r/opensource bans AI-made projects, then tells non-English speakers to leave

r/opensource, Reddit's main forum for open-source software, has banned projects that use AI, are made by AI, or are built for AI, and told non-English speakers to go elsewhere. The rules went up on 24 October under the title "Your tokens aren't valuable: No more AI," drawing thousands of replies, a rival subreddit and an argument about what open source means.

What the moderators actually wrote

Moderator Wolvereness stated the position without hedging: "If your project uses AI, is made by AI, or is intended for AI, it's not welcome on r/opensource. AI, as it exists today, is incongruent to this Open Source community." Submissions must now clear a short set of thresholds:

• at least a year old, and actively maintained
• multiple contributors, "subjectively 3+"
• an existing community, an OSI licence, and no resemblance to a capstone project
• an account at least a year old with "significant Reddit contributions"

The language rule is justified by detection rather than taste: "We cannot distinguish between AI-written and AI-translated. Since you don't speak English, you can't even verify yourself if it translated correctly." Requests for maintainers are out too.

The revolt is definitional

Kotaku's embed records 2,777 comments. The most-upvoted objection it quotes is about classification, not sentiment: "This is orthogonal to open source. It's OK to not like AI but it doesn't change whether something is open source or not. I guess Linux is no longer allowed here? Linus uses AI for kernel development now. This is a ridiculous stance."

Not hypothetical: the kernel's disclosure requirements for AI-assisted patches became a story this month, as traictory reported. The Verge noted commenters warning that code carrying AI-generated contributions could fail the test, and that the one-year, multi-contributor bar shuts out solo developers. A rival forum, r/trueopensource, appeared within a day.

The moderators' reply

Wolvereness has argued in the comments, per The Verge, that enforcement will stay selective, citing "software that incidentally has accessibility features that use AI," automatic captioning among them. The moderator also disputed the backlash's shape: in a comment quoted by Kotaku, Wolvereness blamed "some guy on twitter claiming to be alternative news" who posted an "opinionated editorial pointing hundreds of people to the thread," and said the influx did not reflect the subreddit's regulars. The announcement now links a follow-up titled "Adjustments will be made"; the original text stands.

Both readings are on the record. For the moderators, a forum filling with generated submissions and burner accounts needs a human filter, and AI involvement is the cheapest proxy available. For the objectors, provenance is not licence, and a rule that can disqualify the kernel has confused a tool with a definition. The promised adjustments are the next test.