The moderators of r/opensource, a Reddit community for open-source software, have banned projects that use artificial intelligence. The new submission rules, posted Saturday evening, open with a blunt statement: “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.”
The reaction was swift. The comments filled with complaints, and some members went further by creating a rival subreddit, r/trueopensource.
Moderator Wolvereness has joined the discussion to explain that the rules include room for judgment. In the comments, Wolvereness pointed to “software that incidentally has accessibility features that use AI,” such as automatic captioning, as an example of the kind of case that may not be enforced under the rule. That explanation has not quieted the criticism. Community members argue that the rules are too broad, unclear, or misguided. Many have pointed out that the Linux kernel now contains some AI-generated code, which they say could put projects that rely on it at risk of removal under the new policy.
The AI ban has drawn most of the attention, but the moderators have added other limits on what can be posted. Projects must be at least one year old, actively maintained, and have multiple contributors. Solo developers working on new projects would not qualify to ask for help. The post also says, “we can no longer field requests asking for maintainers or people to contribute.”
The rules also effectively exclude members who do not speak English. “If you don’t speak English, you need to find a different community,” the post reads. “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.”
The moderators’ reasoning centers on the difficulty of telling human-written content from AI-generated or AI-translated text. That concern, however, is the same one that has left many members questioning whether the policy is workable at all, and whether it fits the community it is meant to serve.
Este artículo fue escrito con la asistencia de IA.
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