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Codeberg bans vibe coded projects

codeberg.org

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Re: Codeberg bans vibe coded projects

#141

Post by countWSS »

uncircle wrote: post #135
countWSS wrote: post #131

The copyright/Anti-ai angle is likely an excuse and they're running out of money for hosting, hence errors and anti-scraping blocks. Its completely absurd to think they somehow waited years to ban AI for copyright, while deleting anything they deem as copyright infringing. Looks like those vibe-powered opensource projects will mighrate to somewhere else.

> Looks like those vibe-powered opensource projects will mighrate to somewhere else. You say this as if it’s a big loss.

Okay, lets imagine it get enforced and every project is scanned for compliance, with some false positives and inability to prevent people from sneaking in AI code.\ Do you agree with it now?

Re: Codeberg bans vibe coded projects

#142

Post by tempfile »

jorisw wrote: post #43
exploderate wrote: post #30

They are a non-profit with a mission to support free software: https://codeberg.org/Codeberg/org/src/branch/main/en/bylaws.... However, they do this because of copyright status and harmful code: "7. 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 an…

So 'mostly' is the clearest they get here. Meaning more than 50% of lines of code? At any given time?

They are unable to be more clear, because the law is unclear. The safe assumption would be "if the code would be copyrightable, had it been written by a human, then it must have been written by a human". It is impossible to be more clear than this, because "copyrightable" is a legal term of art decided by judges.

Re: Codeberg bans vibe coded projects

#143

Post by graemep »

tempfile wrote: post #138
KingOfCoders wrote: post #29

What is a vibe coded project? Where does it start? Cursor autocomplete? One shot Github project copies? [Edit] The pull link is https://codeberg.org/Codeberg/org/pulls/1253/files and says "7. 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 (…

If this opens more questions than it answers, then you are simply discovering that you don't understand copyright (which is ok, but not the fault of the Codeberg policy). > You must not share projects that mostly consist [of LLM-generated code] > Such projects having an unclear copyright status There is no bright-line threshold at which a code contribution becomes copyrightable (and therefore relevant). It is a legal…

That is not what their wording says. They could have said "code that is mostly covered by copyright under German law", but they chose to say 'mostly consist of code written by "generative AI"-tools'.

Also, if you are a non-German user of Codeberg and there is a wide difference between what is covered by copyright in your country and Germany (e.g. if you are British) this might make Codeberg less of a suitable choice for you. What copyright laws matter to a particular user? Their country, the US because of its dominance and reach, or some sort of global safe/effective compromise?

This has the feel of being done by people who do not understand how to work things to be clear legally, nor of an understanding of the consequences.

Re: Codeberg bans vibe coded projects

#144

Post by derdi »

KingOfCoders wrote: post #47
cwillu wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“You must not share projects that mostly consist of code written by "generative AI"-tools (including services such as Claude , OpenAI Codex ).” Seems pretty clear to me?

What is mostly? >50%? >75%? What does "written by generative AI" means? Autocomplete? IDE-with-AI-normal-classname-completion? Everything not typed by a human. I personally don't find this clear at all and see many unhappy discussions in the future for Codeberg.

> What is mostly? >50%? >75%?

1. Don't ask us, ask the Codeberg people in the thread above.

2. If you're not sure you can meet Codeberg's terms of service, do what others are claiming to do: Take your repositories elsewhere.

3. I'll just hypothesize that you don't have Codeberg repositories and are only arguing here for argument's sake.

Re: Codeberg bans vibe coded projects

#147

Post by graemep »

applfanboysbgon wrote: post #12
guessmyname wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people leave the “Co-authored-by: ” lines in their Git commits [1]. I’m not sure why exactly, but I suppose it's either laziness or a lack of care. Regardless, if I were Codeberg, that would be the first thing I’d detect, and then I might use a Random Forest Classifier to identify the rest. [1] https://docs.github.com/en/pull-requests/how-tos/commit-chan...

AGENTS.MD and CLAUDE.MD also provide easy detection avenues. Trivial measures will probably catch 70-80% or more. You don't need a 100% enforcement rate for a rule to exist, indeed there are basically no rules anywhere in the world that achieve that.

It does not prove anything. Some could not commit those files to avoid detection, and those files exist in projects in which only some code is AI generated. I have them in projects where, for example, LLMs were used to generate tests and for a few fixes/additions in the rest of the code.

Re: Codeberg bans vibe coded projects

#148

Post by IceDane »

account42 wrote: post #44
IceDane wrote: post #4

Well, that's their prerogative, I guess. But the burden of proof will be on them, of course. They can't expect users to prove a negative. There are simple tells that would reveal a lot of projects. Claude Code's moronic defaults of littering commit messages with both a CC author trailer as well as a session link will reveal some, but those are easy to disable. Then there is stuff like prolific comments, em-dashes in…

There is no burden of proof for them as they have no obligation to provide a service to anyone.

Sure. And I'm sure that their users will take kindly to being banned with prejudice and without recourse. By adopting this policy they are committing to policing it and acting as judges. And at some point someone will be banned that shouldn't have and it will go on social media and so on and so forth.

They'll also have a fun time drawing the line. What if someone uses agents to generate boilerplate like tests? Are a few files out of hundreds enough for a ban? If not, are they going to force users to write the code manually? How are they going to verify that?

It's a big can of worms.

Re: Codeberg bans vibe coded projects

#149

Post by olalonde »

surgical_fire wrote: post #124
olalonde wrote: post #81

It would be cool if they just admitted that this is ideologically motivated rather than hide behind pragmatic excuses. 1) "unclear copyright status" Even if the copyright concern was legitimate (highly doubt so), Codeberg would be fully protected under safe harbor laws. 2) "little safeguards to ensure that they do not include harmful code" Inclusion of harmful code is no more likely than human-extruded code (probably…

They are ideologically motivated towards open source software. That means that they are ideologically motivated about the open source license being enforceable. Just because you have ulterior motives, it doesn't mean others do. Codeberg is pretty clear on their stance. > Inclusion of harmful code is no more likely than human-extruded code (probably less actually). Right now this is unclear, based on personal experien…

I don't think they have ulterior motives because I do, I think that because of the loaded language they use (e.g. "taking a stand against AI", "LLM-extrusions") and the dubious reasons they came up with.

It's been decided pretty much everywhere that LLM output is not copyrighted by the LLM vendor. The only realistic risk here is for vibecoded code to be considered public domain, if too little human input was involved, but public domain is functionally equivalent to a very permissive open source license (e.g. MIT minus attribution).

Re: Codeberg bans vibe coded projects

#150

Post by throw310822 »

lionkor wrote: post #90

Why are all the vibe coders so upset? Places that have mostly non-polluted projects will be fantastic for future model training. Codeberg doing this will mean that it will be scraped and part of all future models' learning input, surely? They have never cared and will never care about anyone's rights.

Because it's either plainly stupid virtue signalling aimed at the current strawman (AI bad!) or- if the legal justification stands- it's another symptom of European death by over-regulation, which should be judged as tragic.
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