r/opensource, Reddit’s primary “subreddit for everything open source related,” has banned all AI-assisted and AI-related projects. The users on the subreddit are not taking the ban well. However, not all of the comments appear to be from LLM lovers, as the moderators’ decision to also ban users who “don’t speak English” has upset most of the community that supports the AI-related restrictions.
As reported by The Verge, the subreddit’s October 24 post, titled “Your tokens aren’t valuable: No more AI,” features four new main rules: all projects must now be at least “1 year old,” have “multiple contributors,” be posted by someone who must “speak English,” and cannot be “made by” or “intended for” AI.
There’s a lot to go over here, but the ban on AI is simple; as the subreddit’s moderators explain, “AI, as it exists today, is incongruent to this Open Source community.” Unsurprisingly, this is the part that’s upset the majority of the users in the thread.
“This is orthogonal to open source,” reads the top comment. “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.”
However, the moderator who posted the new guidelines stated in a separate comment that the overwhelmingly negative response is due to “some guy on twitter claiming to be alternative news” who posted an “opinionated editorial pointing hundreds of people to the thread.”
Given the timing of when the thread was posted, alongside the fact that the X post in question mentions “the Linux kernel,” they are presumably referring to this post by The Lunduke Journal. The moderator may be correct, as almost all of the top comments on the post are from users who have never posted in r/opensource before. The fact that Epic Games’ Tim Sweeney commented on The Lunduke Journal’s post also probably didn’t help.
Yet, regardless of whether you’re pro-AI, anti-AI, or otherwise just ambivalent to AI, some of the users in the thread do raise some understandable concerns with the new rules. For instance, one user noted that their project, which has been “actively maintained for nine years, has 300+ stars on github, resolved dozens of issues for, and uses exactly zero AI,” would not be allowed on the subreddit anymore due to them being its “only contributor.”
Likewise, many aren’t too fond of r/opensource’s new rule prohibiting all non-English speakers from the subreddit. “I’m a native English-speaker, but the no translated English point confounds me,” replied one user. “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?”