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Comment by selfhoster1312 | Hacker News Reader

Why would i use codefloe and not a more reputable non-profit provider like codeberg/disroot/framagit?

It says it's community owned, but i only see one codefloe team member on the forums and a few people (like you). I didn't find any good community rules or pricing, any political statement about the mission, etc. The only thing i found deep in the comments is that it seems to be for people who don't want FLOSS? Also the pricing mentions mixing a non-profit and a for-profit for the best of both worlds, which as Mozilla has shown is a potentially tragic strategy.

To be clear, i'm in favor of more non-profit hosts. But from reading the site i'm not convinced this one is actually for-profit, what the community stands for, and whether i'm the target audience.

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Codeberg does not permit personal repos, it is strictly for open source project communities. Also, it is painfully slow if you are working in a repo of any size. Codefloe is professionally hosted on a robust platform - it could probably support about 10x the volume Codeberg has currently with good performance. I have not used the other options you mentioned but I've long admired what Framasoft is doing.

I'm not sure where you'd get the idea that Codefloe is for people who don't want FOSS. There are hundreds of open source repos. There are also a lot of personal projects, and probably some commercial ones as well.

What they don't want, is an ideology that restricts the types of projects hosted there. Its available for all software projects. Most of their user base are just using the service - and that is really the point. Similar to how most users on Lichess are there to play chess, not to talk about hosting chess servers.

They are owned by a commercial entity, devXY but they are not profit seeking. They need donations to cover costs but are willing to give that time to build up. There are some regular donors[1], but they are not yet covering all costs [2].

They publish a report every quarter where you can see usage figures.

https://codefloe.com/codefloe/analytics/src/branch/main/repo...

They also publish detailed cost analytics and donations:

[2] https://codefloe.com/codefloe/analytics/src/branch/main/repo...

[1] https://en.liberapay.com/codefloe/

The amount of Codeberg FUD one can encounter on HN is unreal. I'm starting to question whether there's an organized effort behind it.

Both personal and private repos are explicitly permitted in the Codeberg TOS:

> Private repositories[…] allowed for really small & personal stuff like your journal, config files, ideas or notes, but explicitly not as a personal cloud or media storage.

As if there wasn't a massive amount of nuance between "you may keep your dotfiles private but don't upload your photo library". If their rules read this arbitrary, I wouldn't trust them to host any of my stuff, especially considering that you always have to hope they don't change their rules any further.

Assume you did some local LLM stuff in June that worked with a 200MB set of various jpegs and you wanted to keep it private: Is this still legit in September 2026? I wouldn't rely on it.

> , I wouldn't trust them to host any of my stuff, especially considering that you always have to hope they don't change their rules any further.

Yeah, I think this is a win-win for both parties.

You strike me as someone who would "ride along the lines of the terms of service" basically, and you'll see anything not explicitly forbidden as being allowed essentially.

While Codeberg is a project driven by humans, with human reactions to what's happening. If you're not comfortable with rules not being 100% defined, and requiring a humans value judgement to be had to figure out if the rule is broken or not, I don't think Codeberg is for you.

The rest of us, who are OK with humans making decisions rather than just going by what's written in rules, are fine with this, because we know our private repositories won't be deleted. And if they are, you'll be able to speak with a human to explain, and if your intention is fine and good, they'll be OK with it. But if you try to argue about some "That wasn't explicitly stated", then yeah, they'll probably get tired of you quickly.

Think your participating in your local user group vs some corporate/government forum, the rules will be enforced differently.

> "ride along the terms of service"

By using AI to write code, like virtually everyone does? Tell me, what indication was there in their TOS, that this might be close to a line?

Do X in whatever way you want, if you do so knowing it's against the terms of service, you're "riding along the line of the terms of service" for sure if you try to explain away how it is/isn't explicitly forbidden.

Using AI was not against any terms of service at all three months ago.

Ok, point being? Codeberg is a non-profit community that evolves and figures out where to move, all the time, this is the point of the association itself. Members discuss what to do, then a decision is made, then new rules eventually apply, this is how the project moves forward.

You said people were “riding the line”. They weren’t. Codeberg made up a rule that excluded eligibility for projects they were already hosting. Projects that were not illegal, indecent or dangerous. I can’t think of another time something like that has happened. They can do it, sure, but many had hoped they could be an independent host for all FOSS as GitHub deteriorates. They have disappointed those hopes, and we will have to look to others - like Codefloe - to carry that hope forward.

GitHub is deteriorating primarily because of LLMs. I’m guessing Codeberg doesn’t want to end up the same way.

> Codeberg made up a rule that excluded eligibility for projects they were already hosting

What does "made up" mean? It was a decision by the actual members of the platform, you know, the actual people using it! Nothing "made up" about it.

I think it's pretty clear you don't have an idea of what Codeberg is trying to be, nor do you have any interest in understanding, you just want to push this "Codefloe" platform for some reason. Codeberg make very public what the platform is for and yes, that'll change in the future too, as the world changes.

I'm sorry that phrase offends you so much that you have to resort to personal attacks. Why don't you respond to the actual substance?

The reason I'm supporting Codefloe is written in the comment you are responding to. Codeberg is not interested in hosting all FOSS, and Codefloe is. That is the reason. Its very simple.

It is pretty clear you are not making any effort at all to understand the problem people have with Codeberg's rug pull.

No, it was just against every value Codeberg ever stood for, and against the value humanity should stand for. There was no ambiguity ever about this. There is no moral ambiguity that if people develop military FLOSS on codeberg they will be banned, even though it's not in the ToS right now, because that's the right thing to do and the community will reach a consensus that we want to support human communities, not military organisations who destroy them.

The rules say nothing about military AI and currently include selfhosted LLMs as well:

> You must not share projects that mostly consist of code written by "generative AI"-tools (including services such as Claude, OpenAI Codex). Such projects having an unclear copyright status (see requirements § 2 (1) 1 and § 2 (1) 3) and furthermore have little safeguards to ensure that they do not include harmful code (c.f. § 2 (1) 5).

At least stick with the truth before launching with "the right the to do" (which is also a pretty bad rule because it's completely ambiguous.)

I'm fine with ambiguous rules. A non-profit is not a legislative body, though to be fair even actual laws are usually ambiguous and contradictory and that's why we have lawyers and judges and such.

Ambiguous rules with clear objectives is what gives a non-profit the power to be flexible in the way to accomplish common goals. It's based on human trust and is fine by me and others. If you ever were part of a non-profit, you know human trust is an essential component.

I was (4 years) and we made sure our rules were easy to grasp and follow to ensure we wouldn't have to deal with lack of clarity and enforcement.

Not one programmer i know does this. Well no actually, one does because his boss makes him but it's so shitty he basically AI-washes his own job. How come on HN every week i come across someone who believes programming is dead and everyone has been brainwashed by Silicon Valley execs into destroying the planet with LLMs?

Honestly it is astonishing to me that there are still people who believe things like this. AI is just a tool. Software development still requires human minds.

There are people who don't understand that and crank out slop. Fuck those people. That isn't what I do.

There are people who don't understand that and won't host my FOSS. Well, I've found someone who will.

Why do you assume they will be ok with it?

They recently made some very ideological decisions…

I didn't? Maybe I didn't explain properly, what did you understood I said/wrote?

„ and if your intention is fine and good, they'll be OK with it“

That doesn’t work because „fine and good“ doesn’t mean the same thing to Codeberg voters/admins and to a large part of the hacke news population. Notably, Codeberg is morally opposed to AI.

> That doesn’t work because „fine and good“ doesn’t mean the same thing to Codeberg voters/admins and to a large part of the hacke news population.

Why on earth would Codeberg give even the slighest fucks about what the "hacker news population" finds "fine and good"? Makes absolutely zero sense.

Codeberg made those things against the Terms of Service because paying members who use the platform voted for exactly that. This is how Codeberg works, the members of the platform decides how it works.

You changed the topic. The topic is not what Codeberg should care about. The topic was trust in the humans behind Codeberg to not delete private repositories on a whim. Codeberg community is free to care about whatever it sees fit. That doesn't protect them from criticism.

Do I trust humans behind Codeberg to behave sensibly? No.

Would more precise terms of service that explain what Codeberg community thinks is ok help with such trust? Yes.

Should the humans behind Codeberg care what I think? Maybe? Presumably they do care about reaching _some_ users, otherwise why have the service public at all?

What a weird take coming from a pro-Codeberg perspective considering that many their users I are proudly #actuallyautistic people who would prefer strict rules to follow in order to feel secure.

> The rest of us, who are OK with humans making decisions rather than just going by what's written in rules [...]

Better speak for yourself and not infer from your own views to others. With bad intention this could be interpreted as if I was incapable of dealing with human decisions when all I stated is that I mistrust people who rugpull me.

> journal .. config file .. ideas or notes

So, not code for personal projects? Right? A private git repo with my own code, is not permitted.

More to the point of this thread - there is no specific affordance for a personal website.

> So, not code for personal projects? Right?

No, not right. Still wrong:

"Use it for your personal notes, your side project or any other[sic] you want to keep private".

(That's even ignoring that I was addressing the claim that you actually made, which is different from the one you're making now; you're moving the goalposts.)

That language is not in the terms of service. The word "side" does not appear on that page.

The terms of service state:

> Private repositories are only allowed for things required for FLOSS projects, like storing secrets, team-internal discussions or hiding projects from the public until they're ready for usage and/or contribution. They are also allowed for really small & personal stuff like your journal, config files, ideas or notes, but explicitly not as a personal cloud or media storage.

The TOS Section 1:

> Our service is open for all projects covered by a licence for free and open source software, free and open source hardware, or free cultural works as defined by § 2 (1) 1.

So the "FUD" I am spreading is literally the headline of the legal terms of service. There is an organization behind the spread of this information, and it is Codeberg e.V.

You have made two concrete claims about Codeberg that are verifiably untrue:

"Codeberg does not permit personal repos"

"A private git repo with my own code, is not permitted"

Codeberg's policy explicitly permits personal repos, including private code repos. Both of your claims are false. There is no getting around this, no matter how much you try to move the goalposts or the other forms of conversational misdirection you're trying to pull off here.

You have made two concrete claims about Codeberg that are verifiably untrue:

"Codeberg does not permit personal repos"

"A private git repo with my own code, is not permitted"

Thanks for the explanation. It's more detailed than what's on the homepage.

> it could probably support about 10x the volume Codeberg has currently with good performance

I'm very curious about this statement since it seems to also be based on forgejo, and hosted by Hetzner. Maybe there's some forms of clever caching involved? That could explain why the monthly expenditures seem to be moving around so much, which is unusual. Do you have a link about it?

> an ideology that restricts the types of projects hosted there

That's precisely what people who don't want FLOSS say. I appreciate that some communities prevent others from restricting our freedoms; if that means restricting their capability to engage in harmful behavior (eg. non-free software, LLMs, scams, etc) that's a plus. But even codeberg is not that "strict".

> They are owned by a commercial entity, devXY but they are not profit seeking.

I will never trust a for-profit corporation to host my data, and even less so if it claims to not seek profit. If you don't seek profit, there is 0 reason to setup a for-profit company. And depending on your jurisdiction, it may actually be illegal for a for-profit to receive donations.

Thanks for taking the time to reply. I hope to be wrong and over time codefloe becomes a flourishing community full of interesting projects and people.

Forgejo user, but I do not trust Codeberg after their last "vote".

> Maybe there's some forms of clever caching involved? That could explain why the monthly expenditures seem to be moving around so much, which is unusual. Do you have a link about it?

Mostly it is just better/newer hardware for the database servers - both CPU & NVME storage. But also more hosts, that are not sharing system resources, and have sub-ms latency between each other.

Yes, costs change as hardware is added. But this leads to another advantage which is hard to understate:

It is very easy for Codefloe to adapt its hosting architecture because everything is managed with infrastructure as code. So as bottlenecks are found, improvements are benchmarked, change can be deployed safely and reliably. Codeberg is much riskier to change at this point.

Some of this is public here[1] - but I don't really expect it to convince you. What should convince you, is simply using Codeberg. It feels like being on dial-up.

[1] https://pat-s.me/codefloe-launch/#takeaways-from-my-time-wit...

Thanks, that's a very good article! I don't understand why it's not set front and center on the codefloe homepage.

> 403 Browser Update Required Your browser is outdated. CodeFloe requires a modern browser for the best experience and security.

Site is broken on Brave.

Haven't used Codefloe but at least they're not restricting what projects you can host with them. I don't see any preachy neo-Luddite "don't use AI" or "no private repos pls" messaging on their site.

Apparently, not wanting to spend a huge amount of resources on storing slop makes a free hosting service “neo-Luddite”.

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