Overview
- Over the weekend moderators posted a sweeping policy that bars any project that “uses AI, is made by AI, or is intended for AI” and says enforcement is up to moderators’ judgment.
- The new submission criteria require projects to be at least one year old, actively maintained, carry an OSI‑approved license, and have multiple contributors, which excludes many solo and new projects.
- Moderators added an English‑only posting requirement and told non‑English speakers to find other communities because volunteers said they cannot reliably tell translated text from AI output.
- The rules allow limited exceptions for incidental features such as accessibility tools, but moderators warned that asking for post exceptions can trigger permanent bans and some moderators privately disagreed with parts of the policy.
- The change has sharply divided the community, prompted many users to move to a newly created AI‑friendly subreddit r/TrueOpenSource, and raised questions about enforcement given that major projects and developers already use AI tools.