Thread

Dutch governments builds alternative for Microsoft based on NixOS

1021 points · 583 comments · fjfaase

ricardobeat · 1790328018 · focus · HN ↗
A note to the developers in the project, if anyone is reading: your repositories are in violation of the new Codeberg policy that forbids AI-generated code [1].
[1] <a href="https://blog.codeberg.org/protecting-our-floss-commons-from-llms.html" rel="nofollow">https://blog.codeberg.org/protecting-our-floss-commons-from-...
1. NoahZuniga · 1790328291 · focus · HN ↗
  Their instance is self hosted right, so this doesn't apply I think.
2. KomoD · 1790328341 · focus · HN ↗
  And Codeberg also blocks real people from accessing it, for who knows what reason. I just get "Access denied." with no more info.
  But they do let me visit blog.codeberg.org
  1. sevenzero · 1790329181 · focus · HN ↗
    Had that issue with HTTP accessed repo, switching to SSH solved it for me.
  2. danadam · 1790340229 · focus · HN ↗
    They block some user-agents, maybe that's it?
    From [1]
    > We must regularly implement temporary security measures to ensure the availability of Codeberg's resources and prevent abuse.
    > The 403 you have received is expected based on the UA.
    From [2]
    > What is the version of your chromium? AFAICT <=137 gets 403 Forbidden: [...] while >= 138 works ok: [...]
    [1] <a href="https://codeberg.org/Codeberg/Community/issues/3084" rel="nofollow">https://codeberg.org/Codeberg/Community/issues/3084
    [2] <a href="https://codeberg.org/Codeberg/Community/issues/3078" rel="nofollow">https://codeberg.org/Codeberg/Community/issues/3078
3. graemep · 1790328398 · focus · HN ↗
  Is it on Codeberg? I looked self-hosted to me.
  1. KomoD · 1790328456 · focus · HN ↗
    <a href="https://code.overheid.nl/MinBZK/DAWO-NixOS" rel="nofollow">https://code.overheid.nl/MinBZK/DAWO-NixOS says:
    > DAWO Core has moved from <a href="https://code.overheid.nl" rel="nofollow">https://code.overheid.nl to Codeberg to facilitate community collaboration.
    galumptuous · 1790329088 · focus · HN ↗
    Does this mean European governments have or will have an alternative(s) to GitHub as well?
    lucideer · 1790332235 · focus · HN ↗
    Forgejo (the Codeberg-maintained Gitea fork) is essentially becoming an EU-based community of familiar compatible alternatives to GitHub.
    It's not quite a federated/decentralised platform in the traditional sense, but the decentralised nature of Git makes it a close enough equivalent, & the fact they're built upon a shared platform makes them very easy to navigate. So setting up public instances for each government or org makes a lot of sense.
    Codeberg even maintains a list of alternative pubic Forgejo instances[0], some of which are explicitly pro-AI.
    [0] <a href="https://codeberg.org/forgejo-contrib/delightful-forgejo#public-instances" rel="nofollow">https://codeberg.org/forgejo-contrib/delightful-forgejo#publ...
    graemep · 1790376941 · focus · HN ↗
    That list leads to some interesting services as a lot of the instances are run by organisations that do other things too
4. streetfighter64 · 1790328429 · focus · HN ↗
  Fair note, but I'd avoid the cheap shot "more open". You'll just bring up the old flame wars about whether the MIT-style or GNU-style licenses are more open.
  The same applies here, is it really "more open" to allow corporations to profit by removing the openness of your work?
  1. ricardobeat · 1790329394 · focus · HN ↗
    Point taken, trimmed that. I do take issue with their position but not the place to start a new discussion.
5. gagik_co · 1790328456 · focus · HN ↗
  It’d make the most sense for the Dutch government (or DAWO) to have their own Forgejo instance if the goal is data sovereignty.
  edit: looks like this was originally the case and then they moved?
  1. utopiah · 1790328771 · focus · HN ↗
    clearly shows the need for federated forges, where you get to decide on your own rules but you still benefit from interacting with a broader set of collaborators.
    embedding-shape · 1790329782 · focus · HN ↗
    Yeah, waiting for this too, feels like the final piece of the puzzle. Tracking issue from Codeberg + more general information about the effort around the the ecosystem:
    - <a href="https://codeberg.org/forgejo/forgejo/issues/59" rel="nofollow">https://codeberg.org/forgejo/forgejo/issues/59 ("[FEAT] implement federation")
    - <a href="https://forgefed.org/" rel="nofollow">https://forgefed.org/
    athrowaway3z · 1790330568 · focus · HN ↗
    Final piece of what puzzle?
    We can do big federated/distributed development with git at the project level. See the linux kernel.
    If the goal is fancy UI then there are alternatives.
    If the goal is to do a big multi-git with cross repo issue tracker, then that implies either:
    - you're a public site for random repos like codeberg
    - you're a special purpose forge and identity management is a big issue you want full control over.
    IMO - For this to work, they should go with the latter and not try to offload identity into some federated scheme.
    xvilka · 1790345015 · focus · HN ↗
    Given how slowly it progresses in Forgejo, there are better alternatives - Radicle[1] (full decentralization, not a federation) and Tangled[2] (federation).
    [1] <a href="https://radicle.dev/" rel="nofollow">https://radicle.dev/
    [2] <a href="https://tangled.org/" rel="nofollow">https://tangled.org/
    embedding-shape · 1790347544 · focus · HN ↗
    Man I was so excited about Tangled, until they announced they sought and got VC investments, which makes it not even worth looking into for long-term projects. I still wish them luck and hope they'll be the lonely 0.1% that can resist enshittification even during pressure from investors, but realistically my hope is fairly close to the bottom.
    Radicle seems better in that regards, but instead is on top of their own cryptocurrency, which comes with its own issues.
    Personally my best hope is still "real" federation across centralized services, ala ForgeFed, but ideally we can make all these approaches interoperate in the future, that would be really awesome.
    iamnothere · 1790349143 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
    embedding-shape · 1790357840 · focus · HN ↗
    Personally I don't find the incentives of the only developer team working on something to be irrelevant to me as a user, if I'm looking for a long-term solution. Self-hosting/on-prem still seems like the only sensible solution here.
    I think the notion persists because they are seemingly still using a DAO as the governance structure, so the organization sits on top of a cryptocurrency (is the idea of DAOs at least, in practice it isn't always so).
    iamnothere · 1790379515 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
    poulpy123 · 1790329965 · focus · HN ↗
    That's a recipe for drama as shown with mastodon when they got publicity few years ago
    amiga386 · 1790330448 · focus · HN ↗
    That's likely to end up Balkanized like the fediverse, where every instance has a list of other instances they refuse to federate with, often because politics or petty drama. Though to be fair to the fediverse, sometimes it's because those other instances are full of child porn and most people just don't want to see that.
    It amuses me that Mastodon Central uses corpo-friendly labels for the sites they won't federate with, e.g. (<a href="https://mastodon.social/about" rel="nofollow">https://mastodon.social/about)
    tsundere.love Suspended (Hate speech) you**.**ve Suspended (Inappropriate content)
    Whereas the more free-wheeling sites, like the ones Mastodon Central blocks, tell it exactly how it is: (<a href="https://tsundere.love/about" rel="nofollow">https://tsundere.love/about)
    nadeko.pw CP mk.fedcast.ch Spam youjo.love hosts at least one admitted pedo
    fc417fc802 · 1790333561 · focus · HN ↗
    A lot of such issues could likely be resolved by a better thought out protocol. There are certainly plenty of self righteous people who would refuse to federate purely on principle but more typically the issue is simply that one does not wish to be exposed to or traffic in any way the content in question. A well thought out self categorization system could largely address that need - you'd only need to refuse to peer with those who failed to apply it. AI also makes any such effort easier than ever.
    numpad0 · 1790340255 · focus · HN ↗
    Doesn't work. People from different geographical areas just can't agree on categories. So even correctly applied labels are useless.
    You'd think "no lolis" would be reasonable. It falls apart when people look 14 into 50s, to you and your local police, but not to themselves.
    Akronymus · 1790335242 · focus · HN ↗
    weirdly enough that reminds me of wattpad and ao3, where wattpad uses much nicer sounding terms while ao3 uses as accurate terms as possible. (which makes ao3 seem more "degenerate")
    mitxela · 1790339993 · focus · HN ↗
    If you want to follow some CP poster on nadeko.pw then you can ask your admin on tsundere.love to unblock it and he will probably just ban you for admitting you like CP.
    Where did we get this idea that federated instances should never block anything? Even warez sites have rules.
    amiga386 · 1790345753 · focus · HN ↗
    > Where did we get this idea that federated instances should never block anything?
    I'm not sure, but the OP was postulating that Forgejo instances could federate to solve the problem that the Dutch government runs its own instance to develop its software (including using AI extensively) but wants to engage with the wider community so is currently hosting things on Codeberg's centralised instance of Forgejo, and Codeberg's administrators hate AI.
    Adding federation doesn't solve that problem, it just moves it one level up. To collaborate with the Dutch government, you either need to directly register on their site, or set up an entire copy of Forgejo, publicly hosted, so you can federate your one-user instance with them, or you need to find a different instance that someone else hosts, and be at the mercy of that instance's admins, who may be even more cruel and capricious than Codeberg's.
    What I predict is a future codeberg.org/about saying
    code.overheid.nl Suspended (slopfondlers)
    And a future code.overheid.nl/about being full of dodgy Forgejo instances that host porn games
    mitxela · 1790347269 · focus · HN ↗
    Codeberg's AI position was about resource waste. Single-user AI projects were spamming their CI/CD as if they were KDE or the kernel.
    They don't care if someone wastes their own resources.
    amiga386 · 1790349599 · focus · HN ↗
    Federation is a people-problem, not so much the resource problem.
    Mastodon servers defederate because the people (or rather, the admins) of instance A don't want anything to do with the people (who toot at the discretion and policies of the admins) of instance B.
    Codeberg's AI position, as stated and voted upon, does not mention resource usage at all. That's completely invisible from the discussion. It is exclusively argued against on accord of 1) unclear copyright ownership, and 2) users have no idea what's in the code, therefore it could be full of security flaws or harmful code.
    <a href="https://codeberg.org/Codeberg/org/pulls/1253" rel="nofollow">https://codeberg.org/Codeberg/org/pulls/1253
    So they would not want to federate with another host that used a lot of AI-generated code, even if it claimed an open license, even if that federation caused little-to-no usage of their CI. They would fundamentally disagree with any other instance that allowed mostly-AI-generated projects. They would therefore block such instances, if federation was a thing.
    mitxela · 1790357727 · focus · HN ↗
    Those are all problems codeberg doesn't want on its system. Allowing a codeberg user to comment on someone else's system wouldn't bring those problems to codeberg.
    iamnothere · 1790348689 · focus · HN ↗
    Why should a fallible, biased human “admin” be able to block an individual from communicating with another individual or group of individuals? This just creates weird social silos and echo chambers. It’s made worse because the people who choose to be jannies are often deeply broken people.
    The Fediverse has the whole model backwards as a result of its design. Either individuals need to run their own instances, or identity needs to be completely ephemeral and flow through many servers as it does in Nostr. A Nostr admin can choose not to host data from a given identity, they could even use an identity whitelist, but users normally subscribe to multiple relays. In the end, the data gets through, while the relay admin can keep their own hands clean if they have a problem with the data.
    Note that having this freedom does not preclude you from voluntarily signing up for blocklists. But this is an active choice, and it can’t be suddenly imposed on a set of users.
    mitxela · 1790357679 · focus · HN ↗
    Do you have an email account without a spam filter?
    iamnothere · 1790379554 · focus · HN ↗
    I have one with a spam filter that I control myself, not some BS like GMail who wants to decide for me. It’s well-tuned at this point and hasn’t given me problems.
    If I want to, I can opt in to any number of spam blocklists. That’s kind of the point—it’s opt in.
  2. cornedor · 1790330512 · focus · HN ↗
    They use both. <a href="https://code.overheid.nl/MinBZK?q=dawo&sort=alphabetically" rel="nofollow">https://code.overheid.nl/MinBZK?q=dawo&sort=alphabetically as the official source, and <a href="https://codeberg.org/DAWO" rel="nofollow">https://codeberg.org/DAWO for the community parts.
  3. mitxela · 1790339860 · focus · HN ↗
    We can insist everyone self-hosts everything, but is it worth it? Do you have your own email? It's quite normal for a government agency to contract a third party to supply e.g. furniture, instead of chopping its own wood.
    gmueckl · 1790341591 · focus · HN ↗
    But furniture is a one time sale, not an ongoing service. That's a bad comparison.
    mitxela · 1790343365 · focus · HN ↗
    A third party supplies their electricity too.
    Quothling · 1790348845 · focus · HN ↗
    Furniture is actually an ongoing service on the scale of public organisations. When I worked for a Danish city we had a set of subscriptions for furniture, depending on what sort of institution it was. This probably won't surprise you but city hall had the supreme plus subscription which meant that furniture was replaced regularily, while schools had the shit tier subscription meaning the furniture almost had to break into pieces before it got replaced. It's done with purchase agreements for an entire sector.
    I think the comparison is fair enough considering that self-hosted would work sort of similar. In that you'd rent the physical space for your hardware (and possibly the hardware itself) at local suppliers, and not actually have it in your basement.
6. schnebbau · 1790329248 · focus · HN ↗
  Codeberg are going to have issues in the future when all code is AI generated (except for artisanal code of course, written for the love of the craft but not to achieve anything of merit).
  1. max_streese · 1790329593 · focus · HN ↗
    Assuming writing code by hand is slower (which I agree with), why can't it still have merit compared to code written via llm harness?
    schnebbau · 1790330462 · focus · HN ↗
    Because no one is going to hire developers who write code by hand, apart from a few niches. For the same reason that no one hires a courier who delivers by horse anymore, or a miller who uses windmills to grind their grain, or a cooper who continues to use wooden staves and iron hoops instead of forming plastic or metal containers, or...
    applfanboysbgon · 1790330511 · focus · HN ↗
    Yeah yeah, except LLM code is absolute dogshit and is not on a trajectory to ever not be dogshit.
    schnebbau · 1790330632 · focus · HN ↗
    <a href="https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/akakichi-no-eleven-redraws" rel="nofollow">https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/akakichi-no-eleven-redraws
    dwb · 1790335071 · focus · HN ↗
    I’m sorry, but this isn’t the case. I don’t like it, on balance, but managed responsibly and steered well, plenty of LLM code is fine.
    fc417fc802 · 1790333955 · focus · HN ↗
    > or a miller who uses windmills to grind their grain,
    Huh. For all the "traditional", "organic", "hand crafted", and other "things" I've encountered that isn't one of them. I wonder why no one is advertising fair trade hydropower stone ground organic flour?
    tmtvl · 1790336276 · focus · HN ↗
    Because people generally don't like having bits of millstone in their flour.
    EraYaN · 1790338792 · focus · HN ↗
    At least where I am (the Netherlands) there are plenty of mills still milling.
    gspr · 1790340557 · focus · HN ↗
    Your analogy is terrible.
    The act of verifying that parcel is delivered, that the grain is correctly ground, or that the container is up to spec is far easier than the act of delivering/grinding/making in the first place (and in the latter case, there's perhaps even an argument to be had that the modernized process eases verification).
    For a lot of coding, this is simply not the case. And so people will retort that that's fine, LLMs will help with verification and maintenance too. I think you're seriously misguided – you're accidentally trying to turn human prose into a programming language, and it's a terrible terrible idea!
    At any rate, I find it extremely worrying that people like you keep reiterating this point as if it's a fact. If it's true, then surely we'll very soon see the evidence. The way you speak of the "near future" with certainty, as if everyone agrees, gives me the same sour taste as cryptobros or MLM conmen. Yuck.
    schnebbau · 1790345843 · focus · HN ↗
    Feel free to disagree, but you will be wrong.
    gspr · 1790364514 · focus · HN ↗
    This, too, gives me vibes of cryptobros!
    Proponent: EmergingTech is gonna be amazing, it'll at revolutionize everything!
    Bystander: Alright. But I'll hold off until I see actual evidence of that happening. Truly revolutionizing tech usually shows clear signs of being revolutionary, and doesn't need evangelists.
    Proponent: You're gonna be left behind! Act now, or forever miss out! Here's analogies with things we know in hindsight were revolutionary.
    Bystander: Those analogies are bad for these specific reasons.
    Proponent: You will be proven wrong!
    It's so dumb. At least you AI proponents don't post pictures of yourself with glowing laser eyes when you evangelize, so I guess that's an improvement over the cryptobros.
    PS: I emphasize that I'm not claiming that the technology won't have huge effects on society. If that's your take, you have to read again.
  2. applfanboysbgon · 1790330314 · focus · HN ↗
    Policies are enacted for current reality, not fantasy futures. If your magical fantasy becomes reality (it won't), they can just... change their policy. Of course, you aren't thinking about practical effects of policies on platforms, only on how it's an insult to your LLM-bro way of life.
    schnebbau · 1790330543 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
    applfanboysbgon · 1790330734 · focus · HN ↗
    Sure. You can come gloat about how you're unemployed because nobody needs a prompt monkey when they can just prompt the LLM to produce dogshit code themselves.
    schnebbau · 1790333169 · focus · HN ↗
    I climbed out of the code trenches years ago - I have multiple companies, I'll be fine.
    And yes, they both have moats that will take AI at least 5 years to erode, at which point I'll just retire.
    Regarding the dog shit code comment: this is the problem with your whole line of thinking. Customers don't care if the code is dog shit. They care if they get value from the product.
    As I mentioned, there will still be some demand for devs who code by hand, similar to how theres still demand for blacksmiths who make ornamental weapons.
    applfanboysbgon · 1790333553 · focus · HN ↗
    Dogshit code doesn't give customers value from the product. You can get away with enshittifying your code/product if you already have an iron grip on the market and network effects make it impossible to escape, eg. Windows/appleOS/Android, Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Discord, etc. At that point, you're relying on the inertia of community lock-in to replace product quality. However, this strategy does not work if you aren't a FAANG-scale monopolist. If your code and product is dogshit, you will never get off the ground. You need not only a better product but an overwhelmingly superior product to the competition to defeat inertia. And we see this playing out in reality: there are no vibecoded software disrupting the market. At most vibecoded software is carving out a new MLM-style pyramid of vibecoding tools, but it is not replacing hand-crafted software.
    schnebbau · 1790334408 · focus · HN ↗
    This is just wishful thinking.
    Building the product was never the hard part. Getting it in front of people is. That will continue to be true, except the build stage will be even easier.
    andersonpico · 1790337418 · focus · HN ↗
    > Building the product was never the hard part
    this is an absolutely insane take
    gmueckl · 1790343339 · focus · HN ↗
    Is it? A lot of software is really just a pile of context-specific database front-ends. There is virtually nothing difficult in the implementation itself. Most businesses in this space survive because they know how to dress up their pile of CRUD for their customers. And it gets worse: a less reliable, buggier product may still be the better fit for a customer if it works well enough for what they use it the most.
    schnebbau · 1790345890 · focus · HN ↗
    Prove it?
    cleaning · 1790352229 · focus · HN ↗
    I worked in an early startup that came from 5+ years of initial academic research and selling the product was far more arduous of a process.
    gspr · 1790340853 · focus · HN ↗
    You sound exactly like the cryptobros of yore. Just stop.
    If you're right, the evidence will bear that out. Stop evangelizing. It's insufferable. And it's paradoxical that so many who believe this technology to be absolutely world-changing also feel that the technology needs to be pushed onto people actively. It reminds me of religious people ("my god is all-powerful, but if you meaningless mortal insult him he'll be mightily upset").
    gmueckl · 1790342783 · focus · HN ↗
    I also hate preachy sermons about new tech with a deep passion and that transfers somewhat to the tech they preach about.
    Despite this, there is a reality that LLMs for coding can create pretty decent results fast. There is something real and usable hidden in all that mess. It's like the dot com bubble in some ways: the bubble died with all the overhyped "x on the web" BS that had no real substance, but the web itself stayed. This time around, LLMs and agents will stick around as tools, but the hype will likely die a loud, messy death.
    gspr · 1790344444 · focus · HN ↗
    Sure. But HN these days is the epitome of "x but on the web" in the AI era. It's insufferable!
    applfanboysbgon · 1790353235 · focus · HN ↗
    Nobody here is saying otherwise. The Codeberg policy in question does not forbid LLM-assistance outright; their policy is targeted towards unmitigated slop. Even myself, as I argue heatedly against the religious adherents, not only use LLMs daily but work for a very successful LLM startup developing and selling LLMs-as-tools. That does not make the people who won't shut the fuck up about LLMs-as-gods any less infuriating.
    schnebbau · 1790356375 · focus · HN ↗
    This is nothing like crypto. Crypto never got beyond the bros. It was never used seriously in the real world beyond the concepts attempting to pierce the veil.
    Almost every dev I know is already using AI to some capacity.
    This is like telling Henry Ford he's getting too excited about his cars after he'd already sold a million and with no slowdown in sight.
    What a miserable way to think. I implore you to keep this sort of advice to yourself.
  3. Thanemate · 1790330455 · focus · HN ↗
    >but not to achieve anything of merit
    Educating oneself to provide better quality of work still requires writing code by hand, and by extend is an achievement of merit.
7. embedding-shape · 1790329387 · focus · HN ↗
  Did you actually read through that post you linked? You realize not every project that was ever touched by a LLM is being thrown off? Read the "Some early, but informal guidelines" particularly, as you've seemingly missed that.
  They're targeting slop and essentially spam, not everything that could possibly have been built by LLMs.
  1. wafflemaker · 1790329692 · focus · HN ↗
    Not OP, but I stand corrected. Thought it was 100% no generated code. Now I know better, thanks! Looks like codeberg aren't as mad as I thought.
    mitxela · 1790340265 · focus · HN ↗
    In the future, consider reading a policy before complaining about it.
  2. ricardobeat · 1790330036 · focus · HN ↗
    Quoting from the post:
    > If you see yourself on this list, you don't need to move right away, but there might be other places that better fit your needs: - Projects written and maintained with heavy use of LLMs
    All of the commits I browsed here seem to be LLM-assisted, so these projects are in this category. The policy being fuzzy is in itself a problem - "likely to be tolerated" is not a great policy to have your entire government depend on.
    Personally, the refusal on "Projects heavily tied to the LLM ecosystem, e.g. LLM-written tools to ease LLM usage" is enough reason, as that's a good chunk of what I've been working on.
    rhamzeh · 1790330519 · focus · HN ↗
    > "enough reason for me to move out"
    And that's not a bad thing. That's why they are communicating, so if you feel that is you and you're uncomfortable about it, you can move out and it's a win win.
    Not everything should service all of us, especially not the smaller services. It's OK for places to have their own rules and them being upfront about this is a *good* thing.
    embedding-shape · 1790331854 · focus · HN ↗
    > The policy being fuzzy is in itself a problem
    No, the policy being fuzzy is a feature, because they're not 100% against all LLM usage, they're against slop and AI-spam, which is what they're trying to combat.
    Laws are fuzzy, and we're doing mostly fine with this, of course there are edge-cases. But that's exactly why laws are fuzzy in the first place.
    If you have a "automated software factory" or whatever the vibe-coders are up to today, then yes, Codeberg is probably not for you. But if you sit with a agent TUI in one tab, review things closely and don't just "throw code over the wall" without reviewing it, you have nothing to worry about with hosting code on Codeberg.
8. docheinestages · 1790329412 · focus · HN ↗
  Codeberg is trying to solve the right problem with the wrong solution. But hey, it's democratic!
  1. lucideer · 1790331398 · focus · HN ↗
    I like Codeberg's solution (hard written policy, light good-faith based enforcement), what would you suggest as a better solution?
    rhplus · 1790335270 · focus · HN ↗
    Their contention seems mainly focused on the heavy resource use of AI tooling.
    They run a service: they could impose limits on the number of submissions, builds, branches, scans, etc, and give additional usage credits to the large community projects they want to encourage.
    lucideer · 1790338646 · focus · HN ↗
    That & the legal aspects of hosting code of questionable copyright.
    The LLM revolution has proven that if you have enough institutional investors, the Berne Convention doesn't apply to you, but it's sofar unclear whether that exemption from international law extends to small EU-based non-profits.
    mitxela · 1790340152 · focus · HN ↗
    But they don't want to. They want to provide all needs for approved projects. They want that if a FOSS project legitimately releases 50 times a day, they want to make it work. If a slop project is wasting those resources that could be used for KDE, on nonsense, then they don't.
    They're not a free for all, they do KYCP (know your customer's projects) with an initial assumption of good faith.
    Also they're a voluntary society you can join by contributing money. They're not a charity as such, more like a group of people pooling resources, and also offering them to people outside the group on a good faith basis.
    Muromec · 1790341113 · focus · HN ↗
    Hard policy, light enforcement in practice means there is an actual shadow policy that you don't know, which is pretty bad to the point that it would be illegal if the government did it.
    lucideer · 1790344896 · focus · HN ↗
    Curious about your comment on two counts (genuinely, not being argumentative):
    1. how is this bad, in Codeberg's case, practically speaking?
    2. in what cases is this illegal for governments to do? In practice no legislation is perfectly enforced, & even judiciaries have varying degrees of exactness across countries - to the point that things such as desuetude are densely studied legal topics.
    (note: I'm aware of the negative ramifications if desuetude but not aware of any negative ramifications of Codeberg's specific ai policy)
    Muromec · 1790346696 · focus · HN ↗
    >in what cases is this illegal for governments to do?
    It's legal certainty principle and equality before the law principle and also prohibition of discrimination principle.
    For the law to be lawful (weird, but it's a thing, right) it should satisfy certain criteria. Me, being subject to the law should be able to predict whether my actions are allowed or not when I plan to do or not do them. If I can't predict the outcome of my actions, the law isn't valid. One of the outcomes of it is being able to read the law -- it's published and it's comprehensible, it has advance notice, etc.
    If the rule says "don't host LLM generated code", but everybody hosts LLM generated code and then I say mean things about one of the people providing the hosting and suddenly I'm deplatformed for hosting LLM generated code, then I'm not deplatformed for LLM generated code, I'm deplatformed for saying mean things about people with fragile ego. Or being part of a specific group. You are often explicitly prohibited to make certain decisions based on belonging to a certain group (religious, ethnic, sexual, trade union, health, criminal record based), but it could happen that somehow the outcome of the shadow policy correlates with those. Since we don't know the shadow policy and the stated policy doesn't seem to be applied equally, this is not great.
    See example about weed in a different comment.
    >how is this bad, in Codeberg's case, practically speaking?
    They look silly for stating it and not following (loss of credibility), then once they suddenly start following it, there will be different interpretations, including "I'm banned because I'm $protected_thing_that_you_should_not_be_banned_for", which is bad press.
    lucideer · 1790347758 · focus · HN ↗
    > suddenly I'm deplatformed for hosting LLM generated code, then I'm not deplatformed for LLM generated code, I'm deplatformed for saying mean things about people with fragile ego
    This is ultimately a matter of framing though. You can equally argue that (a) that person shouldn't be deplatformed because others' LLM use is tolerated or (b) all of them should be deplatformed including that person. In the latter case (b) the person who said mean things still experiences the same outcome, but by your logic this is just. Ultimately whether the others get deplatformed doesn't directly affect them, so what's the real difference here?
    > > how is this bad
    > they look silly
    > bad press
    This seems highly subjective & ultimately not really bad by any metric that matters.
    iamnothere · 1790349538 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
    Muromec · 1790349777 · focus · HN ↗
    >Ultimately whether the others get deplatformed doesn't directly affect them, so what's the real difference here?
    The difference is -- if I know the effective policy, I can plan better and choose a different platform in advance (if the it's option (b)).
    >This seems highly subjective & ultimately not really bad by any metric that matters.
    Subjective opinions matter because people act on them (more) consistently than on objective facts.
    mcv · 1790345205 · focus · HN ↗
    Governments have a lot of laws that they don't enforce, or enforce only lightly. For example, weed is still illegal in Netherland, despite many decades of tolerating its use.
    Muromec · 1790345627 · focus · HN ↗
    It's illegal but you can't be prosecuted for usage or possession (unless you do it in a blowverbod area in front of a village cop that is having a bad day) -- the judge will ask why this person specifically is prosecuted if everybody around is smoking and will throw it away. It already happened in fact.
    iamnothere · 1790349304 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
    hyperman1 · 1790364974 · focus · HN ↗
    I've heard it is only illegal becausr they signed treaties that would require them to keep it illegal, and they would have to leave these treaties. The USA president at the time hated weed and put it in every treaty he could.
    LinXitoW · 1790365186 · focus · HN ↗
    Every single issue they brought up in their blog post starts with even just 1% AI code. If they actually believed the absolutely absurd stuff they spew, banning it all would be the only logical solution.
    The current solution solves none of the issues, AND pisses off most sane people (mostly because their arguments are fabrications). They dropped the cake and shit on it too.
9. rvz · 1790330523 · focus · HN ↗
  I predict that Codeberg will soon realize that they have no choice but to loosen and allow AI generated code.
  There is no point in being on the extreme end around banning all code generated by AI.
  Regardless, there is AI generated code in many repositories on Codeberg anyway.
  1. teekert · 1790330862 · focus · HN ↗
    It may be more a measure against explosive growth than being anti-AI in principle.
  2. lucideer · 1790331717 · focus · HN ↗
    I've seen so much commentary on the apparent strictness & extreme nature of Codeberg's approach & no actual examples of it.
    They have a strict policy (which many have rightly pointed out is impossible to fully enforce), & their "enforcement" has mostly relied on good faith contributions to date. They're also accounting for the fact the ToS change came without advance notice for many of their users who were already making active use of agents, hence there remains many AI repos (I have yet to hear of any removals).
    To me that seems like the best approach one can hope for - a lax policy is a slippery slope (presuming dissuading AI contrib is your goal), & wouldn't satisfy their legal concerns (hosting code of questionable copyright status), & strict enforcement isn't viable in any case (especially at their scale), so this seems to me to be the best compromise.
  3. tcfhgj · 1790332510 · focus · HN ↗
    AI generated code is allowed on Codeberg, but not if it's mostly ai generated
  4. TiredOfLife · 1790336878 · focus · HN ↗
    People who act out of ideology very very rarely change their opinions.
    Muromec · 1790341180 · focus · HN ↗
    They can however lose the means to enforce their opinions on others to the point those opinions don't matter.
  5. mitxela · 1790340071 · focus · HN ↗
    Did you read the actual policy? It isn't extreme in the slightest.
    tapoxi · 1790340951 · focus · HN ↗
    It's stricter than Debian's, which is one of the most conservative Linux distros out there.
    mitxela · 1790349599 · focus · HN ↗
    > Debian neither endorses nor prohibits the use of generative AI tools in the development, maintenance, or documentation of software, packaging, documentation, and other media published within the Debian Project.
    That's a strict policy to you?!
  6. amrit3128 · 1790342526 · focus · HN ↗
    This is less about the code and more about load. It's community funded so allowing agents to willy nilly push and pull will be very expensive.
  7. mcv · 1790345032 · focus · HN ↗
    I don't think they're banning all AI generated code, just projects that are primarily AI-generated. They'll probably also object to PRs that are entirely AI generated. Or at least they will when they become a problem.
    IslandRebel · 1790348224 · focus · HN ↗
    I was looking at alternative hosting for some of my projects that are going to be opensource. I've heavily used AI to speed up dev (I've been a software developer for about 20 years now) and it was quite disappointing to see that they made that decision.
  8. embedding-shape · 1790347434 · focus · HN ↗
    > I predict that Codeberg will soon realize that they have no choice but to loosen and allow AI generated code.
    I predict that eventually people will read the linked blog post and realize Codeberg already allows AI generated code. But this requires reading and nuance of course, which is hard to come by sometimes, so I guess we'll continue see misinformed comments like this until eventually the web is only autonomous agents.
    IslandRebel · 1790348479 · focus · HN ↗
    It doesn't really. It allows it in very limited context which has overlap with other existing tools that predate AI.
    embedding-shape · 1790349018 · focus · HN ↗
    Point out what verbatim piece of text forbids any and all usage of LLMs for coding and having that project on Codeberg?
    Literally the first "informal guidelines" (subject to change of course) states:
    > Projects who have an active community that cares about and maintains the software
    You can use LLMs for development + fulfill this requirement, contrary to popular belief.
    They want to get rid of slop projects and vibe coders, not any project that has any developer that used any LLM. But again, requires you to read through the actual text to actually get their intention here.
    IslandRebel · 1790350907 · focus · HN ↗
    > 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 (1) 3) and furthermore have little safeguards to ensure that they do not include harmful code (c.f. § 2 (1) 5).
    <a href="https://codeberg.org/Codeberg/org/src/commit/96fac426a32d1ba91ff879366d59bf1af54080c2/TermsOfUse.md" rel="nofollow">https://codeberg.org/Codeberg/org/src/commit/96fac426a32d1ba...
    I have read it. This effectively narrows down the use of AI drastically IMO. Which is what I said.
    This effectively limits it to stuff like code completion and using it as a chat assistant and doing some medium level refactors.
    They should have just completely banned it. As the ambiguity itself causes problems. Even if you use LLMs maybe say 25% of the time, sooner or later that means that a significant portion of your code base is AI generated.
    > They want to get rid of slop projects and vibe coders, not any project that has any developer that used any LLM. But again, requires you to read through the actual text to actually get their intention here.
    I am not a vibe coder (I am a software dev with almost 20 years experience) and am using Heavy LLM assistance (I am running Qwen 3.8 locally) for some of my projects. I am making sure the code output is decent, well documented, has tests etc. Sure what I am doing is something betweeen "vibe coding" and "proper development" but there would be no way for me in the few hours an evening to even get to the stage I would be at in some of them without LLM assistance.
    I would not be able to use codeberg for hosting my project under their rules.
  9. YorickPeterse · 1790349408 · focus · HN ↗
    Banning AI generated content works just fine, and arguing otherwise is nothing short of FOMO.
    As a random example, AI generated content is banned from the /r/ProgrammingLanguages subreddit and any regular visitor that _isn't_ suffering from AI psychosis/FOMO will tell you it's for the better. In general it's not that difficult to moderate for it either as AI built projects consistently contain the same patterns _over and over_ such that 98% is easily detected.
10. lucideer · 1790331326 · focus · HN ↗
  It's self-hosted on <a href="https://code.overheid.nl/" rel="nofollow">https://code.overheid.nl/ & they mirror a subset of it on Codeberg.
  That might still be in violation but I would imagine it's low on Codeberg's radar since they're not making primary contributions there (& if I were DAWO I'd also be interested in limiting direct community agentic contrib).
  1. karel-3d · 1790333653 · focus · HN ↗
    They have "migrated to codeberg" which is written in the repo itself.
    However Codeberg actual "fuzzy" policy is less strict than "no LLM used ever".
11. mitxela · 1790339758 · focus · HN ↗
  Codeberg does not forbid AI-generated code. It forbids AI-generated projects. You would know this if you read the policy.
  1. llimllib · 1790341221 · focus · HN ↗
    The specific language is:
    > projects that mostly consist of code written by "generative AI"-tools
    And "mostly" here seems egregiously undefined to me
    <a href="https://codeberg.org/Codeberg/org/commit/96fac426a32d1ba91ff879366d59bf1af54080c2" rel="nofollow">https://codeberg.org/Codeberg/org/commit/96fac426a32d1ba91ff...
    tcfhgj · 1790341618 · focus · HN ↗
    implies for me >50% - instead of >0% as suggested by @ricardobeat
    WarmWash · 1790343079 · focus · HN ↗
    The hardest part of policy isn't coming up with smart policy, it's figuring out where and how to draw the lines.
    mitxela · 1790347298 · focus · HN ↗
    What do you think "mostly" could mean?
    ricardobeat · 1790348193 · focus · HN ↗
    Take a peek at <a href="https://codeberg.org/DAWO/DAWO-Core/commits/branch/main" rel="nofollow">https://codeberg.org/DAWO/DAWO-Core/commits/branch/main
    Is this "mostly developed with AI" in your opinion? Not to mention the fact the policy leaves it open to interpretation is part of the problem...
    jenniferhooley · 1790348122 · focus · HN ↗
    As much as I hate vibe-coded "slop". I feel like this is idiotic. I and most good engs with decades of experience do use AI now to type nearly all the actual "code", but we read EVERY SINGLE line, always fix and rework every feature before a commit to make it clean, optimized, and de-slopified.
    But still, we wouldn't be allowed to use codeberg because "generative ai" was used significantly for most lines of code?
    mitxela · 1790357764 · focus · HN ↗
    If it's good, will they ever find out?
    jenniferhooley · 1790359235 · focus · HN ↗
    Maybe not... I personally wouldn't use a service that would boot me off if they did find out because I spoke about it online or committed too much code one week or something.
    lowbloodsugar · 1790360650 · focus · HN ↗
    AFAICT they are dealing with resource exhaustion from slopcoding agents hammering them with copycat garbage. It's existential. If you use AI to help you thoughtfully write code, review it with humans, and respect their service, I don't think they will have a problem with you.
    ares623 · 1790361749 · focus · HN ↗
    > And "mostly" here seems egregiously undefined to me
    and yet we seem to be convinced that English is the appropriate spec language of the modern times
12. ransom1538 · 1790345195 · focus · HN ↗
  hahaha

Open on Hacker News to reply ↗

Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.