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Comment by hibikir | Hacker News Reader

Only if you can reasonably separate LLM from non LLM code, which is in no way a solved problem. Even if one agrees with their priorities 100%, it's just asking for non-automated enforcement. It's difficult to execute, and either lead to completely arbitrary enforcement, or a lot of resources being spent in exchange for this freedom you mention. It's just a very hard practical line to try to draw.

And let's be real, most of the costs LLMs incur on hosting providers have little to so ln who makes commits. A popular project than bans LLMs from contributing, but is used often by LLMs that are using the project as a library is indistinguishable from one that allows LLM contributors.

So from a practical perspective, it's a head scratcher

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It's true that an LLM ban is really hard to enforce, but that doesn't mean it's worthless. If i make an image editor and say "It is my policy that serial killers and pedophiles cannot use my software" i can't really enforce that, but it still makes a (somewhat useless) statement.

In my opinion, not allowing LLM code at least signals that codeberg (and forgejo) itself is unlikely to be majority LLM code, which raises its stock in my book; It signals what kind of people the maintainers are.

> what kind of people the maintainers are.

Can you elaborate on this? It's new that we're judging what kind of people we're dealing with based on what tools they use.

I really meant -- are these maintainers passionate about the design and maintenance of their tools, are they trying to slop up a demo fast enough that some VC buys them out, is this project a goal in itself or the means to some other end, etc...

Open source software that exists for its own sake is exceedingly rare, and understanding the goals of a community before becoming dependent on it is a good idea

OK! This makes sense, and I agree. But I don't think banning LLM usage gets us there. LLMs are going to be used for coding, whether anyone likes it or not. I think focusing on the effort and care that is put into the codebase is a good metric: LLM generated code that is reviewed by teams of professionals, for example, is a huge win, and should be encouraged.

I readily concede that there is a huge volume of inexperienced programmers generating crap, though.

It's basically Eternal September for programming.

If you made this statement and you catch a serial killer using your software, it affects the options. A more reasonable example may be: Microsoft may not reverse engineer this. They still can do it privately - you can't enforde it - but if you catch them, then you have more options besides saying "welp, I said they could"

> Only if you can reasonably separate LLM from non LLM code, which is in no way a solved problem.

It's trivial to detect when someone's coding with a chatbot - they tell you, repeatedly.

Nobody who doesn't code with a chatbot worries that it's hard to tell.

Apparently some people have compared it to some other unlikable groups of people (I know this because a vibecoder complained about the comparison someone else made)

If someone has to ask whether their software is mostly AI-written, then it is.

If someone has to ask exactly how racist you have to be before you can be called a nazi, they're probably a nazi.

If someone has to ask how attracted to underage girls they can be before they're a pedophile, they're a pedophile.

If someone has to ask how responsible you have to be for a death before it's a murder, they're probably a murderer.

Because people who aren't these things clearly know that they aren't.

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