or Tyranny are not the only modes of operation. -- See point 2
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.
    - johnfn 2mo ago
      I think I agree with you, so maybe you meant to ask someone else? Or you’re just supporting my argument, in which case I appreciate it :-)
    - card_zero 2mo ago
      If they have a coherent set of values, then that's why. Then you have a theory of mind about the admins, and they weren't behaving erratically, but it was your original expectations that were incorrect.
      - no-name-here 2mo ago
        Codeberg has existed since 2018. Was it clear to you a few years ago that things like 1) projects tied to AI, 2) mostly AI code, and 3) crypto would be banned? If not, then what makes you believe you now know their future actions if you didn’t before?
  - nmz 2mo ago
    They won't. No company will, I think the best quote I've heard this week is from the proton CEO on the Decoder podcast. "No company is going to jail for you." If vibe code is of questionable legality, then the best thing to do is to remain guarded until its legal standing is determined. It is simply an added bonus that it prevents slop that consumes data on servers for projects that nobody cares about enough to not have vibe coded.
lowsong 2mo ago
I'm faced with the question on whether all my investment can go up in flames on the whims of a shadow group. What "shadow group" would that be? The paying members of Codeberg e.V. who voted to pass this motion?
- squigz 2mo ago
  And also like... this is how literally any community works? You "invest your free time" in it, then you do something that goes against the values of that community... yeah, of course that big bad "shadow group" (in other words, the admins/moderators) is going to do something.
  - cmrdporcupine 2mo ago
    The point is that the stated values of said group changed.
    - squigz 2mo ago
      Yes, this happens with most communities. It's called growth. As an example, HN now has this in the guidelines: > Don't post generated text or AI-edited text. HN is for conversation between humans. Does this signify the end of HN? Or does it represent understandable growth in an evolving world?
      - cmrdporcupine 2mo ago
        It's not analogous at all. I moved my project to codeberg because the values were one way, and GitHub didn't match my values. I pour my heart and soul and time into my project. I also used AI tooling in a fashion as I saw fit. Now I'm reading I'm not welcome -- retroactively -- because I touched "bad" tools. So I had to spend the last 3 days dealing with all the fall out from that and moving my project -- which was not insignificant -- docker images, debian package hosting, documentation references, existing in-flight pull requests, blog posts, build/release processes, my CI configuration, etc. etc. I'm nowhere near done. An individual making an AI slop comment on HN loses that one comment to moderation and moves on.
kalleboo 2mo ago
Hacker News recently banned LLM-generated comments due to a vague vibe check of the community. Do you feel the same way about the slippery slope of Hacker News moderation?
- aliasxneo 2mo ago
  Did it get much attention? I don't know of a single person who finds value in LLM generated comments on social platforms. The fact that Codeberg is getting attention for this move is likely because it alienated a part of the community that was previously engaging, enough to generate constructive responses. I didn't see the same thing happening with this HN change.
  - ThrowawayR2 2mo ago
    > "Did it get much attention? 4229 points and 1716 comments at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47340079 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47340079
    - aliasxneo 2mo ago
      Interesting. Two things stand out to me: 1. dang specifically posted a comment saying the rule has been around for _years_ [1] 2. I browsed the top upvoted comments and they seem to almost universally lean towards this being a good thing. That's about what I would of expected. Although the "being around for years" thing was news to me and doesn't really make the OP's argument a good comparison for Codeberg's case. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47341726 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47341726
bastawhiz 2mo ago
> how would I know I'll be accepted tomorrow This question exists for any service. Unless you host things yourself, there's a baseline amount of trust you have to have in any service.
- saghm 2mo ago
  Yes, and the baseline amount of trust seems to be substantially reduced for Codeberg for a lot of people in the wake of this change relative to most of the other options. I don't even necessarily think the new policy is bad in a vacuum, but if the strongest argument for why you can trust a service is "well can you really trust anyone 100%?", it's hard not to be a little wary. Would you use a bank if their response to the question of "How would I know I'll be able to access my money tomorrow?" is "This question exists for any bank" rather than actually giving any sort of reassurances?
  - skydhash 2mo ago
    It does exists for any bank. Where I'm at, the assurance is given by the national bank, not the individual banks. Anything else is just probability and marketing. In Codeberg case, what I would be looking at is the actual banning process, not "assurance" they won't ban me later. It's a Germany-based institution, if Germany applies a whole sanction to my country, I'm gone anyway.
    - saghm 2mo ago
      > It does exists for any bank. No one is disputing the existence of the question. > In Codeberg case, what I would be looking at is the actual banning process, not "assurance" they won't ban me later. Okay, so then, what actually is the banning process? The recent changes sound like the banning process has been expanded to cover a lot of new things that it didn't before, and stating "well anyone can ban you" isn't particularly helpful information, which was the point I was making.
      - skydhash 2mo ago
pooploop64 2mo ago
Did you know GitHub removes things they deem to be malware? Malware is a very subjective classification, so who watches the watchmen? How do we know they won't start removing things that are deemed harmful just for competing with Microsoft products? Hell, letting them have a mechanism to moderate the site's content at all is a huge risk to society's freedom and continued existence. Aliens could arrive any time and shoot mind control beams at the GitHub admins which compel them to delete everything at once. The only way to prevent the future holocaust is if I'm allowed to typo squat GitHub repos to distribute viruses and someone else has to pay for it. If it's not safe for me to do that, GitHub is not safe for anyone.
- jujube3 2mo ago
  Removing malware or illegal content is very different than removing things for political reasons.
  - anonymous_user9 2mo ago
    What is and isn't illegal is the very definition of political
    - jujube3 2mo ago
      Generally following the law in the country you're located in is not considered a highly political act.

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.

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.

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.