Changes to Sourcehut's terms of service regarding LLMs

Summary of the mailing list discussion (https://lists.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/sr.ht-discuss/%3CDKSTMKM0ZD9N....) - counted by hand without LLM assistance so there may be mistakes or misreadings :)

~51 in favor of the proposal. 20 of those specifically stated a desire for a blanket or as-strong-as-possible ban. 17 mentioned paying for the service. Many (sorry, didn't count these!) stated that the reason they joined SourceHut in the first place is because of the strongly opinionated culture and that an LLM ban aligns well with that.

~19 opposing the proposal to some degree. (I am counting Greg K-H's comments as a very weak "oppose".) 5 specifically mentioned paying for the service, and 1 stated they will stop paying if the policy takes effect. Some stated that they don't personally use LLMs, or don't like them or the effects they have, or would support a weaker ban (e.g. only ban fully vibe-coded projects or excessive resource usage).

I use LLMs at work without much thought by now. I'm also contributing a little bit to Sourcehut and keep my personal projects there.

While I'm not necessarily in the "LLMs are evil" camp, I find I respect this position a lot. I wish more people would do what they feel is right, even if that's going to result in a backlash from those who disagree.

When it comes to my personal projects, I realize I haven't really touched many of them in the LLM age. In a way, AI has made me uninterested in programming. This might actually be a nice demarcation line: keep my free range organic code on sourcehut and actively not use AI for my personal stuff. After all, LLMs (may) mostly help with speed (sometimes) - which was never the issue for the stuff I create "just because".

> The new terms of service, which will go into effect for new projects after the usual two week notice period (i.e. September 10th), will now include the following under the list of prohibited content:

> - original content written with or which facilitates the use of LLMs (large language models) or other generative AI technologies

> The use of LLMs or other generative AI tools to produce or assist with the production of source code, assets, tickets, emails, and so on, will no longer be permitted on SourceHut once these terms take effect.

> As with our other policy changes, the intention is to roll this out slowly and thoughtfully. Each possible violation will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis and we are open to making exceptions.

I am a paying supporter and I am considering to stop paying. This policy is a) dumb b) unenforceable. I pay them for infrastructure and service, not for some pseudo-moral ideas about how I should write my code. My code is as little of their concern, as things happening in my own house.

I've been a paying customer since... pretty much since I've first seen the project, which has been quite a few years. I've always known the srht founders as rather strongly opinionated - for better and worse. This has always bothered me a bit, but I still strongly preferred it to Github and the likes. And it didn't hit me either with the cryptocurrency related bans. Unfortunately this time, it does. And not because the policy is an anti complete slop policy, but because it bans relatively (at least to me) reasonable AI use as well.

Disappointing, sad, but not surprising. Moral grandstanding in the face of AI does little, it's already here to stay, whether we like it or not.

I wish there were reasonable alternatives.