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Comment by boramalper

5 days ago

> The author seems annoyed that Codeberg wants to focus on projects that have a legitimate contributor community and is not designed for one-off individual projects.

I think Codeberg was never intended for one-off individual projects in the first place, such as them discouraging private repositories. Quoting their Terms of Use [0]:

> Private repositories are only allowed for things required for FLOSS projects, like storing secrets, team-internal discussions or hiding projects from the public until they're ready for usage and/or contribution. [...]

And this makes a ton of sense, because Codeberg is a community-funded volunteer-supported non-profit, and it doesn't make sense to spend their resources for repositories that don't benefit the public.

I think "legitimate contributor community" is just an excuse so I am not going to dwell on it. From Ghostty to Redis, rsync to Linux kernel, more and more FOSS projects are taking advantage of various AI tools in a responsible manner and closing the door on them is just unfortunate and backward in my opinion. We gain nothing from this change and lose a ton of progress in software freedom and digital commons.

> It's not all that different from Mastodon instances. It's a community space, and the community gets to decide who they allow to use their resources.

Of course, and the bigger community gets to discuss their decision. :)

[0] https://codeberg.org/Codeberg/org/src/branch/main/TermsOfUse...

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boramalper

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delfinom  5 days ago

Eh, I release my own one-off individual projects as FOSS. The entire point of FOSS and how most of the common FOSS originated was all one-off individual project. Even Linus created Linux because he could for himself (https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/08/how-l...), and not because he wanted to invent a mailing list bureaucracy to blow his spare time.

Codeberg setting such a high bar means FOSS is dead unless you are a company spending millions to fund something from day zero.

Yokohiii  5 days ago

I didn't look into codeberg really and didn't follow any discussions around it, except some projects fleeing to codeberg.

At the first glance it just looks like a github competitor. Recently I tried to create a repo there and nothing pointed out any of the noted restrictions or preferences.

I think that is a clear communication problem. Maybe the times are chaotic for them and they need to figure out how to position themselves. But appearing as just another github and expecting people to be reasonable with it's usage, is unreasonable on their side.

  • simoncion  4 days ago

    > ... Recently I tried to create a repo there and nothing pointed out any of the noted restrictions or preferences.

    > I think that is a clear communication problem. ...

    The following is very clearly posted on their account creation page: [0]

      By registering for a Codeberg account, you consent to our Privacy Policy [1] and agree to our Terms of Use. [2]

    You'll note that [2] is the same document linked to by the commenter you replied to. Perhaps being informed of your obligations when you create an account is insufficient, and you require alert-fatigue-inducing quantities of restatement of the company's policy documents throughout the UI?

    [0] <https://codeberg.org/user/sign_up>

    [1] <https://codeberg.org/codeberg/org/src/PrivacyPolicy.md>

    [2] <https://codeberg.org/codeberg/org/src/TermsOfUse.md>

    • supriyo-biswas  4 days ago

      > Perhaps being informed of your obligations when you create an account is insufficient

      I'm sure that if we were talking about a corporate entity, then people would have retorted with how "no one reads the ToS" and "most ToSes are unenforceable", and guess what? In a world where significant AI assistance is becoming common, finding out which project is AI generated or even knowing the level of AI assistance is well nigh impossible and could be very well unenforceable.

      Edit: It has come to my attention that Codeberg is a registered association[1]. It would be "fun" to see them argue about how they may argue that an AI assisted project has "harmed their reputation".

      [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Registered_association_(German...

      2 replies →

    • Yokohiii  4 days ago

      Ironically they currently show a huge banner that LLM-generated content is restricted and crypto is no longer allowed.

      No one is reading the ToS you know that very well. That you point out basic advice about ToS is satirical.

      If a service like this has some surprising limitations for a potential user, it should be clear up front and not hidden in the ToS. Considering my first paragraph, they know that too.

      3 replies →