Right - I see the other topic has been locked / author hasn’t returned to follow community rules.
Here’s the original topic https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49003386
and a measured (IMHO) response to it. (BTW, do your self a favour and change tabs with that site open :)
https://マリウス.com/i-regret-migrating-to-codeberg/
It’s a tough spot, Codeberg has found themselves in and I wish them luck. But beyond that, this is (yet) another reminder that in 2026, if you don’t self host it, the cloud is just someone else computer
before reading the blog post I was thinking the same. now I don’t.
the worst of the LLM projects have no place on codeberg that’s for sure, but there would have been better ways than a blanket ban to limit the resource consumption of LLM and crypto projects. codeberg already has a storage quota system, they could be giving a lower quota for LLM projects, maybe also disable free CI for them, which I am a bit surprised they have given. and solve the reputation problem with banners. but no, total blanket ban based on feelings, it is.
An important consideration is that the usage of “AI” aka currently using like LLMs is viral, in a worse sense than eg.: the GPL is viral, and it’s completely understandable that some hosters would prefer to avoid the community problems that that causes.
If the hard legal reality of all LLM generated code having a high risk of breaking copyright is “feelings” for you, then sure 🙄
There is simply no way that is true. First, the legal arguments are dodgy:
Second, there is no fucking way a western court is going to tell every big tech company they have to delete 99% of the code that was written since the start of the year, even if the law as written literally said verbatim, “use of any LLM output for any purpose is breach of copyright” because it doesn’t take a conspiracy theorist to realise that it’s politically impossible.
You may not like that, but it means that, again, Codeberg is doing this based on feels.
How much money are you willing to put in to test that?
5 Zimbabwean dollars.
So then why are you asking other people to on your behalf?
Hmm, maybe the bits of my post that you didn’t quote contain the answer.
First though you need to understand I’m mainly saying I don’t buy their justification.
No, you made a large assumption that this holds up in court completely, predicated on the idea that anything but would be disastorus.
I don’t buy that premise, and neither does codeberg. So again, why should they put money up in that assumption?
I made three claims and you talked about a single one, and not in a substantive way.
This conversation doesn’t seem to be going anywhere interesting or useful, so goodbye.
You are missing the point entirely. LLMs regularly generate code that is a near verbatim copy of existing copyrighted code, but with almost no way for the LLM using person to notice that. LLMs being sufficiently transformative might be an argument about the use of training material, making the resulting model not a copyright violation itself, and thus might protect the companies that produce and offer these models, but it says nothing about the actual output of a model.
It is only a question of time before some enterprising law firm decides to mass scan open-source projects and weaponize their findings similar to patent trolls or file-sharing legal threats. This has a long history in Germany where Codeberg is located, and even if a court rules that the host itself is only responsible for removing such copyright violating code, it will require significant effort to do so with constant legal fights as the attacking lawyers will try to figure out the identity of the person responsible so that they can blackmail them with cease and desist legal fees.
Politics will not care about some hobbyist open-source projects and large companies will spend a lot of effort to obfuscate their code to prevent this legal trolling to affect them.
People can upload code that violates copyright too. No llm required.
So if that is the concern have a rule about not violating copyright (which they may already have). And there is likely already a process for handling that.
This is the problem I have with the situation: the solution chosen (banning llm code) doesn’t really address the concerns they’ve raised directly. It’s just apologetics to make it sound like it’s reason-based rather than “we don’t like it”.
It’s their platform, they can do what they want, but let’s not pretend it’s not code-puritanism.
Yes, they can upload copyrighted stuff, but people typically don’t do so on large scale and when they knowingly do it these days they typically try to hide their tracks well enough that law firms know it will not be a lucrative business to try and blackmail them.
And one of Codeberg’s main points is the unknown copyright status, you just failed to understand it.
Yeah - it’s well known that scripts to automate doing bad things did not exist before llms.
People have tried using forges to host explicitly illegal material all the time. Not just “this may be a copyright issue perhaps maybe”.
The copyright complaint is a fig leaf to hide their shame.
They also outright banned cryptocurrency code with no “copyright fig leaf” apologia.
It’s code puritanism plain and simple. “We don’t like these things so we’re banning them.”
You are still not understanding the issue.
LLMs cause a lot of people to unknowingly violate copyright, and those people then become easy targets for malicious copyright litigation. And Codeberg is caught in the middle of that and doesn’t want to be involved in the resulting mass legal cases because they are just a small volunteer organisation without a legal team.
And Codeberg’s explanation is very clear that is isn’t a blanket ban on LLM generated code for “purity” reasons. It is a risk mitigation strategy against projects that are mostly LLM generated.
This hasn’t happened. It’s a fantasy.
Maybe you don’t understand copyright?
You’re right I wasn’t really thinking about the possibility of verbatim reproduction. I guess we’ll see about that.
Codeberg will need efficient procedures to handle IP trolls anyway, getting a bunch more takedown requests ought not to make a big difference. And if somehow it does start to be a problem… that would be the time to blanket ban or take similar drastic action. If it’s possible to detect now, it will be possible to detect then.
Politics will absolutely care about having a precedent which leaves big tech exposed. Any case against little fish will be jumped on by Zuck and Bezos before you can say “datacenter”.
No, these malicious law firms intentionally go after the small fish, who are much more likely to be intimidated and give in to a settlement payment before it even reaches the courts.
And for Codeberg it makes absolutly sense to minimize the issue for them now before it becomes an even bigger issue.
k
https://malus.sh/
AIs already pillaged all the code in the world. This is fighting a lost fight. We won’t manage to force big AI firms that literally props a country to stay afloat to make their AI “forget” or “untrained”.
Regulators let the pillaging happen so now AI does know how to code. They dont imitate they truly code.
But IMO the real fight is about things like malus that are the real dangerous and malevolent actor here. They will take your open source code and resell it to big businesses.
You are linking to a parody project 🤦
And you are also misunderstanding my point. Yes the cat is out of the bag and companies will absolutely copyright wash their codebases like that, but they have big legal teams to defend against copyright trolls and generally do not publish most of their code base for anyone to see.
Small hobbyist open-source projects that make up near 100% of the projects hosted on Codeberg on the other hand are easy marks for malicious litigation, just like home users torrenting movies were in the 1990ties and early 2000.
Lol Malus is not a parody.
You can verify it yourself but they do make money doing exactly what they say.
They play on that “parody/malevolent” idea but they do have customers and confirmed they make money on that.
It is still a parody project 🤷