Ask HN: What's with the gatekeeping in open source?

[danenania]

Today I tried to post my open source project on the /r/opensource subreddit. It's an AGPL 3.0-licensed, terminal-based AI coding tool that defaults to OpenAI, but can also be used with other models, including open source models.

The subreddit's rules in the sidebar state that a project must be open source under the definition on Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source) and also that limited and responsible self-promotion is ok.

My post was automatically blocked, seemingly by the mere mention of "OpenAI". The auto-message stated that "ChatGPT wrappers" were not allowed on the subreddit.

I messaged the mods to tell them about the mistake, since my project plainly is not a "ChatGPT wrapper". One of them replied saying only "Working as intended" and that because my project uses OpenAI models by default, it isn't welcome in the subreddit.

I asked why projects using OpenAI in particular are penalized (despite this being mentioned nowhere in the rules on the sidebar), considering that there are many posts for projects interfacing with MacOS, Windows, AWS, GitHub, and countless other closed source technologies. I received no answer to this question. I was only told that any project "advertising" OpenAI was "against the spirit of FOSS" and therefore did not belong on the subreddit. The mod also continued derisively referring to my project as a "ChatGPT wrapper" and "OpenAI plugin" despite my earlier explanation. I was also called "egocentric" for wanting to share my project.

It made me sad that a subreddit with over 200k members that seems to have a lot of cool discussions going on is being moderated like this. What's with all the gatekeeping? Why are people so interested in excluding the "wrong" type of open source projects? As far as I'm concerned, if you have an open source license and people can run your code, then your project is open source.

Am I right to be miffed by this or does the moderator have a point? Have you experienced this kind of thing with your own projects? How have you dealt with it?

This is my project, by the way: https://github.com/plandex-ai/plandex

[wmf]

I think what you're experiencing is AI fatigue turned up to the max. Some people have become so soured by AI hype that they lash out at anything AI-adjacent. It's probably nothing to do with open source even if they use OpenAI's lack of openness as an excuse. Unfortunately for you, there's really nothing you can do but avoid such people and the places they control. You should also understand that you're going to have to work extra hard to distinguish yourself from AI hustle bros.

[forbiddenlake]

The moderators of that subreddit are free to moderate their subreddit as they wish. The good news for you is that one subreddit does not represent open source and doesn't even represent reddit. Moderator quality varies. There's plenty of other places, on and off reddit, where you might be better received.

[danenania → forbiddenlake]

"The moderators of that subreddit are free to moderate their subreddit as they wish."

True enough. I guess I'm just wondering if they are truly representing the 200k people they are moderating with this kind of approach. This is the largest open source subreddit on reddit, and probably one of the larger open source focused communities anywhere, so I don't know if I would just dismiss it as "mods being mods" as if it was a smaller niche subreddit.

And for sure, I have found other places that are more welcoming. The attitude just made me sad, so I was curious if others on HN have experienced this kind of thing and how they feel about it.

[sakshatshinde]

Maybe it's less of gatekeepers and more about quality control.

[danenania → sakshatshinde]

In what sense? It didn't seem like the quality of my project mattered much, just the fact that it was using a particular technology. Unless you are saying that all projects that even mention OpenAI are inherently low quality?

[verdverm → danenania]

Think about it from their perspective. There is a hype cycle and they have limited bandwidth to handle all the posts. By putting in some simple rules, while having false positives, is on balance a big win for them.