190
Codeberg Git Hosting Platform Bans Projects Mostly Written by Generative AI (linuxiac.com)
submitted 1 month ago by to c/opensource@programming.dev
28 comments fedilink hide all child comments
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 10 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (5 children)

I'm a Codeberg user (not a member) and I find the situation rather difficult.

Spoiler alert: It's my fault that I have migrated my stuff from GitHub to Codeberg. I should have read the old pre-AI TOS more thoroughly, because the wording in this makes it perfectly clear that this is a place for "curated", collaborative open source projects only. They don't even allow private repos apart from very narrow use cases and this fact alone should have been a warning sign for me. It's effectively a gated community and the existence of your project depends entirely on the members. I usually keep a project private until it has reached a certain level of maturity, and for some projects that means "never". This isn't possible with the Codeberg TOS

Now having said that, I'm pretty shocked of how things went down concerning the TOS changes about Crypto and LLM based projects. While I hate Crypto with a passion and while I'm very critical about LLM usage, the way the TOS change was communicated was patronising and extremely off-putting and rude, and those members doubled down with this attitude on matrix and Mastodon. And for me that simply means, if Codeberg wants to decide for me which tools I am allowed to use, then it's not the right platform to host my code.

Another point to add... I wholeheartedly agree with most of what the codeberg blog post says about LLMs. However I need to be able to research them simply to know what I am talking about. For example I'm experimenting with local LLM models to find out if they are feasible for use, and there are countless other areas in Machine Learning which are very much valid software projects that do not fall into the knowledge-stealer/planet burner category outlined in the blog post. Banning "AI" is too broad and too shortsighted, and the new TOS are too draconic and vague at the same time. In effect, it boils down to "You can host your project if we like it", and that is a terrible attitude to begin with.

Again, it was my fault to migrate to Codeberg to begin with because the warning signs were there, but this still leaves a bitter taste. I was also stupid enough to make a donation to Codeberg which I now regret as well. It's not an open place, and the members (while most of them probably have good intentions) are too narrow-minded and too dogmatic to provide a truly open platform.

What's a good alternative to Github btw? I don't intend to go back and I don't want to selfhost.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • hideshow 5 child comments
    •
  • [–] 18 points 1 month ago* (4 children)

    Banning "AI" is too broad and too shortsighted.

    They haven't done that. The actual terms are

    You must not share projects that mostly consist of code written by "generative AI"-tools (including services such as Claude, OpenAI Codex). Such projects having an unclear copyright status (see requirements § 2 (1) 1 and § 2 (1) 3) and furthermore have little safeguards to ensure that they do not include harmful code (c.f. § 2 (1) 5).

    See also their blog post, where they specifically mentions experiments as "tolerated":

    Side projects and experiments with little resource usage

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
    •
  • [–] 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (3 children)

    I have indeed read the blog post and much more on their matrix and mastodon. The cited TOS are incredibly vague. What defines "mostly"? What defines "tolerated"?

    Am I ok with my projects being "tolerated" or would I like to publish them on a platform that doesn't hate me by default?

    What makes all of this much worse is that people from Codeberg when asked how they will enforce the new TOS give conflicting answers, they themselves don't know how to deal with that yet. Even in the blog post they say

    "We understand that you want to know how the change affects your projects going forward. While we can't give an easy answer, we'll share some remarks that should address most of the concerns raised in the discussion."

    You can't possibly be more vague than that, and it creates an unnecessary uncertainty and opens the door to moderation abuse in the name of a vague TOS one-liner. In consequence it now depends entirely on the codeberg admins' individual perception of what the TOS one-liner means to assess if your project should be killed. Having seen some outright toxic behaviour of Codeberg people on mastodon and in the matrix chat regarding that topic I have serious doubts that this will be handled in a transparent way. The way codeberg is handling this topic is just just irresponsible and piss poor communication. I have completely lost my trust in them and will move on.

    Edit: I think a good approach would have been to have a discussion about it not only among members but also among the userbase, and then deciding on how to go forward. But the way it seems to have happened (hearsay tbh) there wasn't even a real discussion among the members, the TOS change was simply an agenda item in the members meeting which was then voted upon.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
    •
  • [–] 5 points 1 month ago

    Neither of those terms seem problematic to me; a plain reading would be "mostly" means more than half of the code, and "tolerated" would mean that the ban is not enforced on such projects. Of course, if you are already operating under the assumption that Codeberg is acting in bad faith, then it doesn't matter what the terms of service says nor how they they might say that they interpret them.

    It is, however, not surprising that their terms of service are subject to interpretation. That was already the case before they added these particular terms. For example, the Codeberg TOS already included a prohibition against "content that harms the reputation of Codeberg" before the recent changes. Codeberg simply added projects related to cryptocurrency as an example, when the ban was voted through. It is furthermore the case that most, if not all, terms of service are subject to interpretation. We are talking about documents describing human behavior, not machine code.

    If this kind of thing is not acceptable to you, then your only real solution is to self-host

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent