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points by dutchbart 12 hours ago | 0 comments

No, not free as in freedom. LLM-assisted coding is prohibited and everything MUST be open-source. So not viable for all (hobby) projects.

[–] slaymaker1907 8 hours ago

Do they really prohibit all use? My reading of their policy is that they mainly block vibe coding. It doesn't seem like LLM auto-complete or using it to review your code would run afoul of it.

[–] teekert 10 hours ago

Hmm I have my Hugo website there, closed repo and build, in part, with LLMs. Never realized while setting thing up that both are not allowed tbh. I just wanted to not choose GH.

[–] vrighter 12 hours ago

free as in freedom for humans. machines neither want nor need freedom

[–] _heimdall 11 hours ago

That's like saying you're free to build your own shed, as long as you don't use hammers. Hammers don't need nor want freedom.

[–] philipallstar 12 hours ago

Machines are tools used by humans. Codeberg has banned a certain class of tool used by humans.

[–] vrighter 12 hours ago

as is their right, and the wish of a very significant chunk of their users. you're still free to use other platforms.

[–] philipallstar 2 hours ago

I don't know what this means. Is close source software open because you're free to use other software?

[–] r_lee 11 hours ago

"free to use other platforms" doesn't mean that Codeberg is a "free" platform.

might as well say Google is a free Git alternative because you're free to use another one since you can't use it for git

[–] Shish2k 12 hours ago

I wonder how much internet-argument bandwidth would be saved if we used different words for "freedom from" vs "freedom to", instead of putting both things on a single scale and then arguing over which is "more free"...

[–] 1718627440 12 hours ago

It's a matter of perspective and what you perceive to be the default. Freedom from prevention of X is Freedom to not do X.

[–] bheztio 11 hours ago

So if I'm not free to use a hammer, that's actually not a constriction of my freedom because "the hammer neither wants nor needs freedom"?

[–] aabhay 12 hours ago

Speak for yourself

[–] vrighter 12 hours ago

i spoke for nobody. neither myself nor you or anyone else. and machines can't speak or hold opinions, so i can't speak for them either

[–] otabdeveloper4 12 hours ago

Okay, what's the downside tho?

[–] Hendrikto 12 hours ago

Restricting user freedom.

[–] solyin 11 hours ago

Having to wade through piles of human slop.

[–] pixel_popping 10 hours ago

Insecure human slop on top of that. Projects not checked in-depth by AI is recklessness at this point, prove me wrong with an example.

I've found 2 serious vulnerabilities in Librewolf (can crash computer from HTML page, from an iframe) as an example this week, as per their rule, agent isn't allowed to report it, guess we will just have to leave those critical around or wait around that a human discover them while attackers already exploit them in the wild :/

Codeberg doesn't want the world to be secure, quite shady, unless they care to explain what's the downside of discovering critical vulnerabilities with AI, especially automatically? Thinking that humans will write more secure programs than machines is just wrong and shows an outdated and dangerous mindset.

Humans+AI > Humans.

[–] tavavex 6 hours ago

Their ToS only forbids projects that 'mostly consist of code' created with genAI, it says nothing of code that is reviewed through it or projects where it only makes up a small portion of the whole package. The reasons for that are outlined and quite clear - their organization focuses on projects with a certain license and LLM code is in limbo regarding its copyright status.

Basically, unlike your stance, they are rejecting people who are outright saying that AI alone > humans. Which seems to be a popular opinion on HN. Given how angry you are about this, I don't think there's as much separating your opinion from the vibe coders' view as you think there is. I mean, look at this, we're only a few years into LLMs being viable code generators and we already have people accuse them of malice, recklessness and embracing 'human slop' because they dare to have a softball policy on not using this brand new tech absolutely everywhere and for everything. What will the average opinion be like in 2 years? Humans are just bad and can't be trusted to do anything manual at a computer, leave it to the agent?

[–] foolserrandboy 10 hours ago

So they will never have these frequent downtime issues because they will never be bombarded by agents building millions of personal tools with no license applied. Clever.

[–] shiomiru 10 hours ago

Free as in freedom has had a rather specific meaning in software for the past 40+ years, which is "software that matches the Free Software definition." Codeberg runs on Forgejo, whose authors grant you the rights to run, study, modify, and distribute it - unlike GitHub, which is proprietary. (Indeed, there are many Forgejo instances besides Codeberg, it's not just a theoretical benefit.)

It is a ridiculous misinterpretation to assume it means "somebody else will host anything I upload, free of charge", which is of course not the case - not on GitHub either, by the way, their ToS just happens to be more friendly to slop.

(For understandable reasons, too; while M$ is making a killing from selling LLM access & Free Software as training data, the main "benefit" Codeberg sees is getting DDoSed by LLM scrapers 24/7 and vibecoders using up disproportionate amounts of resources.)