Comment by jaggs
6 days ago
I'll add my comment from a previous thread:
This is a bit strange. Are they saying that Codeberg no longer accepts vibe coded projects at all?
If so, it seems kind of short sighted. Within a very short period of time all code will be AI code. What then?
And as the models improve, along with better code will come better bug fixing etc etc. So the quality of AI code will absolutely surpass that of human code. What then?
Will the repositories demand proof of programming ability? Why, when AI will be handling everything anyway. It would be rather like driving schools mandating that all drivers can strip an engine before they're allowed to drive? Very odd.
It's not strange to ban chess computers at a chess tournament, and it's equally not strange to ban AI code on a code hosting platform.
The costs involved with hosting a bunch of vibe coded stuff that no one is really invested in or cares about would undermine the mission of Codeberg, so it makes sense for them. Other code hosting platforms can go a different route.
> The costs involved
How much does it cost to host a few text files in the same way a bunch of other text files are already being hosted? Particularly if there's no investment - ie no significant traffic - in accessing said text files?
> How much does it cost to host a few text files
At large scale, it probably adds up. Remember that they also need to ensure backup, etc. Whether or not your code is being "used" or not, it has a cost.
Even GitHub has been struggling last year with the ramping amount of LLM produced code. I can imagine that it is a real issue.
They already encourage users to use 'agit' instead of doing 'physical' forks.
I imagine that the costs are sufficient enough to motivate them to follow through on this; on top of the ethical and legal concerns.
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Why don't you host your own git for those dormant projects? It's really easy, you don't even need a forge. Just a bare git repo on server via ssh and you off to the races.
I think their stance is fine; there are other providers if you don't agree with this.
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Concerned Citizen: Someone keeps lighting the town hall on fire, can someone arrest them!
Police Officer: #WONTFIX Town hall will be fireproof in the next version
Concerned Citizen: But it's still a crime. And what of the paper and desks inside the building how can that possibly be fireproofed!?
Mayor: Now now Citizen, fireproofing technology has come along way, besides, we've repurposed the Jail House into a Molotov cocktail factory; we couldn't arrest them even if we wanted to.
Concerned Citizen: You did WHAT!? Why would you do that when the Town Hall is burning down every other week!?
Molotov Salesman: Why because this town needs Molotovs to test their fireproofing tech of course. We've set up the arson test pipeline for the good of all in town!
I suppose, if your completely insane fantasy ever becomes reality, they could simply reverse the policy. Codeberg currently lives in the real world, not your fantasy world, so it makes sense to determine policy based on the state of the real world.
> Within a very short period of time all code will be AI code.
This is unlikely. Perhaps “most code”, but not “all”.
People can overwhelmingly shift to a new technology, but the old one usually remains in use, even if niche.
Yeah there are still people out there hand-crafting Assembly. Not so sure about punch carding though; maybe some extreme retro getup.
If we don't count player pianos, punch cards originated in textile industry and jacquard looms[1] - and many jacquard loom users rely on punch cards even today.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punched_card#/media/File:Indus...
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Once most code is AI slop, then the training data is tainted -- you know what happens when you eat your own crap ...
If that happens, I hope we label it dysentropy.
> eat your own crap
Technically you do. Every living thing eats it's own and every other living thing's crap. Just that it's recycled - through other living things - crap (does it stop being "your own" when it's processed by another?).
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It would be rather more like driving schools disallowing autopilot.
Not to say that I agree that the metaphor makes sense here in the first place
See my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49004041
"All code will be AI written" is like saying "all code will be written in an IDE". That in itself doesn't matter, nobody should care,and it doesn't make a difference.
The workflow, or complete lack of a workflow, for vibe coded projects in terms of design, architecture, vision, etc.is the problem. The lack of oversight is the problem, and the lack of thinking by an actual human capable of thinking, is the problem.
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I was kind of thinking of switching to codeberg, but now I am questioning their decisions here.
How do you distinguish a vibe coded project from a heavily AI assisted project? The output is AI generated code. The difference between vibe and agentic coding is how selective you are about the end result and not whether it is AI generated or not.
“Vibe coded” does not appear in the patch to the terms of use.
“You must not share projects that mostly consist of code written by "generative AI"-tools” would seem to clearly prohibit both vibe coded projects as well as heavily AI assisted projects, assuming both result in mostly AI generated code.
In Codeberg's case, they have chosen not to distinguish between those. Their bright line is "mostly", as in, if your project "mostly" consists of LLM output then it is not allowed. The definition of "mostly" is, of course, vague, and people are going to argue about where the line should be drawn. But there's at least something vaguely approaching an objective measure: they might look through commits and count how many have an LLM listed as a co-author, or they might count the number of lines of code changed by those commits. Who knows, at this point, what they will end up doing. But they're not trying to judge "how well did you curate the output of the LLM"? They have, instead, decided to judge "how many lines/commits/something created by LLMs have ended up in your code?"
> people are going to argue
They should just migrate their stuff elsewhere IMO. Even if all current forges go the length of banning AI-assisted projects, before that completely happens there will be several forges which expressly welcome such projects. Guaranteed.
I seriously hope we codeberg users will be able to survive without your presence.
> I was kind of thinking of switching to codeberg, but now I am questioning their decisions here.
It reads to me that you are afraid of getting your project removed if you ever move. No need to pretend you care about the morality of their decision.
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