TLDR:- Codeberg e.V. members voted on two AI-related proposals at their annual assembly, and both passed.

• The first formalizes that Codeberg will never use project or user code and data to train AI models.

• The second amends the Terms of Use to ban projects that mostly consist of AI-generated code.

• Codeberg cites server strain from AI crawlers, rising hardware costs, and eroding contributor trust as its motivations.

Codeberg's annual member assembly has tackled two important votes this week, and both are about AI.

One formalizes a promise already implied by the non-profit's privacy policy that it won't use code or user data to train AI models. The other rewrites the Terms of Use to ban most AI-generated projects from the platform outright.

Both proposals passed after a 14-day voting period that closed on July 22.

The two votes

The first vote turned an existing privacy stance into formal policy. Codeberg's privacy policy already states it doesn't want to need user data, and the members have now extended that same principle to AI.

The forge and its associated services will not use code or data from projects and users to train AI tools, according to the passed motion.

The second vote was more contested. It passed 358 to 144, with 14 abstentions, on a turnout of around half of Codeberg's active members. The result is the addition of a new clause to the Terms of Use (check point 2.7) barring projects built mostly from AI-generated code, specifically naming tools like Claude and OpenAI Codex.

Why do this?

Codeberg's reasoning goes well beyond a single grievance. AI crawlers hit the platform indiscriminately, reading every issue filter variant and every point in git history. This results in excessive workload for volunteer system administrators who could instead be working on new improvements.

Hardware costs are climbing too. Codeberg says a drive that cost around €700 a few years ago now runs closer to €3,700 and is often out of stock. Because the association, Codeberg e.V., owns its hardware rather than renting cloud capacity, it has to absorb those price hikes directly.

Codeberg also argues that vibe-coded, single-use software is flooding the platform with projects that consume storage and CI/CD resources far beyond what their contributor count would justify.

At the same time, maintainers face a growing pile of low-effort AI-generated contributions to review.

What it means for you?

Codeberg is confident that these changes won't trigger a mass deletion of existing repositories. The moderation team isn't generating a purge list either, as enforcement will happen case by case as issues come up.

Projects with an active community, real history predating AI tools, or the odd, unknowingly accepted AI contribution are unlikely to be affected. Small side projects and experiments get some leeway too, as long as they don't draw much attention.

The line is drawn at projects built by autonomous AI agents, code maintained mostly through heavy AI use, or projects burning far more resources than their contributor count justifies.

It's hard not to read this against what Linus Torvalds has been saying lately. He went from calling AI "90 percent marketing" to telling critics to fork the kernel or walk away if they don't like it in Linux.

What Codeberg did here is the opposite; it looked at the same technology and decided the costs, to its servers, the trust between contributors, and to the model of running a small non-profit forge, outweigh whatever AI might offer in return.

My humble opinion

I think they did the right thing. Codeberg is just getting more popular, and they can't risk cost overruns at this stage, with active development and no shortage of new repositories building on it.

A project like Linux is a different story. It's one of the most heavily reviewed codebases on the planet, where a bad AI-generated patch tends to get caught fast, with some harsh words following soon after.

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