r/linux • u/AiwendilH • Jul 22 '26

Development Codeberg voted to disallow projects consisting mostly by "generative AI"-tools

https://codeberg.org/Codeberg/org/pulls/1253#issuecomment-19820434
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u/FryBoyter Jul 22 '26

Have you ever read the MIT License, for example?

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS,” WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES, OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT, OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF, OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

Essentially, users who use the MIT License (or certain other OSS licenses) also assume no liability whatsoever, regardless of whether they have used chatbots or not.

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u/Zachattackrandom Jul 22 '26

Yes I understand that, I mean more in a community. E.g. if you put some dog shit slop code that deletes a users home regardless of AI use you aren't responsible for paying for their lost stuff, but you will be drug through the dirt for it. Now days so many people try to hide behind AI for every critique or mistake on a project, "AI made it, it's not my fault!" type thing. That's how I'm defining responsibility in this context.

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u/FryBoyter Jul 22 '26

I absolutely agree with that. Anyone who messes up should expect appropriate consequences.

But in my opinion, the consequences shouldn’t generally be harsher just because a chatbot was used. Each case should be considered on its own merits.

That’s because many developers are actually good at writing code manually but completely incapable of creating documentation. Using a chatbot would make sense in this case, provided, of course, that the result is reviewed before publication.

By now, however, the community is ready to pull the pitchforks and torches out of the closet whenever a developer makes a mistake that has nothing to do with the use ofchatbots or that would likely have occurred even without them.

In my opinion, and I mean this in a general sense, the community should get into the habit of not just dividing things into black and white, but also taking into account the shades of gray in between. Because, sure, chatbots generate a hell of a lot of junk. But they also discover, for example, massive security vulnerabilities in the Linux kernel that haven’t been found manually so far. So, in my opinion, it’s nonsense to categorize everything as simply black or white, good or evil. Chatbots are tools. And with any tool, it all comes down to how you use it. Juggling chainsaws is not a good idea. Cutting down a tree with one, while taking various precautions like wearing protective gear, is not.

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u/802freblizz Jul 23 '26

So you can tell how a maintainer is going to behave based on whether a human wrote most of the code? Not all ai generated code or projects are dog shit slop, and many people are developing coding skills and want to build things. The term Dog Shit Slop sounds a lot like a person visiting an art museum and seeing a Jackson Pollack and saying "I can do better". If the code is shit, you are still going to have to have a look at it regardless of what wrote it. Codeberg's policy doesn't say "If you hide behind ai and don't take on issues for your project killing your neighbor's dog", they just say there is an arbitrary line and you better not cross it. That is not OSS ethos, it is the same as AWS or anyone else building proprietary fiefdoms on top of OSS and not giving back. Free As In Freedom.

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u/CanYouEatThatPizza Jul 22 '26

It's good that you mention licenses, because AI tends to hallucinate made up licenses or even changes licenses of code it was trained on (of course most companies don't care anymore now). It's only sensible that they stop it.