Codeberg gives vibe-coded projects the toss, promotes human FLOSS

Summary

AI and ML Codeberg gives vibe-coded projects the toss, promotes human FLOSS AI no longer welcome in human-focused community You can take your vibe-coded project elsewhere. Codeberg, a volunteer-run code hosting community, has decided that AI-authored software is no longer welcome.On Thursday, Codeberg announced that the members of Codeberg e.V., the Berlin-based non-profit overseeing the code hosting service, had voted to ban "vibe-coded projects" and declared that Codeberg would not use users’ code or data for AI training due to its impact on Free, Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS).The vote follows ongoing efforts by Codeberg to prevent automated software (bots) from taxing its infrastructure with excessive network requests. Authors Bastian Greshake Tzovaras, Otto Richter, and William Zijl argue that AI companies are shifting costs to others and damaging online communities in the process. "LLMs are so costly that companies externalize the costs on a massive scale – on those who don't use them and society at large," they wrote in a blog post. "Increased hardware prices, energy use and environmental damage – we all pay for it!" They point to the cost of Codeberg's SSD and memory hardware as an example, noting that a drive that only a few years ago cost €700 (~$800) now costs €3,700 (~$4,200) – if it's even in stock. The result is that Codeberg has been forced to raise prices.The authors also call out the proliferation of projects that often involve a solo developer "working with a statistical machine that turns energy into code." They fault these folks for not having any community and argue it's unreasonable for Codeberg to spend its limited CI/CD and storage resources on ghost projects.But the vote isn't simply about unfair resource consumption. It reflects broader unease among Codeberg members about the damage AI coding models are doing to the FLOSS community.AI-driven price hikes, they contend, are broadening the digital divide by making personal computers le...