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 [1] sourcehut [2]blog [3]pricing [4]community [5]merchandise [6] Go to sr.ht
 August 27, 2026 by Drew DeVault
 
 Changes to SourceHut's terms of service regarding LLMs
 
 In late July, [7]Codeberg announced that they would limit the use of LLMs on
 their platform, something that SourceHut has also been considering for some
 time.
 
 Last week, [8]we discussed with the SourceHut community the possibility of
 limiting or prohibiting the use of LLMs (large language models) and other
 generative AI technologies on SourceHut. Thank you to everyone who
 participated, shared a variety of views, and ensured we had a productive and
 civil conversation on the subject. Following this conversation and more
 discussions internally, we have elected to move forward with the necessary
 changes to our terms of service.
 
 I encourage you to read through this thread to see the varied and thoughtful
 opinions of the SourceHut community on this subject, both for and against the
 change. In summary, the SourceHut community broadly has strong support for
 restrictions on the use of AI on this platform. However, ultimately this
 decision was made by staff, so we’ll focus on our own rationale for it, give
 examples of how the new policies will be interpreted and enforced, the expected
 timeline for the change, and options for people affected by the change and how
 they can move their projects forward afterwards.
 
 => [9]Click this to skip the background and read about the changes
 
 There are material incentives for us to curtail “vibe coded” projects on
 SourceHut. They tend to, as a class, be outliers in terms of resource usage, as
 the practice tends to invent complex CI configurations that waste build
 minutes, produce larger codebases, and push commits often, all of which causes
 excessive resource usage and can lead to outages. Often these codebases are
 abandoned after burning through all of these resources for naught. And, of
 course, the scourge of LLM crawlers scouring the internet causes more outages
 and headaches for our sysadmins, and AI is causing skyrocketing costs for the
 hardware we need to run the platform and the hardware you need to use it. But,
 in truth, the rationale is more about politics and ethics than anything else.
 
 Deciding which “hills to die on” is tricky. We are an organization which is
 transparent about politics, both the fact that we, like all others, have
 politics, and also about what our politics are. But, although the world is a
 turbulent place, and this calls all of us to action, there are many issues we
 believe firmly in but which need not necessarily steer SourceHut policy. If we
 were to shape our policies in terms of our values on, for example, Palestine,
 it would serve to stoke controversy and increase our workload without
 meaningfully contributing anything to the problem. We lack the cultural and
 intellectual context to know what to do about that situation, and we have
 access to few resources knowledgeable enough to steer our policies with wisdom
 and care.
 
 In the case of AI, though it touches on complex social, economic, and political
 factors, many of which are beyond the realm of our our expertise, it overlaps
 considerably with matters on which we are experts – software development, open
 source, and open culture, for example. As experts, we can more easily see that
 we have an obligation to evaluate their impact and to weigh in and make
 decisions accordingly.
 
 If we focus narrowly on how LLMs affect our community, we can consult our
 mission statement for guidance:
 
     We are here to make free software better. We will be honest, transparent,
     and empathetic. We care for our users, and we will not exploit them, and we
     hope that they will reward our care and diligence with success.
 
 It’s not easy to argue that LLMs make free software better. The means by which
 they operate involves taking, [10]by force and without regard for the wishes of
 the software authors, [11]the obligations of software licenses, or the
 platforms on which our work relies, vast swaths of open source software,
 disregarding the licensing requirements, and charging rent to produce code
 which is a plausible reinterpretation of its training data applied to new
 problems. The models which are produced in this process are proprietary, owned
 and controlled by private corporations, and give little back to the open source
 community. Therefore, the relationship between LLMs and open source seems to
 exploit the users we are responsible for caring for.
 
 We have also seen some other troubling incidents, for example the use of LLMs
 to rewrite open source software to circumvent copyleft obligations, such as in
 the case of the [12]chardet library, a practice which seems to
 straightforwardly work against the interests of open source software authors.
 
 However, LLMs have shown some utility. They find real bugs, [13]including
 security bugs, and open source software has become more robust as a
 consequence. Some programmers [14]find them useful for code reviews and other
 creative applications, and indeed many programmers report good results in using
 them to write or assist in writing code.
 
 The more we zoom out, though, the more alarming it gets.
 
 The biggest concern is the impact on the climate. Cars fueled by fossil fuels
 are also useful, but most people support efficiency improvements and ultimately
 a complete replacement with electric vehicles to mitigate their effects. The
 transformation of society to address the climate emergency must be
 comprehensive, and each of us, in our respective industries and expertise, have
 a moral obligation to work to reduce our environmental footprint, particularly
 in systemic and institutional ways. The roll-out of AI is a massive trend in
 the wrong direction. LLMs and similar tools are an [15]extremely
 energy-inefficient way of solving the problems they address, such as authoring
 software, and are [16]fundamentally at odds with mitigating the climate
 disaster.
 
 Planned developments in AI infrastructure are expected to generate an
 electricity demand [17]comparable to the entire country of India, a country
 which is experiencing [18]tens of thousands of deaths due to heatwaves
 exacerbated by climate change. This build-out consumes a large portion of the
 green energy coming onto the grid, [19]delaying de-carbonization of other
 sectors, or else [20]AI drives demand for new fossil fuel infrastructure
 outright. In either case [21]the average energy consumer often pays the bill.
 
 It’s often unclear how to respond to the climate crisis at an individual level.
 Taking shorter showers or using your air conditioner less might help – and the
 wealthy tend to highlight these “solutions” to diffuse responsibility for their
 own impact – but this isn’t comparable to the meaningful institutional change
 that needs to take place.
 
 Individuals do make a difference when they have their hands on the levers of
 those institutions. As software engineers we have front-row seats for the
 deployment of one of the world’s [22]fastest growing energy consumers: AI. Our
 conscience calls us to resist the deployment of technologies which will
 exacerbate death and suffering for millions. AI might deliver benefits to
 society, but the cost is so high that we need to make careful decisions about
 how it’s deployed and if the benefits to society outweigh those costs. On the
 whole, vibe coding does not deliver benefits which, in the view of SourceHut
 and our community, outweigh the costs. Cheap, green electricity, preservation
 of freshwater resources, husbanding our planet and its wildlife: these are all
 much more important than AI-assisted coding.
 
 The broader social and economic consequences add to the alarm. These tools are
 disrupting labor and increasing the already unprecedented gap between the haves
 and the have-nots. These companies pay [23]minimum wage in inhumane conditions
 in impoverished countries for the labor they exploit to train models that can
 be applied to taking the bottom out of the labor market in wealthy countries.
 Moreover, the accumulated wealth of the AI owners, and the depleted resources
 of the AI proletariat, is further exploited to consolidate power, enable the
 rise of fascism, and destroy the social order alongside the environmental
 order. AI is being used to [24]deport immigrants without due process, [25]
 surveil and police poor and [26]racialized communities, manipulate elections
 and political discourse, [27]facilitate crimes against humanity at scale, and
 amplify injustices in our institutions.
 
 Finally, AI simply seems to be bad for the people who use it. Many open source
 maintainers complain of [28]being exhausted by a deluge of low-quality AI
 generated contributions. AI has been linked to “[29]deskilling”, making its
 users worse at problem solving and other cognitive tasks. And the number of
 people who have been [30]talked into psychosis or [31]suicide by their chatbots
 continues to rise.
 
 These concerns are myriad, credible, and demand action. Our small contribution
 to the problem is to clearly state our position on the matter and adjust our
 policies to provide a safe platform for people who are concious of these issues
 to work and find community.
 
 The upcoming changes
 
 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.
 
 A matter of interpretation
 
 This policy is worded carefully to allow some room for reasonable
 interpretation. For instance, the choice to target “original” content in the
 policy is intended to allow you to host mirrors of major codebases that may
 have more lenient LLM policies, such as the Linux kernel. An individual who
 contributes to a project like Linux can host their personal tree and stage
 patches on SourceHut, and a Linux kernel subsystem which has an internal policy
 on LLM use which aligns with SourceHut is welcome to host their tree, mailing
 lists, and so on, on our platform, without worrying about the impact of
 AI-assisted code in the rest of Linux. However, SourceHut would not be suitable
 as the upstream platform for the broader Linux project as a consequence of
 their liberal LLM policy.
 
 Moreover, the use of AI for purposes other than co-authoring code, tickets,
 emails, and so on, is discouraged but not prohibited. If you use LLMs privately
 to review your work, to ask questions of, to perform security analysis, and so
 on, and then write original code to push to SourceHut, your use-case is aligned
 with our policy.
 
 Software which contains generative AI features or directly enables the use of
 generative AI is not welcome on SourceHut once this policy comes into effect.
 
 Enforcement
 
 We intend to use a light touch with enforcement. Honesty and transparency is
 among our core values, and we have extended it to our users and expected it in
 return. We rely on the honor system when awarding financial aid on the basis of
 need almost every day, when we refrain from asking users to provide evidence of
 their financial situation to receive free service. All users pay according to
 their means, choosing the price point that they can afford, and have never been
 expected to justify their choice.
 
 So, in terms of enforcement, first and foremost we have made our position clear
 and shown that AI-assisted projects are not welcome on SourceHut. We will not
 be deploying any automated tools for detecting AI use or going out of our way
 to identify covert AI use in projects.
 
 One can lie or mislead us about their use of AI, but we want to signal to them
 that, if this behavior is discovered, they will lose the assumption of good
 faith and their account will be suspended. Therefore, it is not a wise choice
 to invest in SourceHut as the platform upon which this kind of software can be
 built, and we hope that reasonable users will make their choices accordingly.
 
 Existing projects on SourceHut which have made use of AI assistance in their
 work may remain on SourceHut provided that they adopt policies which are
 consistent with our terms of service for their future development. If you have
 used AI tools in your software before, and want to remain on SourceHut, there
 will be no retroactive enforcement, and we will take action against users who
 shame or harass those who have used AI in their work. Nonetheless we invite you
 to consider the arguments presented here and adjust the way you work in the
 future before you consider migrating away.
 
 If your project is affected
 
 Projects which utilize and intend to continue utilizing AI assistance after the
 policy change takes effect will be treated the same as most cases of ToS
 violation: with patience and understanding. If you or your project are affected
 by these changes and wish to continue making use of generative AI tools, you
 are required to migrate away from SourceHut at your earliest convenience. There
 is no deadline per-se, but you should have a viable migration plan in place as
 soon as possible.
 
 SourceHut is free and open-source software. You are welcome to follow the [32]
 installation instructions to self-host it, or to find a community that operates
 their own instance and would welcome you there. We can also recommend [33]
 Forgejo as an easier to deploy forge that may be suitable for your needs, and a
 [34]list of public instances is available. If you prefer to retain the mailing
 list workflow, deploying a solution like GNU mailman may be suitable for your
 needs. Proprietary solutions like GitHub may also be viewed favorably by
 projects which support AI use, and provide many features to support AI users.
 
 Much of your account and project data can be exported from SourceHut and
 imported with minimal loss into other forges. You can transfer your data to
 another SourceHut instance with high fidelity, and other platforms should be
 able to import a subset of the data (e.g. git repos to Forgejo or mailing list
 archives to GNU mailman). Please consult the [35]hut tool for this purpose.
 
 If you require assistance in figuring out your migration plan, or want to make
 sure you have enough time to implement the changes while minimizing the
 disruption for your project, please [36]don’t hesitate to ask us for help.
 
 [37]« What's cooking on SourceHut? Q2 2026
 
 Welcome to sourcehut! This suite of open source tools is the software
 development platform you've been waiting for.
 
   • Git and Mercurial hosting, mailing lists, bug tracking, continuous
     integration, and more
   • Absolutely no tracking or advertising
   • All features work without JavaScript
   • No AI features whatsoever
   • [38] 100% free and open source software
 
 [39] Register for sr.ht or [40] learn more
 © 2026 sourcehut [41]Privacy Policy [42]Terms of Use [43]Logo & Media resources
 [44]Source Code (AGPL, BSD et al)
 
     We are here to make free software better. We will be honest, transparent,
     and empathetic. We care for our users, and we will not exploit them, and we
     hope that they will reward our care and diligence with success.
 
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 References:
 
 [1] https://sourcehut.org/
 [2] https://sourcehut.org/blog
 [3] https://sourcehut.org/pricing
 [4] https://sourcehut.org/community
 [5] https://www.hellotux.com/sourcehut
 [6] https://sr.ht/
 [7] https://blog.codeberg.org/protecting-our-floss-commons-from-llms.html
 [8] https://lists.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/sr.ht-discuss/%[email protected]%3E
 [9] https://sourcehut.org/blog/2026-08-27-tos-changes-and-llms/#changes
 [10] https://codeberg.org/forgejo/discussions/issues/320
 [11] https://spectrum.ieee.org/ai-code-generation-ownership
 [12] https://github.com/chardet/chardet/issues/327
 [13] https://lwn.net/Articles/1070698/
 [14] https://lwn.net/Articles/1063292/
 [15] https://news.mit.edu/2025/explained-generative-ai-environmental-impact-0117
 [16] https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-choose-ai-climate-goals-data-center-chief-warns/
 [17] https://newsroom.ucla.edu/stories/opinion-ai-is-destroying-our-planet-we-must-act
 [18] https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/environmental-health/articles/10.3389/fenvh.2026.1789071/full
 [19] https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/how-ai-cloud-computing-may-delay-transition-clean-energy-2024-11-21/
 [20] https://www.entergy.com/news/entergy-louisiana-announces-a-new-agreement-with-meta-that-will-deliver-an-additional-2b-in-customer-savings
 [21] https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/extracting-profits-from-the-public-how-utility-ratepayers-are-paying-for-big-techs-power/
 [22] https://energy.ec.europa.eu/news/focus-data-centres-energy-hungry-challenge-2025-11-17_en
 [23] https://time.com/6247678/openai-chatgpt-kenya-workers/
 [24] https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/palantir-deportation-roundup
 [25] https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/machine-surveillance-is-being-super-charged-by-large-ai-models
 [26] https://www.oxjournal.org/predictive-policing-or-predictive-prejudice/
 [27] https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/04/gaza-un-experts-deplore-use-purported-ai-commit-domicide-gaza-call
 [28] https://arstechnica.com/security/2026/01/overrun-with-ai-slop-curl-scraps-bug-bounties-to-ensure-intact-mental-health/
 [29] https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.08872
 [30] https://thehumanlineproject.org/research-stanford/
 [31] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_linked_to_chatbots#Suicides
 [32] https://man.sr.ht/installation.md
 [33] https://forgejo.org/
 [34] https://codeberg.org/forgejo-contrib/delightful-forgejo#user-content-public-instances
 [35] https://sr.ht/~xenrox/hut/
 [36] mailto:~sircmpwn/[email protected]
 [37] https://sourcehut.org/blog/2026-05-28-whats-cooking-q2-2026/
 [38] https://sr.ht/~sircmpwn/sourcehut
 [39] https://meta.sr.ht/register
 [40] https://sourcehut.org/
 [41] https://man.sr.ht/privacy.md
 [42] https://man.sr.ht/terms.md
 [43] https://sourcehut.org/logo
 [44] https://sr.ht/~sircmpwn/sourcehut/
 [45] mailto:~sircmpwn/[email protected]