r/opensource bans AI projects, and its strict new posting rules also shut out solo developers

Moderators of r/opensource, Reddit's general forum for open source software, have banned any project that "uses AI, is made by AI, or is intended for AI." Moderator Wolvereness posted the new submission rules over the weekend, and the post says AI "as it exists today, is incongruent to this Open Source community." The rules go well beyond AI. A project must be at least a year old, actively maintained, carry an OSI licence, and have an existing community with "subjectively 3+" contributors. The person posting needs a Reddit account at least a year old with "significant Reddit contributions." Anyone who messages the moderators for an exception after trying to post will be permanently banned. Help Net Security reports that the moderators link this rule to an estimate of about 20 such messages a day. Non-English speakers are told to "find a different community" because the moderators cannot tell AI-written posts from AI-translated ones. Registered nonprofits can skip the project and account minimums if they get approval first. The Verge reports that users have revolted against the rules, and one moderator has objected to the language rule. One user said a nine-year-old package with no AI and more than 300 GitHub stars no longer qualifies because it has a single maintainer. The episode shows how efforts to stem low-quality AI submissions can also exclude legitimate contributors.