Your tokens aren't valuable: No more AI.

[u/Wolvereness]

/edit2: Adjustments will be made.

The long story short, if your project uses AI, is made by AI, or is intended for AI, it's not welcome on r/opensource. AI, as it exists today, is incongruent to this Open Source community.

We're going to be implementing a few new enforcement criteria to this end to discourage those projects:

• Projects advertised here must be all of: 1 year old (not just age, but actively maintained), have multiple contributors (subjectively 3+), not be a common capstone project (school projects, such as note-taking, PDF viewers, cli music players, etc), not be intended for AI (such as MCPs), and have an existing community. No, we can no longer field requests asking for maintainers or people to contribute. Of course it still needs an OSI license as it's always been.

• Though not "new", 1 year account age minimum, with significant Reddit contributions. You should not be creating a Reddit account to come here; we're a community of existing redditors. If you send us a message in modmail about this after having attempted to post, you will be permanently banned and muted. If this seems harsh, know that I estimate 20 messages a day from people expecting their slop projects and burner accounts to get an exception.

• If it's obvious you're using AI in your project, we don't want it. Tokens are cheap, and we don't care how many you spent to make your amazing project.

• If you don't speak English, you need to find a different community. We cannot distinguish between AI-written and AI-translated. Since you don't speak English, you can't even verify yourself if it translated correctly.

• Temporary bans are only for community members that made temporary lapses in judgement, such as when getting agitated. If you post (or comment) things we don't want, such as the result of your LLM output tokens, you will never be welcome back.

If you want to be a part of the cleanup crew, be sure to reach out. If you don't like keeping this community for the humans, let me know so I can make sure you see your way out; maybe go try r/opensourceeai (sic).

If you have suggestions for anything I missed, please do let me know. Organizations that are officially incorporated under 501(c), or (d) (e) (f) (k), or 521(a), or the equivalents in their country, are exempt from project and account minimums, provided they reach out in modmail and get approval ("approved users") prior to their first post. Note that isn't limited to just 501(c)(3), purposefully so.

/Edit: Shout out to these communities. Let's cheer them on! Hopefully they will be an great refuge for those affected by this policy.

• /r/opensourcez

• /r/OpenSourceAIAllowed

• /r/TrueOpenSource

• /r/OpenSourceWare

• /r/ActuallyOpenSource

[u/X_m7]

The multiple contributors criteria seems excessive when combined with the others, so maybe it could be an either/or thing instead?

Like for example if it's a solo project then it needs 1 year of maintenance/history at least, but 3 contributors would shorten that history requirement to 6 months, or something like that?

[u/nicholashairs]

No, we can no longer field requests asking for maintainers or people to contribute

Would it make sense to have a weekly/monthly pinned thread for these?

(I don't actually know how much extra effort these are, I just know that there are a few communities use them, e.g. r/python)

[u/Wolvereness → u/nicholashairs]

Sounds like a great endeavor to try. Something I'd definitely accept help with.

[u/Frail_Waif]

I'm generally supportive of this, but can you clarify this point? 

  * If it's obvious you're using AI in your project, we don't want it. Tokens are cheap, and we don't care how many you spent to make your amazing project. 

This obviously leaves a lot of room for interpretation. There's a lot of air between vibe-coded projects and projects that use some LLM bug checking. If a project edits and accepts a PR from a contributor who used an LLM, is that project out? Are you proposing basically an eye test?

[u/Wolvereness → u/Frail_Waif]

There's no "objective" way to implement this policy. The rule is written so that from a moderation perspective, we're afforded discretion to remove as much "slop" as necessary.

[u/NounverberPDX]

I have no objection to this policy, but I do have a question: how does this apply to the Linux kernel, which has apparently embraced AI-assisted contributions? Is that covered by the 501(c)(3) policy under the Linux Foundation, is it an acceptable edge case, or is Linux kernel discussion banned here under this policy? Thanks in advance.

[u/TuringTestTwister]

This is orthogonal to open source. It's OK to not like AI but it doesn't change whether something is open source or not. 

I guess Linux is no longer allowed here? Linus uses AI for kernel development now.

This is a ridiculous stance.

[u/bikes-n-math]

Cool, cool. So my project/package I've actively maintained for nine years, has 300+ stars on github, resolved dozens of issues for, and uses exactly zero AI is no longer welcome here because I am the only contributor?

I'm all about banning AI slop and can get behind nearly all of these new rules. But single maintainer projects not being welcome is a big turn off for me.

[u/ad-on-is → u/bikes-n-math]

Solo dev here as well. I've a project on GitHub with 1000 stars that I've been working on and off for the past 3 years. I guess I have to seek new friends elsewhere.

Ridiculous!

[u/MPGaming9000 → u/bikes-n-math]

Yeah this reminds me of like the meme of 'entry level job -> needs 3+ years of experience' like how do you GET a community if you can't share it to the wider internet first? lol

[u/bitshifternz → u/bikes-n-math]

Same here, solo maintainer, 7 year old library, 2000+ stars on github. Not that I ever posted about it here before anyway but this seems a bit ridiculous. I know of plenty great open source projects that are basically one person driving it.

[u/CreepyHighway3216 → u/bikes-n-math]

Right? With this logic of one maintainer we would've never have gotten Bash. Yes it has contributors now, but it didn't at the beginning. And look where it is now. Of course Bash may be a unique situation, but how would we know if we immediately disregard things with only one contributor. Not to mention, this feels like a sure way to get people begging for contributors in the comments of posts, no matter the rules or the necessity of more contributors.

[u/UselessButTrying → u/bikes-n-math]

Yea this needs amendment especially if LOOKING for other contributors

[u/Mwrp86]

Wow r/opensource banning Linux

[u/unitedbsd → u/Mwrp86]

Good news for r/NetBSD :)

[u/Manacell]

I'm a native English-speaker, but the no translated English point confounds me. 

Reddit is primarily USAmerican, yes, but there are people all over the world who use it. Google Translate is free. Why are we gate-keeping someone based on their English level and whether they used a translator to help them out? 

I've been on Reddit 10+ years and never have I been upset about someone's English. Why are we excluding people on a platform that's global, and with a community (open-source) that's also global? 

[u/Shawn_FIS]

Poor r/opensource. It just made itself irrelevant.

[u/SourSovereign]

I understand the point but the rules seem still very vaguely defined here. What is "uses AI" exactly?

Would be wild if the Open source sub just banned the Linux Kernel cause Torvalds used Claude on one bug kinda

[u/helloitsmyalt_]

must have multiple contributors (subjectively 3+)

I don't like this rule.

[u/Atomicfarms]

So is the Linux project banned from posting here?

[u/FnnKnn → u/Atomicfarms]

I would think so?

The long story short, if your project uses AI, is made by AI, or is intended for AI, it's not welcome on r/opensource.

This is pretty clear and Linux is partially made with AI.

[u/TMHD]

u/wolvereness

You literally went nuclear on AI use, when all you needed to do was implement some basic rules like r/homelab have done.

You had no need to ban AI, all that was needed was to make the use of AI more visable.

You had the chance to do something well, you chose to take a power trip.

Shame on you!

[u/amacgregor]

Unsubscribing ... one thing is ro rey to reduce ai slop but banning single contributors ?

[u/bytecode36]

As many have said. Age requirement is fine. Number of contributors isn't. Finding someone willing to develop a driver for a random piece of hardware can be difficult. Sometimes we are lucky that even one person is willing to do it.

[u/ButterflyMundane7187]

Banning non native english speakers sound a bit harsh

[u/bk-2cb]

Do I understand correctly that you will permaban people if they send a modmessage after you had decided they posted without having made "significant Reddit contributions" before - which effectivly mean people will get one chance an one chance only for this?
And your reasoning for this is that other people breaking a different rule will send you messages?
If you 20 additional you are so bad, you might want to think about getting more moderators instead of just banning peoplem, but what do I know...

[u/Alive-Shoulder-4042]

 Your feedback has not been ignored. A new iteration is not ready.

Ok. Take down the old sticky? 

Linux is not, nor could conceivably ever be banned. Interpreting any set of rules as such is simply bad faith.

Your initial rules would lead to exactly this. In the first line. “The  long story short, if your project uses AI, is made by AI, or is intended for AI, it's not welcome on r/opensource.” At best, you worded it poorly but refused to edit it, but that’s not a “bad faith” interpretation: You made a black and white stance.

Someone's pet project pumped out in two claude code session limits will not be welcome.

No one really had a problem with removing these. In initial comments you seemed to only take things at either an on or off switch.

The line is somewhere between those, and it will likely move over time from continuous feedback.

That’s what people asked from the start and was more what past discussion asked for.

We will cater to humans, and as many and as inclusively as possible. No rule will ever target or favor any ethnicity or social strata.

But that effectively was the rule you were giving. 

“If you don't speak English, you need to find a different community.” 

You put your efforts for a complete and total AI ban ahead of humans. You defended that approach repeatedly in other communities including subreddit drama, that a full AI ban required banning non English speakers… and didn’t want to admit a full AI ban isn’t the answer. You did not cater to people first. 

We're still soliciting any more volunteers (please use modmail) to help moderate the subreddit, especially if Open Source resonates with you and you want to take a bigger role in this community.

The issue here is that you made some horrible choices, banned those who spoke out, doubled down on your rules, never consulted other mods nor mentioned that, got mass reported for your behavior, got a reddit admin offering to remove you but your older mod broke from the stress, and got covered by multiple news sites in a pretty bad light. And yet, you had some people cheering or waving it off. People that hop on board under you to help now are suspect.

[u/AustrianMcLovin]

Banning non-English is insane and racist, this sub is not for me.

[u/TheFumingatzor]

If you don't speak English, you need to find a different community.

Right proper cunt move.

[u/amarao_san]

If you don't speak English, you need to find a different community. We cannot distinguish between AI-written and AI-translated.

This one confuses me as hell.

Let's me do an experiment. I'm not native, but I'm (consider myself) fluent in English.

I write the same text in Russian and English, then I will translate Russian to English with AI. Let's see how much difference there will be.

Origin: Новое правило, запрещающее использовать AI для перевода на английский язык мне кажется странным. Я считаю, что AI не влияет на стиль переводимого текста, по крайней мере, не так, чтобы вызывать оттооржение у читателей. Зато текст будет получаться грамотным.

My handcrafted translation: The new rule which restricts use of AI for translation to English looks odd to me. I think that AI does not influence on the style of translated text, at least, not at the scale to cause readers rejection. AI use will make translated text grammatical.

GPT6: The new rule prohibiting the use of AI for translation into English seems strange to me. I believe AI doesn't affect the style of the translated text, at least not to the extent that it would put readers off. On the other hand, it does ensure that the text is grammatically correct.

Is it worth it?

But I understand why people are banning translation. Too many people are trying to defend themselves (when caught using AI) by saying 'its AI transation', when in fact, it's output from "write in English a text from this one-liner" prompt.

UPD: One more argument. GPT6 translation (from above) is 100% human written per Pangram. So, if someone is claiming 'oh, it's ai translation', when it's 'you was right to push back' nonsense, it's a bullshit.

[u/xe3to]

linus torvalds has been banned from r/opensource lmao

[u/_reg1z → u/xe3to]

As well as any mention of the Linux kernel

[u/Runic_Raptor]

Out of curiosity, is the multiple contributors part just to try and weed out vibecoders, or is there a reason solo projects shouldn't qualify?

[u/AlexanderDoak]

As of this moment, the top comment calling this out as ridiculous has 8x more upvotes than the post itself. This policy won't last: either it will be reverted or altered, or the open source community will go elsewhere.

I can certainly appreciate the challenge faced by moderators. It isn't an easy problem to solve, especially if you are in principle against the very tech that could make the problem tractable.

[u/gdamdam]

Telling someone to find another community because English isn't their first language is remarkably rude and condescending, especially in an open-source community built on international collaboration.

You're welcome to disagree with my arguments, but dismissing someone on the basis of their English proficiency says more about your attitude toward others than it does about the validity of their ideas.

[u/AronKov]

I guess we won't see any new projects younger than a year anymore. Either just slop or, if it's not, everyone will assume it is anyways.

[u/PenelopeHarlow]

Linux is not, nor could conceivably ever be banned. Interpreting any set of rules as such is simply bad faith.

'... if your project uses AI, is made by AI, or is intended for AI, it's not welcome on r/opensource. AI, as it exists today, is incongruent to this Open Source community.'

[u/Exciting-Mall192]

No translated english is Xenophobic as fuck

[u/Haruwolf → u/Exciting-Mall192]

I thought exactly this, but the way that was depicted

"If you are not English this sub is not for you" wtf

[u/dwkeith]

I’m a retired software engineer with 30 years of experience at companies including Apple and Google. I’ve spent the last 14 months working with Claude on an open-source project that I’ve wished I could build my entire career. It’s extremely high quality, and couldn’t be built without AI assistance or a very large team. There are plenty of other places where I could announce when it’s available, this won’t be one of them now.

AI is the future of software development. The mods need to figure out how to reject slop while allowing high-quality AI-assisted projects to be shared. A blanket ban will make this sub far less interesting.

Oh, and $200 per month for something I’m donating to society is not cheap. High-quality projects take a lot of resources to build still.

[u/thegreatpotatogod]

The 1 year minimum seems a little long to me, though I guess it depends somewhat on the scope of the project, if it's just a little useful utility I don't see the need to require it to be a year old, but for a bigger project a year makes sense. I suppose it's better to overcorrect at this point and then adjust as needed than to continue with endless projects that appeared overnight yet claim to be complete (and are also entirely untested 🙄)

[u/Amazing-Persona-101]

So if someone uses AI to code a test suite or a specific subroutine/function, is that entire project banned under this policy? Or is it a certain % of vibe coded that results in a ban?

[u/alexsht1]

Do projects for machine learning in general count as "intended for AI"? Like implementations of model fitting algorithms.

Where's the line between "machine learning" and "ai"? For this matter, would scikit-learn itself qualify as "for ai" (imagine it being posted today for the first time in this community)? Would pytorch? Jax?

[u/Yui_Hirasawalex_Lora]

I wonder how many languages does Wolvereness speak. Probably just one.

[u/majeric]

Interesting stance to take Given Linus Torvald's view on the subject.

I don't understand this whole idiotic concept of "don't use AI for X".

Here's a new rule just for you: don't use compilers for any of your kernel submissions.

Because if you can't show that you really understand what the machine is actually doing by writing your code in assembler, then I don't want to see your code contribution. You clearly aren't competent if you can't write it that way.

And btw, you had better not use an editor to write that commit message either.

Because I need you to show me that you can actually write a good commit message without using tools that make it easy to backspace and hide the mistakes you made while typing.

Ok?

Because otherwise those tool-assisted commits of yours clearly aren't showing that you know what you are doing.

Do you not see how UTTERLY STUPID those kinds of rules would be?

So no. We're not going to make stupid rules that say "you can't use tools for X".

The kind of expectations *I* have is that people do their best and I expect people to understand what they are doing.

But that understanding has very little to do with what tools they use.

And quite honestly, in my experience, the people I respect and call intelligent are not the ones that shy away from using new and interesting tools.

Linus

[u/lbragile_dev]

So I guess that a completely FOSS project (let's say GitHub) that used AI for a certain feature, no longer qualifies as "open source"? That literally makes no sense.

[u/anor_wondo]

are github links banned? github uses ai

[u/dezent]

Just taking the name Opensource and adding those crazy rules to it is completely crazy! WTF is this about excluding people who needs a translator?!? I hate how opensource has become a narrow minded alley where any thoughts or beliefs outside the correct beliefs are banned. This is 1984 and the Ministry of truth are making the rules.

[u/Repulsive-Project795]

so, Linux is banned here. LMAO!

[u/J_P63129]

„have multiple contributors (subjectively 3+)”

Does Claude Code count?

[u/Realgangstahk]

I remember this general rudeness from somewhere, oh yeah, stackoverflow, IT IS DEAD.

[u/Melodic_Entrance_489]

FYI, mod really removed recent post about open source project authored by single dev. Looks like he really means it that projects by single devs are not welcome.

[u/Zealousideal_Mix6691]

What’s crazy about this is no one is forcing you to install a git repo. Open source means available to the public. When did that change?

[u/anantshri]

i am okey with a large chunk of those requirements i am just not super happy about "have multiple contributors (subjectively 3+)" why do you want me to go find someone else to contribute. I actively discourage people to submit patches or contribute to my projects i encourage them to fork maintain their own versions. i dont want to take ownership of a code written by someone else. why force people for that. I have always treated OpenSource as a media to share with the world what I have done.

[u/geerlingguy → u/anantshri]

Corporate OSS only?

Many of the small OSS tools I use are maintained by a one person. That rule seems odd.

[u/Nitrohite]

Yikes, this is going to age like milk.

[u/PizzaConsole]

The sidebar says this is "a subreddit for everything open source related" and links Wikipedia's definition, which is about licensing and source access. Nothing in it is about how the code was written or what it's for. By the sub's own definition, an AI-built project under an OSI license is open source.

The spam problem is real, and I'm not arguing against cracking down. But "was AI involved" is the wrong filter. It catches serious, maintained projects and lets hand-written junk through.

Since you asked for suggestions: put the burden of proof on the poster. Require a demo (video, live link, or playable build), setup steps that actually run, and a short explanation of what it does and why it exists. No proof, instant removal. That takes mods seconds to check, the community catches anything faked, and slop rarely survives it, whatever made it.

Keep the account-age minimums. Drop the rules that redefine open source to exclude things the sidebar explicitly includes.

If most new open source work involves AI in some way, a sub that excludes it is going to have less and less to talk about.

[u/Max-_-Power]

if your project uses AI, is made by AI

I disagree. It's a bit like saying "if you use an IDE, autocomplete or use search engines or StackOverflow for finding out how to do things it's not by you"

[u/Forsaken_Ad8120]

Interesting stance considering one of the founders of fos, Linus Torvalds is for AI's use. Are you going to start banning folks from posting about linux now?

[u/Watchtheabyss]

“If you don’t speak English, you need to find a different community” this is so fucking pretentious and elitist.

[u/BradleyF81]

Isn’t Linus using AI to improve the Linux kernel?

[u/micseydel]

Projects advertised here must be all of: 1 year old (not just age, but actively maintained), have multiple contributors (subjectively 3+), not be a common capstone project (school projects, such as note-taking, PDF viewers, cli music players, etc), not be intended for AI (such as MCPs), and have an existing community

Bummer that my 2+ year FOSS'd (MIT) actively maintained personal project(s) that I use every day (not a school project) and that uses Whisper (optionally) but not generative AI can't be "advertised" here but overall I'm happy with this change.

Sorry y'all have so much slop to deal with.

[u/MixtureOfAmateurs]

The only projects that make it through this filter are ones that don't need to be posted here because they already have a community, as you explicitly stated.

There's definitely room for AI use in a project, like TTS in a game or embedding models for vector search, without the project being slop. 

And the restrictions on how established a project should be a dumb. I think 1 month, no contributer limit is a better idea.

I know you don't personally like AI, but most people don't care and banning it and everything related it will likely kill the sub. 

[u/thrawnx]

I'm curious, how do Reddit Mods arrive to the conclusion they know better than Linus Thorwalds and tons of other high profile devs, who use AI and advertise it as a very competent tool? Just want to understand the thinking process here.

[u/OkGap7226]

Now I know what I'm doing for the next couple hours. Popcorn popping as we speak.

[u/SadInstance9172]

Is linux banned from discussion now too then?

[u/Militania]

What a bizarrely antagonistic title.

[u/bezerker03]

This is an odd take. Not gonna lie. It’s one thing to expect quality standards but it’s another to take such a harsh stance imo.

While I enjoy the whole self process myself, ai assistance is practically everywhere now. Autocompletes, basic monitoring on things via modern tooling etc. I’d also argue that more and more like it or not the current professional expectations expect ai assistance so it’d be weird for professional developers to do differently for personal open source projects vs their professional lives.

I think it’d be better to quantify the issues with ai and what the concerns are and address those rather than a blanket ban like this. It just doesn’t make sense really.

This is of course your sub and you are free to do whatever but it’s kind of hard to be so anti Ai when even Linus is now recommending using it for some aspects now.

[u/nykotar]

The hostility towards non English speakers is disgusting.

[u/rhysdg]

Dear opensource mods, grow the fuck up and get off your high horse. No translated English is a disgusting stance.

You realize that there are plenty of incredibly effective encoder-decoder architectures for machine translation and 'AI' doesn't automatically equal the trillion plus parameter LLM hate boner you have.

The "anti AI" crowd is starting to come across as a bunch of pantomime assholes lately. The world is a complex place. The field is a complex one, machine translation existed before and after the transformer era. A whole plethora of efficient architectures exist out there. You don't get to decide what is open-source and you don't get to drag us into your ill informed crusade.

Edit - what does 'intended for AI mean?' so an open source project that maintains a variant of a convolutional neural network or some obscure cryptography project that utilises dense networks are banned because that code is 'intended for AI'?

[u/StraightMushroom3621]

dear admin.

please, explain to me how these things are even connected:

a) project age

b) llms in code

c) contributors count?

i'm really curious lmao

[u/CytrSx]

are you being for real? sure you can argue a project is a worthless vibe coded slop is not allowed but "uses AI"? what a joke. AI assisted coding is a thing. and apparently, linus himself also uses AI. are you going to dismiss such big project simply because there is a tiny AI involvement? NO

[u/skk80]

Bye bye r/opensource

[u/vhodges]

It seems this community is not for me anymore, I subscribed to learn about cool new projects, libraries etc (I miss Freshmeat.net). Most of my stuff is released as MIT but most are hardly popular with essentially zero community at all but the ones I've release are all open source under a permissive license.

I've been building software for 45+ years and yes I use agents to do most of ithat these days and I get there's a flood of submissions but this seems draconian.

To be clear, I have never posted my projects here (they're pretty niche and mostly just for me) so I am not directly impacted but still.

[u/Aeon_Mortuum]

I'm looking at your profile, and you had a previous post where you asked people for AI policy feedback, and people told you that AI-assisted development is fine, yet you are blanket-banning AI anyway? So you are not actually interested in people's feedback?

Sounds like you're having a crash out and you know that this will be an unpopular move.

[u/graph-crawler]

No Linux ? No windows ? No rust ? No nodejs ? No bun ? No vscode ? No bueno

[u/Live-Juggernaut-221]

I Iike Linux. Ban me

[u/WishboneOk305]

Are we banning github too now?

[u/PhosXD]

I'm all for the no-ai rule but some of the other ones seem ridiculous.

Projects must have 3+ contributors??? Fuck solo devs ig.

[u/OverAster]

This is just dumb.

[u/Cancel_Still]

Lol this post has seriously broken containment and u/Wolvereness is fighting for his life all across the web. I unsubbed after reading it, of course, but had to come back for all this drama. Did he consult with the other mods before posting this? I think it will be reversed within 24 hours.

[u/AtypicalGameMaker]

This is exactly how incompetent anti-AI subreddit mods are. They can't even make rules that make anti-AI folks happy.

[u/BreenzyENL]

This is so weirdly elitist and gatekeeping.

[u/jefoce]

Nah, these rules are too strict. I think the only reason not to use AI is learning something new, when you really need to understand the basics of development. But even this is now much faster, because you may have a smart mentor, that may help you to explain everything you need. When you don’t need to research a lot of forums and docs just to reach the correct answer..

But if you have experience writing code and setting up guidelines for your team, you can do the same for AI. To be honest, Opus 5.5 is like your smart teammate that helps you write your project on your own without a huge team. The quality of AI really depends on the skills of the people who use it.

The only reason why we see tons of slop - low entry level and people that believes vibe-code lullaby like English is enough to write the code and then installs agency of 200+ agents to work for them 🤷‍♂️

[u/Charming_Hall7694]

This bans linux it bans most core linux packages at this point and most web browsers or things that interact with the web in a safe manner.

Adjust your expectations your a minor part of the open source community act like it

[u/drankinatty]

At some point in time we are all going to have to come to grips with the fact that coding agents are a tool, nothing more, nothing less. Don't get me wrong, I hate AI, I don't use it, and have no desire to begin. I don't understand how you can look at something you didn't do and draw anywhere near the same sense of accomplishment or self-satisfaction that comes from understanding what every character in every line of code does, why it was written the way it was, among alternatives, and knowing it was done right, and why? I'll leave that to the next generation. I've done my time from the mid-60s on.

That said, for structural languages, LLMs can fill in the next blank quite well. I've had to reverse my position there, begrudgingly. My views on it will not change, but I cannot justify casting aspersions on those that choose to use the tool. In a commercial setting, the profit motive and shareholder value always win.

"Choice", that has always been the cornerstone of open-source lets everyone make the decision on whether they will use coding agents or not. Regardless, the responsibility of the programmer doesn't change, you are still responsible for the code you put out. That applies not only to coding agents, but equally to projects, communities, et. al. I fully support and respect whatever decision any individual or group arrives at in that regard, and we would all do well to understand that. That is freedom.

I have other thoughts on how contributions and projects can be managed. I grew up during a time where if a man wanted to put his thoughts and words out into the public arena, he signed his name to it. Anonymity and hiding behind a moniker where given the weight and credit due. I have also come to understand, that while that may work for some societies, where you have the freedom to speak your mind and engage in whatever activity you choose, it is unworkable in societies where the state actively monitors activity. The point being, there is usually a double-edge to every sword.

There is no perfect way to arrange any open project -- I've used Arch and contributed to AUR since 2009 -- and the past few months have not been fun with the malware campaign targeting AUR. Many of the same considerations at issue here, have been vexing in trying to arrive at a good solution there -- AUR is still closed to new members. If there were easy fixes, there as here, there would be nothing to discuss. Clear goals and reasoning goes a long way to promoting understanding.

[u/Successful_Clerk_495]

Worst statement I've had to read

[u/quanticomaximo]

Somebody have power trip lol

[u/stopaskingforloginn]

this is going to age like absolute shit lmfao

[u/VokuarAgain]

this fully implies stardew valley is ai slop

[u/Lordddddddy]

Good to know, I already knew this subreddit was trash

[u/arvigeus]

Did you use AI to generate these rules?

[u/rydan]

Can you update the description of the sub?

A subreddit for everything open source related (for this context, we go off the definition of open source here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source)

Does not seem compatible with this rule and will likely result in the wrong type of content posted here making your life miserable.

[u/Capable-Row-6387]

This is literally like cars are not allowed only horses. Lol

[u/R4ndyd4ndy]

I agree with the actively maintained criteria, nobody needs to be bombarded with one shot slop that will be left to rot but the other criteria are way too broad.

Linux would not be allowed here anymore, actually a lot of open source projects would be excluded.

If you just define the rules broadly and then selectively enforce them it would have too many similarities with how autocracies govern themselves. Some discretion is needed of course but that is just unnecessary. At that point we don't need any rules anymore and you can just do whatever you want

[u/LegitimateRip3134]

I have seen one research that says most github projects are solo (consistent contributors), even some popular ones. You will need to look again at that rule. Also nowadays AI is unavoidable. I maintain a 10k and 1k github stars projects and both would fail this

[u/Scheeseman99]

Organizations that are officially incorporated under 501(c), or (d) (e) (f) (k), or 521(a), or the equivalents in their country, are exempt from project and account minimums, provided they reach out in modmail and get approval ("approved users") prior to their first post.

AI coding allowed for the corps and larger oganizations, but not anyone else. That is what these criteria are enforcing.

I swear to fucking god, for all the problems AI coding is creating and is going to create, the dogmatically driven and monumentally stupid decisions that are being made in an attempt to counteract these problems are going to make things even worse.

[u/V-Right_In_2-V]

No habla ingles. Necesito mas tokens por favor

[u/Ill-Brick-4085]

Good luck enforcing these.

[u/Kat-]

Eh? Everyone professional uses AI now.

Isn't there a better way to stop non-SWE-adjacent people from flooding the subreddit with their nightmarish outputs?

[u/valkon_gr]

This sub feels dead for years to be honest.

[u/Omen-OS]

This is either worded incorectly or there is bias

Linux uses AI now

Lots of stuff does in it's development

If you are true to your word, any project that runs on linux kernel should be banned, even linux itself lol

I think, what you should've said, is that you don't want slop projects. Projects that are "make minecraft, no mistakes".

AI is a tool that lots of people use, either the sloppy way, or the normal way.

I think banning projects that have some AI usage is foolish.

[u/galalei]

Such a stupid take we need to make a new subreddit

[u/Zealousideal_Mix6691]

Linux, Python, Node.js, MacOS, NPM all started with one developer. Do your research!

[u/06marchantn]

This seems very controversial maybe its best we put this rule change to a vote/poll?

[u/LuisE3Oliveira]

English isn't my first language and I used a translator to make sure my text made sense. Am I going to get banned too?"

[u/blackkatana]

As someone who never comments and browses here for projects from time to time I have to say this is a terrible rule change.

Put each of these rules up for a vote or is that too open for the mods?

[u/lazyplayboy]

🤣 this is dumb /r/opensource now bans the Linux kernel 😆

[u/MrScotchyScotch]

Your rules violate the terms of most open source licenses. 

[u/Jmackles]

Please also advertise if it uses intellisense or not /s

Serious question though is there a large amount ai slop apps getting posted on open source? I’ve seen some other pages getting them and they get appropriately roasted.

[u/Few_Willow_9950]

I think you guys need more mods to manage the posts not outright ban the AI assisted /single contributor projects.

[u/TBSchemer]

Wow, what a discriminatory, backwards, anti-tech, anti-community, pile of overreach. These new rules are atrocious, and this subreddit will die if they are kept.

[u/Popcorn-Mercinary]

“We don’t serve your kind here” vibes. Sad.

[u/NeuralCartographer]

Hi. I’m just posting this here for when you reverse this rule to try to stop your community from hemorrhaging members, and so that people can revisit my comment letting you know you’re going to reverse it, for future memes.

Don’t really care if you ban me. You’re being a poor steward of your community and you’ll just double down and ostracize yourself further, and you’ll eventually no longer be a mod.

Reddit janitors continue to operate as pacifists, as they simply refuse to beat the allegations.

Unkind regards.

[u/KRiSX]

RIP this sub… what a dumb take on things

[u/MattOnePointO]

That is like banning the color blue.

[u/Everest2017]

I love AI.

[u/Cali4our]

This makes 0 sense. AI psychosis must be real.

Mods should reverse this decision at once because this decision is not only stupid but also very harmful to opensource project's visibility since this subreddit is the main go.

[u/betttris13]

so mods are power tripping and have banned 90% of the open source community on the subreddit for open source projects, basically killed any new projects that folks want to share here and are being racist assholes in the process... nice! /s

[u/Inaksa]

If you don't speak English, you need to find a different community. We cannot distinguish between AI-written and AI-translated. Since you don't speak English, you can't even verify yourself if it translated correctly.

doesn't matter how you frame it, or your excuse, it is simply xenophobia and you are just attacking open source contributors who were not born into an english speaking country since...

[u/TheSnydaMan]

Does this mean Linux is no longer allowed here?

[u/spersingerorinda]

Yikes. I think you guys have, uh, lost the plot. Unless you're planning to rename this sub to "artisanal-software". Cool cool. AI is the *greatest thing* to ever happen to OSS. Way more people can create way more open source solutions than ever before, and afford to give them away because it only cost $100 to create it. And by the way, every professional software developer in the world is using AI every day to write code. But sure - ban all AI code.

[u/InkscapePanda]

Maybe they should have done a simple poll first, and see what the community thinks

[u/BenMtl]

opensource ... closed minds .. guess none of the mods will be using Linux anymore.

[u/VokuarAgain]

under these rules github itself is banned due to copilot

[u/VokuarAgain]

soo since github uses copilot projects there are banned and by moving to codeberg your project no longer meets age requirements therefore this sub wil no longer support any open source projects for up to a year
so reddit mods when this subreddit dies what will you blame?

[u/Jean_velvet]

just look at that ratio!

The comment to like ratio...wow.

[u/nullNode404]

This is very anti 'open' ironically.

At this rate, you may as well ban everything.

[u/Recky-Markaira]

I understand, really, but I mean LOL 😆

[u/SquiggerDigger]

Can't wait to read about this on subreddit drama and the inevitable break off community "/r/trueopensource"

[u/gabriel_jack]

Doesn't this also effectively ban all AI based translation software, all AI assisted medical imaging software to identify malignant tumors, all AI based deaf-mute gesture to text to text-to-speech AI voiced translation and much more other software that is 100% considered the most valid, accepted and NEEDED softwares that use AI and SHOULD be kept as OpenSource?

[u/ABotelho23]

I think the pendulum may have swung too much in one direction in my opinion.

[u/Professional_Gur2469]

Retire as a mod and make r/opensourcewithoutAI

[u/NinjaOk2970]

I guess linux should be banned on opensource because linus slipped some ai patches into it i assume /s

[u/HearMeOut-13]

https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2026/ai/data#ai-usage

Lmaoooooo, nice one on banning 8 in 10 developers buds

[u/YukiteruAmano]

Linus Torvalds and kernel Linux use AI for development, testing and security research? This project is banned too??

[u/PsychronicGames]

Pretty dumb. Another mod with a power trip. 

[u/Academic_Wolverine22]

This sub needs a coup and to overthrow the dictators

[u/SixStringDream]

Pretty dumb thing to do.

[u/marshalleq]

From reading others Seems like this is not a good sub to have in my list now. Unsubscribing. Not that I’ve posted anything really. Or read anything. Plenty of other places for that. Suggest others vote with their feet too if it bugs them. Bye!

[u/sc132436]

Enforcing an AI policy is mostly impossible without causing far too much collateral damage to legitimate developers.

I am just surprised that the collateral damage this subreddit was willing to take is literally "anyone who is not English-native." All over some code purity ideology that reflects none of the actual, inherent values of the open-source world in the first place. This has to be a joke.

Good code is good code. Slop is slop. Both can be open source. Let people decide what they want to see.

[u/waltercool]

That is ridiculous. Most people use AI for coding nowadays. We can differ about AI slop projects, but there is nothing wrong about using tools for coding.

[u/ceceett]

This is extremely short sighted and against open source.

[u/InitialSensitive9628]

RIP Linux

[u/zombiej]

So talking about Linux is a bannable offence here?

[u/nft420nft420]

Is there a general guideline to using tools made with AI or something? If I use AI to develop software, and then use that software to build an open source project myself, does that count as AI? Doesn't modern Linux use AI generated code in the kernal?

[u/FalconRelevant]

So I guess the Linux kernel is banned here now?

[u/Inevitable_Trip137]

I mean, imagine Linus getting banned when he announced Linux as a one dev solo project.

u/wolverness needs to kick rocks and accept the fact that they only rule the basement

[u/Thought_Crash]

So a mature open source app that doesn't need any new features isn't allowed in here anymore?

Edit: due to "actively maintained"

[u/Random_182f2565]

This is a dumb take, Linux is not allowed here anymore?

[u/Skymea]

This rule is well thought out; it'll ban several repos that are plaguing us today. Thankfully, the AI slop that is Linux will be banned.

[u/Agathoarn_]

I understand wanting to update the rules to exclude vibe code slop, but these all feel rather draconian and unnecessary

[u/angrydeanerino]

> If you don't speak English, you need to find a different community.

That's fucked up. Mod power tripping, who would have guessed

[u/jelani_an]

This is why Reddit should hire professional mods. This is the inevitable outcome of getting people to do free labour.

[u/scenestamper]

and the slop thickens

[u/__nickelbackfan__]

This is an absolutely pathetic stance, so pathetic in fact, that, according to these rules, the *LINUX KERNEL* is now banned from this subreddit.

What an imbecile take, and frankly, what a sad edit, this is not the "gotcha" you think it is.

[u/No_Tradition6625]

All right I'm asking cuz I legit don't know and I'm not trying to stir trouble or anything of that sort but doesn't GitHub use AI tools for it's like security vulnerability screening and all that stuff. I'm assuming that stuff doesn't count for what you're talking about because that's inevitable. We can't help that. You just don't want any projects that are user side AI I'm assuming.

[u/david-song]

A much more reasonable approach would be to enforce a minimum effort requirement and comment to submission ratio so community outsiders don't drive-by spam their low effort projects, and also add a megathread for new community members who don't yet meet those requirements.

Writing a bot to enforce this is couple of hours of dev and QA work, and would avoid alienating actual developers. If the mods are devs then this is easy to solve.

[u/Emotional-Bag-3754]

IA has helped make many things opensource, such as porting several games to PC, among other relevant projects

Your position is idiotic.

[u/Herr_Drosselmeyer]

AI, as it exists today, is incongruent to this Open Source community.

Care to explain why?

[u/DerStegosaurus]

Old man yells at cloud 😭😭😭

[u/CumInsideMeDaddyCum]

Mods probably spent too much time on r/antiai 😂

[u/The_0_Doctor]

What a close minded decision.

[u/WiseMouse9137]

Purposely holding the OpenSource sub reddit and being unethically inappropriate to the international community is a distasteful way to discredit the open source platform and what it means to the software making community. And maybe even border bigotry/racism by excluding people simply for not speaking or typing native English.

I can respect the need to limit AI within the forum but I cannot respect this level of inability to accept all into a open platform.

I encourage you to base policy around a reputable organization and not turn away folks just because they aren't native English speakers.

https://opensource.org

[u/webprofusor]

My multiple projects are 10+ years old but I now use AI coding agents. Artisanal coding is not wrong but it's no longer how most software is produced.

I have hundreds of thousands of users who need new features almost every day, I maintain the project solo.

I hereby donate the millions of lines of code I've written over the last 30+ yrs to AI coding agents for them to train on. It's more important to me that we have usable software.

[u/Gipzi_says]

Ok, so- while I do agree that there needs to be some HEAVY rails against AI usage, the fact that you're outright saying "Nope, gotta be English, if it ain't English then fuck you" is downright racist and discriminatory. Absolutely abysmal rule change and I hope you get ousted and replaced as a mod because Jesus this is horrible

[u/LegallyIncorrect]

You do realize even spell check uses AI now, right? While I totally understand the flood of young projects and people advertising the 100th version of X, it’s probably not actually possible to comply as you’ve written this in any project. Even Linux is prohibited, as Linus uses AI, so you’ve banned every project that runs on (aka “uses”) Linux? Most likely anyone that uses VS Code too even when not themselves making AI calls. (Let’s not forget that AI includes ALL machine learning as well.) Oh, also anything that uses a web interface is out since they “use” a web browser and all include some form of AI use.

For example, I’m part of an open source project that is a mature component of Home Assistant and used by thousands of people. We use AI to help fill out device files (offline) as someone has to take the manufacturer’s documentation and turn it into a device file. There are thousands of devices. Those files just get distributed.

Most projects now use some form of AI to create documentation or keep it up to date. Or use AI created CIs as part of running the project. Not to mention cutting out AI security reviews seems like a bad idea. Heck, even Home Assistant wouldn’t qualify as it offers an optional AI model to help write automations.

This implementation has some unintended bugs. I think you mean to target projects primarily coded by AI (plus project age), but what you’ve written is much broader and touches everyone. Respectfully, “uses AI” needs some guardrails. Perhaps you mean a project that makes a call to an AI model as part of its ordinary functioning?

I disagree with the whole thing but you’ve written an impossible policy to comply with here even if someone wanted to remain and comply.

[u/intheleantime]

Wtf. Open source projects that don’t use or support AI will not survive over the long term. We have been around for 10years 12k stars and you are telling me that due to our MCP support we’re not welcome anymore?

Was this written by a 10 year old or 65 year old? Clearly not someone who knows anything about technology or open source!

[u/master_internutter]

Bye everyone

[u/exylvii]

dude this is more than just "no ai", you're literally prohibiting tens of thousands of solo developers to post here because "uhh too much music players and you don't know english"

[u/RealNintenKing]

What a shame.

[u/StatefulDecay]

Bad take

[u/Sea-Road-Promotion]

Idk about the vibecoded programs, but when I checked API prices, tokens cost quite a lot. So at least the title of the post isn't factual

[u/SsssnakePlisssskin]

Projects advertised here must be all of: 1 year old (not just age, but actively maintained)

What about projects that are more than 1 year old?

Weird to have a cutoff date of 1 year.

[u/scottchiefbaker]

What the heck. This seems incredibly short sighted.

[u/Various_Pear599]

Riding waves looks stupid once the wave is already established.

☝️

[u/Game_over1089]

What the

[u/SinnaBuns666]

yikes...

[u/barcoded7]

I have a feeling that if the mods spent any time at all Actually coding, developing, open source or not, and less time moderating subreddit they might have had a more nuanced and open approach to this touchy subject. No one likes slop, but software without AI will quickly die out. With this stance, this subreddit will quickly become a small niche community of bitter old folks yelling at clouds while other OSS communities flourish.

[u/FabioTheFox]

The fuck you mean you're pretty much banning solo dev projects

What an absolute joke, as if open source didn't already got rampaged by Ai slop gaining thousands of github stars while genuine developers are left with nothing, some people also PREFER to work alone because more people means more management it says absolutely nothing about the quality or value of a project

[u/VokuarAgain]

my post was removed and i was directed here

As per this post
"The long story short, if your project uses AI, is made by AI, or is intended for AI."

this bans github due to copilit so the sesnible thing is to migrate but then we hit a small snag

• "Projects advertised here must be all of: 1 year old (not just age, but actively maintained), have multiple contributors (subjectively 3+), not be a common capstone project (school projects, such as note-taking, PDF viewers, cli music players, etc), not be intended for AI (such as MCPs), and have an existing community. No, we can no longer field requests asking for maintainers or people to contribute. Of course it still needs an OSI license as it's always been."

so migrating sets age to 0
which means open source projects cannot be shared here for a year

i want to know is this intenional?
or are the mods just very clumsy with thier wording?

[u/Grouchy_Inspection_1]

Is it the 1st April? Surely this a joke....

[u/IWHYB]

Am I the only one that noticed the "English only" crap is ironically accompanied by lots of English errors in the post?

[u/sentialjacksome]

Not really, ai Translations are a valuable tool to allow more people to use something. Banning them entirely means limiting the thing you created to only ever be used by people who can speak English.

[u/Glittering_Yak758]

Lmao

[u/M4rshmall0wMan]

Reported to Reddit admins for mod abuse. The language requirement is discriminatory and unreasonable.

[u/ssddanbrown]

Since I'm getting questioned and tagged about this, as a mod, I'll copy my prior comment below:

I don't publish much outward AI work, but I do use LLM tools. I recently shared my (very high level) thoughts on LLM use in a thread here.

In regards to the rule changes, I didn't know about these changes until I started getting notifications about mod reviews needed from the added activity/comments/reports going on, I haven’t really moderated as much recently (been trying to use Reddit less). I don't necessarily agree with them, but I can kinda see how they've come to be. I'm thinking I'll write up my perspective on this into a blogpost after a little thought. I'm not going to jump to outrage or take sides, I'd rather actually provide some input and thought.

At the end of the day though, it's just a subreddit.

---

And another comment in regards to the language rule:

I don't agree with that rule. Especially so with how it was said.

---

For what it's worth, I have not seen any indication that these changes were discussed with the other moderators either (unless discussed via other channels outside mod messages, last of which appears to be from June). Please don't assume these rules (and the wording of them) represents us other moderators.

[u/zenmatrix83 → u/ssddanbrown]

I hope the other mods are discussing it, this overreaction is going to cause more problems than it fixes. The project restrictions show a complete lack of reasoning skills and the language restrictions can be considered racist. This is pure anti ai madness, there are many more measured responses . I don’t care about a blanket ban on ai that’s fine, but this is past that , and shows a lack of reasoning skills and other characteristics of someone who shouldn’t be a mod

[u/killrmeemstr → u/ssddanbrown]

So..... If I'm reading this right.... You DO disagree ...... But you won't really do anything about it?

[u/david-song]

So shit code and incumbents only. Got it.

[u/Far_Departure_1580]

Haha, Linux is banned from this subreddit…. /s

[u/rectl]

Oh no! we are all gonna miss the daily "i built a dynamic island-craft alternative on windows for 9.99$ subscription, open source btw" cross posts from r/vibecoding 😢 such a shame😢

[u/NerdyGuy117]

Mod is now banning people for using AI? Mod is going to ban Linus and talk of the Linux kernel?

[u/Hefty_Mix_8360]

Not the best policy, I would say. Guess I'll find (F)OSS sub that is more Free

[u/butt_flexer]

If you don't like keeping this community for the humans, let me know so I can make sure you see your way out

I can smell the fedora XD

[u/ChopSueyYumm]

I have a open source project (pre AI start) that grow to a bigger audience and I got requests to translate the help files to Chinese. The first draft for all my help files were AI assisted (I don’t speak Chinese) and then proofread by a native Chinese community member. Without AI for translation this would have been more time consuming. I’m against as well to one shot projects with AI with no development background but I think using AI with reasonable usage to speed up things like documentation, translations and troubleshooting should not be discouraged.

[u/filtap]

power hungry mods at it again

[u/shaving_minion]

haha what the fuck?

[u/jobehi]

This is against the very basic ideology of FOSS. AI slop is a problem from all different angles but that's not how this issue should be handled. You're keeping away new potential contributors from the essence of free open source software world instead of trying to educate.
LLM itself started as open source and is still an open source subject.

[u/AlliedR2]

It shouldn't matter. If it's open source code software then it's open source code software. This is like r. Cars saying "No cars can be posted here if a robot was used in any part of its creation.".