[kurante]

I strongly disagree: I think this is a perfectly acceptable action. No project is entitled to host their project there, nor is any project compelled to do so, so I don't see why there is any harm in having this instance of Forgejo moderate itself as it sees fit. They have no moral requirement to support all kinds of software.

If you disagree with their beliefs, you are free to host your own instance or find a code forge that better aligns with your beliefs. That is the beauty of free software!

[kleene_op]

This sends a really bad signal.

Why would I host my project there, taking the risk that they changed their mind overnight and declare my project inappropriate because of XYZ?

[Barrin92]

you shouldn't if that concerns you. Any organization or project that's value driven is going to turn people away who feel they run afoul of those values, that's the point. It's a non-profit, they don't gain anything from trying to serve everyone.

[selfhoster1312]

Noone is changing their mind overnight. These discussions on Codeberg have been going on for years, and you know, if only from reading HN, that a certain portion of humanity is strongly opposed to cryptocurrency and LLM slop.

There's nothing surprising, new, or shocking about codeberg banning cryptocurrency projects. This is the logical conclusion of them being a non-profit acting for the good of humanity and not for the crypto grifters.

[p-e-w]

> If you disagree with their beliefs, you are free to host your own instance or find a code forge that better aligns with your beliefs.

Sure, but Codeberg has presented itself as a hoster for Free Software projects, not for Free Software projects that align with some vaguely defined ideology. If they are now the latter, they should start by clearly stating that ideology so users can make an informed decision on whether Codeberg is the right place for them.

The ban on “vibecoded” projects is effectively an invitation to start witch hunts. This is a terrible idea if you want to build a community.

[kurante]

> Sure, but Codeberg has presented itself as a hoster for Free Software projects, not for Free Software projects that align with some vaguely defined ideology. If they are now the latter, they should start by clearly stating that ideology so users can make an informed decision on whether Codeberg is the right place for them.

Well, they kinda do? Go on the main page, it's the second line of text: "Codeberg is a non-profit, community-led effort that provides services to free and open-source projects...". They're community-led, and this was a community decision.

> If they are now the latter, they should start by clearly stating that ideology so users can make an informed decision on whether Codeberg is the right place for them

What do you want to see then? They've made a blog post about vibecoded with detailed explanations [1], a public banner mentioning they no longer allow cryptocurrency projects and restricting LLM content and with a link to the changelog with the differences in terms of use [2].

Should hackernews also mention that allowed content is dependent on its moderators with vaguely defined ideologies?

[1]: https://blog.codeberg.org/protecting-our-floss-commons-from-... [2]: https://codeberg.org/Codeberg/org/compare/17bdb39b0c1ecd0e42...

[p-e-w]

> Should hackernews also mention that allowed content is dependent on its moderators with vaguely defined ideologies?

Absolutely. And it would be even better if the moderators each wrote a short summary that’s an honest attempt to describe what their individual ideologies are.

I respect institutions that clearly state their biases much more than those that pretend they have none.

[kurante]

Fair enough! But surely you would allow them to update their summary on what their ideologies are, right? People change, after all. And people should know when those ideologies change too.

We should also make sure people read all the blurbs before they join a website. Maybe we should call it the Terms of Service? ;)

Despite most websites having nothing but legalese in there, Codeberg's is pretty short and human readable by comparison. I know most people have been desensitized to it, but I haven't heard of any better way of coveying them at an institutional level.

[p-e-w]

The problem isn’t about ToS or other kinds of rules, it’s about what drives them.

When I join a community, I would like to be able to predict whether tomorrow, they might ban Chinese projects, or projects written in Lisp, or projects that only run on Windows.

This doesn’t follow from the ToS, it follows from what the platform’s values are. Codeberg does publicly state its claimed values, but they don’t imply these new bans.

[inigyou]

There was a vote at the annual general meeting where all members could attend and vote.

[colordrops]

"community led" != "ideology". That's a statement of governance style, which is a different level.

[rvz]

> If they are now the latter, they should start by clearly stating that ideology so users can make an informed decision on whether Codeberg is the right place for them.

So far it is now (unofficially) The hoster of Human-made™ non-crypto™ Free Software so far it is fully legal under the jurisdiction or country it resides in (Germany).

[hparadiz]

That's a lie anyway. I know for a fact that major open source projects have AI contributions merged into main. At this point pretty much all the ones that take over 5 minutes to compile have some LLM generated code.

[matheusmoreira]

> The ban on “vibecoded” projects is effectively an invitation to start witch hunts.

It's a guarantee. Those witch hunts will happen now that those opposed to LLMs have official approval.

[colordrops]

You are arguing with a strawman. No one said anyone is entitled to host there. They are saying it's just a bad policy because it makes it an unreliable place to host projects when you don't know what will be banned next. You are "strongly disagreeing" with something other than what the OP said.

[hbbio]

Another beauty of free software is they took the project from gitea and gogs before that.

[cush]

It’s bad because it’s subjective. It’s a liability to host anything there now - their opinion of your product category could shift tomorrow… oh wait that already happened

[avaer]

Exactly. It's not so much that there are rules, it's that the rules are decided by random popularity vibes. It's not clear what vibes they will be smoking tomorrow.

The least they could do as a nonprofit is make users aware that a core tenet of the service is to promote/ban whatever content the community voting decides any given day, and hopefully what ideology they are following.

Otherwise any serious person would to well to stay away from Codeberg; you don't know if your project will be in the community's sights in the next vote.

[selfhoster1312]

That was not a random popularity vibes. One of the discussion was from 3 years ago. Taking a political stand is part of codeberg DNA. If codeberg had no opinions and no politics then it would just never have existed.

Unless your project is very sketchy to begin with, you have nothing to fear. I would understand this kind of fear if we talked about a company whose CEO dictates directions every month or so. But this is a non-profit with sane individuals and debates.

[inigyou]

Literally every rule is decided by random popularity vibes. Name one that isn't?

[cush]

> Literally every rule…

Imagine for a second if that were actually the case. Most rules are determined by physics, science, data, or something tangible. Food safety, aviation, electrical codes, even sports rules are based on math and statistics.

[inigyou]

Not wanting to die of dysentry is a random popularity vibe. What if the people did yearn for the toilets?

[cush]

The only thing that's random here is your liberal interpretation of the word random

[omnimus]

At the same time now it's quite clear what is codeber for. Hosting active free software projects that are not vibecoded.

It's not a dump to put anything you have stored in git.

[matheusmoreira]

> No project is entitled to host their project there

So tiresome. This is going to lead to an even more fragmented free and open source ecosystem. GitHub is the default choice because it has huge network effects. Codeberg just opted out of those.

[kurante]

Did they, though? Do we have numbers on how many cryptocurrency projects were removed from Codeberg because of this, since GitHub is the default choice? Or are you suggesting that there is going to be a significant split because of this?

I agree that this is probably going to cause some fragmentation, but I'm not convinced that it will do so in a meaningful matter or at the scale at which it is problematic to the free and open source ecosystem.

For what it's worth, Forgejo is working on federation[1], which might address your networking effect concerns?

[1]: https://forgejo.org/2026-05-monthly-report/#federation

[matheusmoreira]

> Or are you suggesting that there is going to be a significant split because of this?

There are going to be many splits. Cryptocurrencies. Vibecoding. Whatever else offends them.

Whether it will be "significant" or not, remains to be seen. I won't be sticking around to witness it.

[krapp]

Good. That's how FOSS is supposed to work.

Codeberg isn't competing against Github for market share, it serves a specific demographic with a specific ideology. Anyone is welcome to use any other host they want for their crypto and AI projects, with whatever policies align with their preferences. Or make your own with blackjack and hookers.

There shouldn't even be "default choices" or "huge network effects" in FOSS anyway. That's just another form of centralization.

[inigyou]

You know every project or collective used to have their own website and that was fine, right?