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I regret migrating to Codeberg

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Re: I regret migrating to Codeberg

#421

Post by inigyou »

skinfaxi wrote: post #353
rpdillon wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People downvote this kind of take because you're striking at the heart of the enforcement problem and also the definition of what a project that is majority built with AI really means. What they really want is to ascertain the amount of effort from a human that went into the project and they're using the percentage of code generated by an AI as a proxy metric. But it's a bad proxy, both because it doesn't capture hum…

Even human effort is a terrible proxy because effort is a gradient that depends on skill. An expert exerts low effort for the same result a novice would labor over.

Maybe it shouldn't be viewed as some kind of reward but merely as a spam reduction measure. If you put in effort, it isn't spam.

Re: I regret migrating to Codeberg

#422

Post by jraph »

mrngld wrote: post #296
ngcazz wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"nice things" you mean upholding the harm of the status quo by not criticizing it

But do people look at installing a formulae in brew and wonder "what's their position on Uyghur oppression in Western China?" Like, wow, jxl is pretty neat, but they don't have a position on Palestine so I don't know if I should leverage the JPEG XL format? Insanity. IMO. Keep that stuff at home.

Well if I had to install something and knew their authors were in favor of genocides, I would look elsewhere.

> they don't have a position on Palestine so I don't know if I should leverage the JPEG XL format?

This is a strawman. You go from "they are in favor of something horrible, should I use them?" to "they haven't expressed a position on stuff, should I use them?".

Re: I regret migrating to Codeberg

#423

Post by inigyou »

bigfishrunning wrote: post #324
hibikir wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if you can reasonably separate LLM from non LLM code, which is in no way a solved problem. Even if one agrees with their priorities 100%, it's just asking for non-automated enforcement. It's difficult to execute, and either lead to completely arbitrary enforcement, or a lot of resources being spent in exchange for this freedom you mention. It's just a very hard practical line to try to draw. And let's be real, m…

It's true that an LLM ban is really hard to enforce, but that doesn't mean it's worthless. If i make an image editor and say "It is my policy that serial killers and pedophiles cannot use my software" i can't really enforce that, but it still makes a (somewhat useless) statement. In my opinion, not allowing LLM code at least signals that codeberg (and forgejo) itself is unlikely to be majority LLM code, which raises…

If you made this statement and you catch a serial killer using your software, it affects the options. A more reasonable example may be: Microsoft may not reverse engineer this. They still can do it privately - you can't enforde it - but if you catch them, then you have more options besides saying "welp, I said they could"

Re: I regret migrating to Codeberg

#424

Post by hedora »

inigyou wrote: post #407
hedora wrote: post #385

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…

Codeberg isn't software so the FSF's definition of software freedom is not relevant.

The essay "Who Does That Server Really Serve?" from the FSF explains why their definition of software freedom is more relevant for SaaS than it is for proprietary software:

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-s...

In it Stallman gets dangerously close to admitting it's possible to be worse than Microsoft Windows. After documenting spyware and universal back doors in Windows, the section of the article comparing proprietary software to SaaS concludes:

SaaSS is equivalent to running proprietary software with spyware and a universal back door. It gives the server operator unjust power over the user, and unjust power is something we must resist.

It even has a section towards the end addressing the slippery slopes that github-style services provide:

Use of simple software repositories is not SaaSS because most of the actual work (as distinguished from redistribution) is done in the contributors' computers. However, when the repository starts doing other kinds of computing work for the users, such as running tests, that starts to cross the line. When the users are contributing to the project, so the work is the project's work rather than the contributor's work, that still is not SaaSS for the users. But it may be SaaSS for the project. However, if the testing means running the programs that the project develops, it is not SaaSS because the project does control the crucial software being run.

Re: I regret migrating to Codeberg

#425

Post by inigyou »

davidgerard wrote: post #343
hibikir wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if you can reasonably separate LLM from non LLM code, which is in no way a solved problem. Even if one agrees with their priorities 100%, it's just asking for non-automated enforcement. It's difficult to execute, and either lead to completely arbitrary enforcement, or a lot of resources being spent in exchange for this freedom you mention. It's just a very hard practical line to try to draw. And let's be real, m…

> Only if you can reasonably separate LLM from non LLM code, which is in no way a solved problem. It's trivial to detect when someone's coding with a chatbot - they tell you, repeatedly. Nobody who doesn't code with a chatbot worries that it's hard to tell.

Apparently some people have compared it to some other unlikable groups of people (I know this because a vibecoder complained about the comparison someone else made)

If someone has to ask whether their software is mostly AI-written, then it is.

If someone has to ask exactly how racist you have to be before you can be called a nazi, they're probably a nazi.

If someone has to ask how attracted to underage girls they can be before they're a pedophile, they're a pedophile.

If someone has to ask how responsible you have to be for a death before it's a murder, they're probably a murderer.

Because people who aren't these things clearly know that they aren't.

Re: I regret migrating to Codeberg

#426

Post by inigyou »

eviks wrote: post #192
adamddev1 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making a principled ban against LLM would seem to allow for more freedom and flexibility with usage limits. People who are creating more by hand would still be allowed to have more breathing room. With a hard limit of resources everyone would be more restricted. That's also a solution, but it's just a totally different approach. The LLM ban could help to allow for freedom without the resources getting overwhelmed.

> principled ban against LLM So was it about high resource use, or a principle? > People who are creating more by hand would still be allowed to have more breathing room. What about the breathing of people creating by hand with a sprinkle of an LLM? > but it's just a totally different approach. Indeed, a better one where you manage directly the issue you claim to care about

Both. They noticed the high resource usage of LLMs and decided that LLMs, in general, aren't worth supporting.

Re: I regret migrating to Codeberg

#427

Post by inigyou »

layer8 wrote: post #239
eviks wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> principled ban against LLM So was it about high resource use, or a principle? > People who are creating more by hand would still be allowed to have more breathing room. What about the breathing of people creating by hand with a sprinkle of an LLM? > but it's just a totally different approach. Indeed, a better one where you manage directly the issue you claim to care about

My interpretation is that the resource usage should be roughly proportional to the human activity involved. That wouldn’t restrict resource usage by any individual project, which might be a popular project with many contributors and a lot of activity, but the resource consumption needs to be justified by corresponding human effort and interest, which LLM usage doesn’t exhibit.

https://blog.codeberg.org/protecting-our-floss-commons-from-...

In this corresponding blog post, one point made is that LLMs tend to LARP big-project infrastructure on small projects. They use the resources for something like GNOME but they aren't actually GNOME so they don't have any excuse for it.

Re: I regret migrating to Codeberg

#428

Post by hedora »

consumer451 wrote: post #395
hedora wrote: post #385

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…

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 net…

(1) Cache the non logged-in pages. You can even host static pages in an unmetered way. They maintain their web service software. They should just do that. If an account is knocking over infra by scraping, ban the account. Make it slightly harder to sign up or something, if necessary.

(2) Vibe coding agents like Claude Code, Codex, Copilot and the grok thing all prefer local copies of a project to scraping web services. Why would a developer using LLMs be hammering their own codeberg site?

(3) If they are worried about AI companies shifting costs (What costs though? See point 1), they should block training scrapers, or - even better - offer a service that resells zero-log-retention / enclaved open-weight LLM inference. This cuts off the revenue stream to the AI companies, and probably lets codeberg skim a bit to expand their own services.

We used to use github at work. It was falling over well before cursor was a thing. Blaming AI for their 1-2 nines of availability is... questionable.

Re: I regret migrating to Codeberg

#429

Post by inigyou »

rpdillon wrote: post #354
soapdog wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gives them a line to justify removing projects in the future if they are caught violating the ToS.

Do we have a tool that can detect whether a project is majority LLM-written? This is an unenforceable rule, unless it's just coming down to vibes and they're going to decide what projects to ban based on their feelings.

They are monitoring their resource usage. If they find a resource leak and it's traced to an LLM project, they will delete it.

Terms of use should be read as a statement of intent, not a series of if-then statements.

Re: I regret migrating to Codeberg

#430

Post by ethin »

addedGone wrote: post #283
ethin wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a pretty great strawman of what their actual terms of service and blog post says. You might want to read both quite thoroughly.

It isn't, I'm literally not allowed to host a project on it, knowing obviously it's 100% "LLM-made" nowadays, no modern softwares can be hosted on it, Bun can't be hosted on it (100% "AI" now), you don't find it ridiculous? The world is changing, they don't want to acknowledge it. The cryptocurrency related projects ban is also insane knowing how much it has contributed to having greater crypto librairies, including…

No, I don't find it ridiculous:

1. You are not entitled to a website hosting your content. A website refusing to host you is not censorship in any form whatsoever.

2. I'm pretty positive they did this because of infrastructure reasons as a secondary reason to their mission. LLMs mean people can just pump out projects at light speed, and that costs money to both host and do things with on CI/CD. If you want that potentially to be lifted in the future, pay them so they are able to have that infrastructure.

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