Reddit’s r/opensource bans AI projects, and non-English speakers too

The moderators of r/opensource, one of Reddit’s main open source forums, now bar any project that uses AI, is made by AI or is intended for AI. The new rules also shut out solo developers, young projects and people who do not speak English.

Moderator Wolvereness announced the rules on Saturday in a post on the forum. By Monday it had about 2,700 comments and a net score of zero.

“AI, as it exists today, is incongruent to this Open Source community,” Wolvereness wrote. “Tokens are cheap, and we don’t care how many you spent to make your amazing project.”

What the rules require

Any project advertised on the forum must now be at least a year old and actively maintained. It needs three or more contributors, “subjectively”, plus an existing community and an OSI licence. Common school projects, such as note-taking apps and PDF viewers, are out. So are tools built for AI, such as MCP servers.

Posters need a Reddit account at least a year old with significant activity. The forum will no longer take requests for maintainers or contributors. The moderators will permanently ban anyone who asks them for an exception after trying to post. Wolvereness estimated that 20 such messages arrive a day.

“If you don’t speak English, you need to find a different community. We cannot distinguish between AI-written and AI-translated,” the post says.

Registered non-profits can skip the project and account minimums if the moderators approve them first.

A moderator objects

Another moderator, ssddanbrown, wrote that nobody had consulted them. They learned of the changes from moderation notifications.

“I don’t agree with that rule. Especially so with how it was said,” ssddanbrown wrote of the language ban.

One user said they have maintained a project alone for nine years. It has more than 300 GitHub stars and no AI, but it no longer qualifies because it has a single contributor.

Others asked if the Linux kernel, which takes AI-assisted contributions, now falls under the ban. Wolvereness replied that the kernel would pass on “the subjective line”, as Luis Rijo reported for PPC Land. Linus Torvalds has dismissed AI labels on kernel patches.

A user asked how moderators would tell vibe-coded projects from those that use AI to check for bugs. Wolvereness answered:

“There’s no ‘objective’ way to implement this policy,” Wolvereness wrote.

The moderator also blamed the backlash on a post on X that pointed hundreds of people to the thread.

Rival forums

Users opposed to the rules have set up r/TrueOpenSource and r/OpenSourceAIAllowed. Wolvereness later edited the post to cheer on these and two other new forums. The moderator hoped they would be a refuge for people the policy affects.

Reddit itself uses AI to enforce moderation through its new Rules Hub. Last week, Spotify said it had pulled 50 million AI tracks and spam uploads from its recommendations.