Reddit’s r/opensource bans AI-related projects, solo projects and posts from non-English speakers

Moderators of Reddit’s r/opensource community posted new submission rules on the evening of October 24. “If your project uses AI, is made by AI, or is intended for AI, it’s not welcome on r/opensource,” moderator Wolvereness wrote. “AI, as it exists today, is incongruent to this Open Source community.” The rules go further. Submitted projects must be at least a year old, actively maintained and have multiple contributors, about three according to The Register, and posting accounts must be at least a year old. The community will also no longer field requests for maintainers or contributors.

The most contested rule concerns language. “If you don’t speak English, you need to find a different community,” the post reads, saying moderators cannot distinguish AI-written text from AI-translated text. Fellow moderator ssddanbrown wrote that they had not been consulted and did not agree with that rule. Users pointed out that the Linux kernel now contains some AI-generated code. Wolvereness said Linux would probably still be allowed, cited incidental features such as automatic captioning as exceptions, and acknowledged there is no “objective” way to implement the policy.

The backlash led to rival communities, including r/TrueOpenSource and r/OpenSourceAIAllowed, and the original post was later updated to point users to them. The dispute reflects a wider split in open source over AI-generated contributions. System76 has banned AI-generated code from its COSMIC desktop project, while the Linux kernel lets developers use AI tools and holds them responsible for the resulting code.