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.…