R/open source bans all solo projects and projects using LLMs
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My understanding has always been that the goal of open source software is to make software more free and to be able to make higher-quality, more ambitious software. With LLMs making it easier than ever to modify, study and read software, and independent developers able to work on more ambitious projects, I would expect open source advocates to view LLMs as strongly congruent with the free software movement. Instead, this post stresses the incongruency of open source software with AI-assisted coding on grounds of human-centeredness and the "cheapness" of tokens. What does human-centeredness have to do with open source software? Isn't the cheapness of tokens directly aligned with the goals of open source software of making it easier and cheaper to create software? I just don't get it.
That is the problem in these subreddits.
Up until 2024, if someone took the time to write and publish an open source project you could use that as a sign that they were trying to participate in the community and that it could be worthwhile to look at.
In 2026, that assumption no longer holds. You can’t tell if someone put 1000 hours into a project or 15 minutes of asking Claude Code to make a thing and then suggest copy to post to Reddit.
For a while, Claude was even telling people to go post projects to Reddit as a way to get users. They would copy and paste the suggested post into the Reddit.
So this created a backlash against all things LLM. The presence of any LLM tells in a project became a sign that it was not worth considering.
I don't know which LLM's are still doing it, but the amount of Posts I remove from r/selfhosted that still have the AI's markdown formatting included is astonishing. At least a few of them per day.
This sounds like a knee-jerk reaction and it hamstrings OSS while others gain from LLM assistance. There are better ways to deal with this issue and I predict that OSS projects which blanket-ban LLMs are going to lose out to more competent maintainers.
This is, to me, the key conceit when the complainers complain. Sometimes it's obvious (like not even changing the visual style). But most of the time it's just pogroms.
That phrase has as much inherent meaning as "the goal of software" or "the goal of technology." People have different goals for technology and society. This is normal.
Some simple rules that would work better:
- Projects should have someone that understands the overall project at a systems level
- If you link to a github, or code project, it can't be ai-written, it has to be a clear README, maybe with some code examples. But, it can call the other project that has AI generated stuff.
X has somehow became the best place to find interesting open-source projects people are building.
X uses recommendations, so you don’t see all the projects and small accounts. You consume curated content.
Most of them aren't slop. They're actually quite useful, but I guess the anti-AI cult wants to silence all AI-aided projects in an attempt to point out how "there's no new software being written by AI".
For me the key thing is that a program that cannot be maintained and improved over time without introducing numerous regressions may as well have not existed, because even those that were useful at one point in time quickly cease to be so due to bugs cropping up from the project being a quivering, duct taped together mass of misery or because it stopped getting updates when the project owner found themselves painted into a corner and broke with an OS update.
Note that I am not a hardline anti-LLM type. I have my reservations, but do make use of them. I do however see a massive difference in quality between knowledgeable devs using them to augment their own abilities and non-devs or newbie devs just telling Claude to bake the whole pie.
- ffmpeg port
- a novel web browser engine
- multiple kernels/os projects
- POSIX shell
- a from scratch crypto implementation library of all commonly (and uncommonly) used crypto primitives
- new VCS that outperformed Git
- git rewritten in rust
- multiple custom new languages written in rust
- new experimental borrow checker
- from scratch new standard library
- countless (genuinely unique) command line tools
If there is something novel in the port, people usually write an article about that or at least mention it in the README.
Hyperbole much?
This is a direct response to AI slop destroying a community; what’s your solution to the AI spam problem?
Also there doesn't seem that much discussion of code in there.
That's not the same. Whenever you do a google search, it only gives out what to do. The decision making ultimately ends up towards you.
In AI case however, its like replacing the person who used to make decisions about what to copy and implement. It makes you a proxy towards the AI's decision making. At least that is how I interpreted it.
Realistically, people do a lot of Googling "parse Json in Python" and going with whatever pops out, like "import json" probably. But there's other options out there.
With a LLM, you're almost certainly also going to get the standard json module if you just ask for a JSON parser.
But nobody says you have to stop there. For instance if I say I want "the fastest JSON module", it goes for orgjson instead.
And if I wasn't happy with that, I could ask it to just write a benchmark using every module available and actually measure what's optimal for my hardware and my data file.
Choices don't go anywhere, and a smart user can take advantage to evaluate possibilities for whatever factors might matter -- speed, size, number of dependencies, etc. I'd say smartly used LLMs make for better choices because you can do research much more easily. Benchmarks, prototypes, asking it to search for you whether a given library has a good reputation or not and is well maintained, etc.
Honestly I agree with this take. The problem is that, under the context of the people banned for using LLMs, no one makes decisions like this.
For instance, say I want to do some data analytics on a pretty large csv file. Of course before AI I would need to think of 1.How to open the CSV file 2. What is the specific data I want to extract 3. How to extract the data 4. How do I change the data into a specific format (say a list, a set etc ..) 5. How do I sort it. 6. How do I visualize it .... and so on. Those kinds of steps on how to write the code forces you to research the libraries and methods and decide what is required. (for instance using pandas in python)
Using AI for that task however, I wouldn't have done any decision for how to extract the data in question. Maybe the AI's decision was marginally better than mine (Writing a csv parser from scratch is faster for that specific data for example). Maybe in the case of data analytics, there is no point in the code cause in the end what is desired more is the visualization. But dumping the code into communities where people were interested in how you came to that decision falls short cause you didn't do it in actuality. I think that is the current issue at hand.
Yeah, but what's more likely to happen is that when you look inside the code you see thousands of lines of code of a handrolled parser and when you ask "why would you write your own rather than use some existing one here?" you only get silence in return.
Except that's exactly what the slop machine peddlers are saying. Why would you, a mere mortal, dare to question the decisions of the superhuman intelligence after all?
I haven't a clue what the peddlers are saying because I run uBlock Origin and do my best to never see an ad. I don't care or even know what they're advertising, and don't take my guidance from big tech CEOs.
This inherently restricts you to projects maintained by people who are willing to wade through a neck-deep cesspool of far-right content, either because they think it’s worth it (Twitter is, alas, still a good source for up-to-the-minute info) or because they agree with it. That’s a small subset of the OSS world. Everyone else has decamped to Bluesky and Mastodon, which are near intolerable in their own special ways.
You can't share your own videos on /r/youtube, your own projects on /r/opensource, etc.
And the weird thing is that normally you would think this would be an overarching strategy by Reddit admins to keep users on site, like Facebook penalizes outbound links, but it's unpaid moderators unconsciously furthering Reddit's agenda.
Someone who makes youtube videos about Foo belongs to the Foo community, but they can't post on /r/Foo. Why? Because /r/Foo isn't the community of "Foo."
The "community" in this case refers specifically to a group of people on Reddit.
That is, the guy will never belong to the "community" because he is busy making videos on Youtube instead of posting comments on Reddit. And you can replace that with anything else. Someone who writes their own blog, or own books, or has an Instagram, TikTok, or even a Facebook page.
He would be considered a "high effort" OC creator in /r/foo if his videos were hosted on Reddit instead of on Youtube. That's how silly this whole thing is. This is not about "the community." This is about someone's personal Reddit group that they're moderator of.
Spam is a problem and has been since the dawn of the internet. Efforts to limit it will always affect innocent people to some degree but it's not really feasible to not do anything. And reddit especially has an astroturfing problem since it became such a popular source for recommendations. Like, just looking at GP's profile here kinda adds some context as to why they might say this change makes reddit useless to them.
> I used to find so many projects on Reddit and now, it’s less and less.
How can this be true when the problem they’re dealing with is an explosion in the number of submissions? Even with some of these policies, the number of software projects being submitted to these subreddits is so much higher than a few years ago.
Doesn’t add up.
It makes sense AI would explode on a platform now used by the bad parts of society.
The AI defense people don't seem to realize the funny things they say defending AI and how detached it is.
Lol calling reddit useless because mods are pumping the brakes on low quality AI slop posts. Hilarious.
Reddit mods aren't paid to deal with low effort auto submittions from LLMs. It ruins the subs.
I'm aware that being anti-AI is trendy right now, so many people won't like to hear that, but the reality is that it won't take long until the opposite will occur. Projects will get rejected for not having been thoroughly checked by AI, if not written by AI, because purely human development will cause too many security and code quality concerns.
Hand tools have no place in the modern economy outside of bespoke or otherwise high-end goods. Today, the economics of power tools make them necessary to embrace in business, or your competitors will out maneuver you in the marketplace.
That doesn’t mean all of existing craftsmen believe that the power tools are safer or produce better results; their opinion ultimately does not matter, as it would lead to the demise of their income stream. The majority will learn to swallow their pride, because they cannot deny that things have changed forever.
My company put off adopting AI until this month. We will never go back, because I am now effectively leading a team of egoless juniors at a fraction of the cost of a single human. The economics will never work out in favor of me writing another line of code.
Juniors without egos? Never heard of it.
And I have been an AI skeptic, so it pains me greatly to admit that.
Your might be too young, but I remember the Graat Outsourcing. Engineering teams were replaced wholesale with overseas counterparts. The original engineers literally trained their own replacements.
Those companies have for the most part continued to thrive, despite the resulting enshitification of their products and services.
History says this time will be no different.
Then again, you have the saftey factor. Some people should be given hand tools first, so you can see whether they can be trusted with power tools. Just as you would give a junior small tasks before trusting them with something bigger.
I can say one example of why you would need some hand tools. Buying an extension cord is easy, but you may not have the budget to buy a larger bandsaw. In that case having a handsaw or framesaw will save you.
I don't think "must" is correct here.
People will use AI all they want without understanding it. Same as the way most people go through life never understanding how basic things work. Our capitalist fixation enables it because ignorant consumers will buy whatever is put in front of them for the most part. Ignorance is profit in capitalism.
Folks don't want to understand. That's work. Why bother?
You are not accounting for the inherent error rate; around 20-40% as I understand it. Reducible with tokens but then not cheaper than humans.
Sure a good analogy is physical vs robotic; but if it was say burgers. It would be a current McDonalds burger vs some new robot place that makes then half price or cheaper but every aspect of the burger is off quality wise; missing ingredients, mistaken orders, incorrect ingredients, weird toppings; BUT DARN ARE THEY FAST.
You’ve gotten faster but you’ve added an error rate that either you expensively inspect for or it moves to the edge.
Your figures are outdated. A lot of progress has been made recently.
Or the difference between Guitar Hero and a real guitar
In some sense, if everyone can build everything, people's attention becomes the currency. If you are able to hold together an audience by banning automated tools, you might had suboptimal software but you might keep the actual goal.
If the result of your software project is suboptimal software compared to what others are achieving, what was really the goal you say you get to keep?
If your argument is to hold together, the goal must have been something besides the software.
To be clear, this is fair, but then you cannot claim to primarily have been working on a software project, but something else.
It's not yet clear what the best strategies are to keep OS communities alive and thriving. It certainly won't be a one-size-fits-all approach.
r/opensource_projects would love to have your open source projects shared
AI needs to be shamed in FOSS. It's not good. This fad will die eventually.
however, being unable to understand the code is an issue. creating code with an AI and then calling yourself a coder is a straight lie.
>This fad will die eventually.
Just like the fad of the internet.
Otherwise they could create r/aiopensource, bound to be more interesting.
The mod is overreacting. By this logic, Linux kernel is banned on the sub...
This is ridiculous and it would be reverted. I'm sure of it. They can't have this long term
All of my interesting and helpful subreddits became unusable over time as the low effort posts took over. Every one of my hobby subreddits that became popular is now 90% or more posts that fit 3 categories:
1. Questions about getting started in the hobby. The same asks about what to buy or requesting feedback on something they’re thinking about buying. The subreddit can have a perfect wiki and up to date buying guide posts, but it will still get 5 posts per day from people who want personalized advice.
2. Posts from people who acquired something new and want to show it off. They’re excited for their new 3D printer or skis or other hobby acquisition so they post a photo. I know the subreddit is cooked when these posts start getting upvotes and taking spots in the feed. This is the sign that the low effort beginner posts are becoming the central content of the subreddit.
3. People posting every small achievement and looking for praise. I get it. It’s fun to share little progress with a community and feel excitement when sharing it with others. Feeling like you’ve made it with a group of other beginners is fun. There really should be a place for this, but once it takes over the subreddit it becomes uninteresting to see the same beginner posts day after day so the experience commenters leave.
The availability of LLMs has caused an explosion of #2 and #3 type posts for any software related subreddit. Starting late last year every subreddit with a software component become flooded with posts about something someone had cooked up with Claude Code. Some of them might be interesting but most were quickly abandoned. Many of them didn’t even work at all.
LLMs made it easy to feel like you’re joining the club. Spend $20 of a subscription and tell Claude what you want and you now have something to post and collect praise for.
The absolute worst are the posts where all the content is also generated by Claude. Even the OP’s comments are Claude written for many of these. You can click on their profile and see their comment history is written in one style for everything else, but suddenly they’re posting capitalized sentences and Claude-style prose paragraphs in this one subreddit. Then you realize you’re entirely viewing the output of a robot, which someone is putting forth as their own work.
It’s just not interesting. It’s not even fun for the #3 feature because the person copying LLM output into the subreddit is not interested in anything about the community other than taking praise and upvotes from it. They aren’t participating in other threads or encouraging others. They are there to promote their project, extract traffic, praise, and upvotes, and go back to prompting Claude.
I don’t know if banning solo projects or projects using LLMs is going to lead to a quality outcome, because those two measures aren’t specific for the slop that people hate. I do understand why they feel the need to do something, though.
They consider AI to capitalist, fascist and whatever is their current slur for things they don’t like.
On the other end of the moment, the non-political side of the movement, people seem to think AI is just another tool. Some absolutely love it. Others don’t care.
Both of these are thriving in their own ways because they are not instilling confrontation and restriction on whatever is being made. They focus on output, and not the politics of creating it.
Over time I’m pretty sure which side is gonna come out of this with most successful projects and the most healthy communities.
The argument against AI-assisted programming just doesn't hold anymore.
I have not seen an LLM rewrite 2-3 times and then settle on what sticks, it just rewrites constantly and usually while leaving residue of previous attempts behind.
Which in some projects is still fine. Like I said, they are generally producing working code, but I haven't seen proof yet that it can actually scale and evolve well over time.
The best feature of LLMs might be that you can do so much without needing anybody's help. (Or that you don't have to deal with anybody)