Join the discussion
Write your take first — we'll ask for email only when you're ready to publish.
- Hacker News
- > LLM-generated code, or is cryptocurrency-related
Codeberg is making decisions to better manage their resource and infrastructure. It's no different than any other privately owned platform, making decisions to forbid certain kinds of content, or ban people for various reasons. Unlike other large centralized platforms, they at least tried to involve the community in this decision-making process, but in the end it's their call.
If you don't want to be under the mercy of someone else's decisions, you have to become more independent and host it yourself. Even then, who owns your server? Who owns the "pipes" of the network? They have terms of services, and can also ban you for various reasons, including your nationality, beliefs, etc. This line of thinking leads to a bigger question of how/whether a truly decentralized and free (as in freedom) computing and communication network is possible, how such a network can defend against abuse and malicious actors without compromising that freedom.
by lioeters - The problem I see with the change in their rules is that they have created an unenforceable or worse arbitrarily enforced rule.
There is no sure way to identify LLM code. I could write a project by hand with all the GPT "mannerisms" for fun. I could sign my commits with "Co-Authored-By: Claude" because my cat's name is Claude and I find it funny.
Now this rule will either be never applied or when it's applied it will be an arbitrary decision made with mostly inconclusive "evidence". This is not a good way to write rules.
Write rules based on merit. Excessive data usage or licensing problems might come to mind. These things are measurable. Otherwise it's really just posturing.
- Also, the there are hundreds of ways to use these tools. From semi-intelligent autocomplete to fully agent-driven. Where's the line? What if I had an LLM clean up a fairly long stored procedure? Is that single action now forbidding me from ever uploading that code base to Codeberg? What if no other part of my code was written using LLMs?
> Now this rule will either be never applied or when it's applied it will be an arbitrary decision made with mostly inconclusive "evidence".
Or people just lie. Which is the whole problem with not having a strong way to determine code's origin. And it's also a tad ridiculous because if done correctly, the seams between my thoughts and those of the agent shouldn't be apparent. If it's utilizing existing patterns in my codebase that I've written by hand, then you wouldn't even know.
- Do the other rules bother you the same way? Like the one about racial discrimination? I mean, there's no surefire way to identify racial discrimination.by inigyou
This is not about demanding a community, as the article argues about at great length: it's only a polite way to say that many ‘vibe coders’ are annoying, negative net value assholes. Community would ensure that they are not aberrant lone wolves.> It seems like many ‘vibe coders’ don’t realize that they don’t actually have a community around them.by HelloNurse- yes, but as freedom of expression allows 'assholes' to say whatever they want, free software also allows 'assholes' to develop whatever they want - and limiting it while position itself as the lighthouse of freedom makes Codeberg people the actual assholesby hespejo
- > many ‘vibe coders’ are annoying, negative net value assholes
Where on Earth does this sentiment come from? I've had people make AI contributions to my open-source projects and while they may be perhaps less technical on average they're every bit as well intentioned - possibly moreso since they're interested in improving the project rather than establishing a little fiefdom.
by AussieWog93 - > Despite not owning a single project that falls into either banned category, I’m now going to look into setting up my own public Git host
That's.. good, actually. I believe that even if Codeberg was good and perfect for every use case of code hosting, not every one and every project should be there. Vibe-coders, shitcoin cryptomaxis, and lovers of total freedom surely have other places to go and are able to set up forges using the same software that Codeberg uses as well. It's the magic of open source.
Seriously, we should let go of the idea that all of humanity should be part of a single Data Silo on the internet. GitHub, Twitter, Reddit, sure, they might have been better back in the day, but being _the_ places for a type of content online they were able to privatize a lot of very valuable data, sell it off for AI training, while slowly strangling to death any interoperability and "public access" that once made the services feel like a free-for-all market square of the internet. Long live the small web!
Codeberg is not in any way obligated to make sweeping infrastructure changes just to make sure that they can keep hosting projects they find to be against their mission.
by FireInsight - > Seriously, we should let go of the idea that all of humanity should be part of a single Data Silo on the internet.
There's a reason these came to be in the first place though, and accounts are among the most prominent ones. A new forum means not just registering at yet another place, it also means creating a new label/folder in your email inbox and a new filter rule to properly redirect stuff. That's friction.
by mschuster91 - Migrated to it around 3 years ago. All I needed was a dependable and simpler (preferably EU-based) GitHub alternative for my FOSS code. Now I am migrating away and stopped my donations to the e.V. Not because I have cryptocurrency-related or vibecoded projects (I don't), but because this sets precedent of introducing vague rules that ban random/unpopular projects.
Ironically, I migrated to it from SourceHut because of similar rules introduced there.
by anarki8 - I don't know you, but my feeling is you have the wrong analysis grid here. This is a non-profit taking a stand for what's right in a world where everything's wrong. The discussion has been ongoing for several years, and the rules introduced are not vague, and do not target random/unpopular projects.
I personally have trust in the human community behind codeberg. I understand if you don't. But my question is: why go with a non-profit host if you're not going to get involved in the governance? Of course governance is always happening in a project. For me, that power is shared and decisions are transparent are a criterium to trust codeberg even more.
- I can't find similar rules at SourceHut, can you point to them?
They use Anubis and block LLM scraping, but that sounds useful to me!
by frabcus - > Now I am migrating away
Where to, if I may ask? Are there any stable FOSS-emphasizing (preferably EU-based) alternatives (outside of just self-hosting)?
by fuglede_ - > A brief comment on Codeberg’s new terms, and why a free-software host deciding which projects are welcome worries
But, wait, Codeberg always had limitations on what projects are hosted there??? This been very explicit from the start, it's for FOSS and anything outside of that isn't welcome. It's one of the reasons I donate there in the first place. Now they're adding additional requirements, which most of the voting memebers voted for, this doesn't seem strange to me.
> Unfortunately, the latest update to its terms of service seems to mark a first step in changing one part I moved there for, namely the “freedom” part.
Given they'll kick you off the platform if you're not aligned with FOSS views and act accordingly, it seems strange to have associated Codeberg with "freedom" at all.
Side-note, but there is something that keeps popping up as an overlay on that page but I never end up being able to see what it is, as I click continuously as I read, and seems it auto-closes no matter where you click. Seems a bit distracting if nothing else :)
- > it's for FOSS
It is for FOSS, but they seem to be more restrictive now than even that, and I don't mean by LLMs. To quote their blog post: https://blog.codeberg.org/protecting-our-floss-commons-from-...
> So while the following use cases are discouraged (similar to private repositories), they are likely to be tolerated in practice: > > Side projects and experiments with little resource usage > > Specific tools and custom scripts that would be unlikely to find a community anyway, even if they were not LLM-generated
I do find that extremely disappointing, that seemingly valid, human-written, compliant FOSS projects are merely "tolerated in practice". I am not storing my code there in any case.
by myng111 - > Given they'll kick you off the platform if you're not aligned with FOSS views and act accordingly, it seems strange to have associated Codeberg with "freedom" at all.
It's different conceptions of freedom. For some, the freedom to oppress is not freedom at all, and building non-free software is oppressive.
> Side-note, but there is something that keeps popping up as an overlay on that page but I never end up being able to see what it is, as I click continuously as I read
Yes, clicking makes it go away! It's an overlay that opens when you leave the page, saying you should really not run Javascript programs sent by the web server because they can do pretty much anything.
- If you click to another tab, the site changes its title and favicon to a random webpage like:
- Pick up lines suggestions – ChatGPT
- Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up - Youtube
- Amazon.com: waifu pillow
When you go back to it there's an overlay chastising you for allowing JS on an untrusted website. I thought it was pretty funny. You can see the list of fake pages in the source (which has the sketchiest URL ever due to punycode + the filename):
by Rendello - I thought it was funny at first and kept clicking away to see what other random changes I'd get, but then I got a "Zuckerberg nudes" Google search webpage and I'm on my work computer...
Fortunately this functionality doesn't change your browser history, but it did really annoy me for a bit
- I find it endearing that someone is keeping up the resistance against JavaScript. Used things like noscript myself since 2008 or so. Eventually gave up since nearly no website would work that way and served you captcha loops instead.by BoxwoodSeed
- I feel like it's a bit ironic that the blog post chastises Codeberg for taking a stance and then does the same with JS.
- So, I guess Codeberg doesn't meet the free software bar any more. The FSF defines four freedoms, and they are all pretty clearly being violated by the no LLM policy. They're blocking people based on how they use codeberg (freedom 0), preventing less experienced users from improving / modifying code (freedom 1), based on an argument that you can modify software, but only how they tell you to, and certainly not with an LLM (freedom 2), and of course they are blocking a distribution channel based on these criteria (freedom 3).
In summary: A program is free software if it gives users adequately all of these freedoms. Otherwise, it is nonfree. While we can distinguish various nonfree distribution schemes in terms of how far they fall short of being free, we consider them all equally unethical.
I guess no SaaS meets the bar in absolute terms, but they've intentionally and significantly lowered the bar with these decisions. I'm happy they did this before I bothered to migrate. Does anyone know of a good alternative to Forgejo? I was thinking of self hosting, but now I just want nothing to do with this organization.
by hedora - Codeberg is not software.
Forgejo is, and remains FOSS.
Codeberg provides a free service and is under no obligation to cater to cryptobros and vibecoders. You can buy a VM and host your own.
by progbits - > The FSF defines four freedoms, and they are all pretty clearly being violated by the no LLM policy.
No they're not. The four freedoms apply only to software licences.
by ragall - Codeberg isn't software so the FSF's definition of software freedom is not relevant.by inigyou
- I am not well informed on this Codeberg story, but could this simply be a way for them to avoid some of the destructive loads that GitHub has been experiencing since "vibe coding" became a thing? Maybe the code origin purity test is just a way to explain it?
It appears to be just that:
> The vote follows ongoing efforts by Codeberg to prevent automated software (bots) from taxing its infrastructure with excessive network requests. Authors Bastian Greshake Tzovaras, Otto Richter, and William Zijl argue that AI companies are shifting costs to others and damaging online communities in the process.
https://www.theregister.com/ai-and-ml/2026/07/23/codeberg-gi...
by consumer451 - Codeberg is a service, not software. If we applied this standard then Codeberg would already have been in violation of the 4 Freedoms because they forbid distribution of CSAM (I would hope).
Forgejo is unaffected by this because it's the software not the service and is not subject to the service's terms of service. You're misunderstanding the scope of this policy change.
by treyd - Keeping up with this stuff is for people who define their identity through virtue signalling and whatever personality trait they have decided to make the problem of everyone around them.
Let them have their little corner of the internet and just stay away. There's plenty of alternatives run by people who don't feel the need to bring their personal baggage into a cooperative environment.
by chmod775 - Well said. This is one of the most concise and from my point of view accurate accounts of what is happening right now.
I'm personally sick of all the politics in OSS development, as such, I no longer actively contribute.
Different strokes for different blokes/whatever floats your boat. I don't care, do as you please.
by sscaryterry - What are these plentiful alternatives? SourceHut also comes with “personal baggage”.by layer8
- I get tired of it because it just becomes a tit for tat war and you end up with these extremely polarized communities.
Codeberg is not for me, I could never get over them keeping the anubis anime girls on, but it would be nice if open source communities were a bit more open. There will always be a line to draw but some of the current rules feel arbitrary.
by infecto