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“The largest Reddit open source community has shut its doors to anybody who even glances at the word AI. They've made it very clear that if you do not speak English well, you cannot even use AI to translate your text. And they suggest that maybe this isn't the community for you if you do not speak English well. They literally say that. I think they've lost their mind over at open source.”

Syntax (Wes Bos & Scott Tolinski) · Hands-On Engineering Podcasts · November 2026

“The largest Reddit open source community has shut its doors to anybody who even glances at the word AI. They've made it very clear that if you do not speak English well, you cannot even use AI to translate your text. And they suggest that maybe this isn't the community for you if you do not speak English well. They literally say that. I think they've lost their mind over at open source.” — Scott Tolinski, Syntax (Wes Bos & Scott Tolinski)

Context

Tolinski reacts to r/opensource banning AI use entirely. He objects most to the rule against using AI to translate, which he reads as turning away non-native English speakers.

Transcript

Syntax (Wes Bos & Scott Tolinski) Around 27:00 into the episode
Scott Tolinski

Come on. But

CJ Reynolds

…Absolutely. Absolutely. I don't think that's a conspiracy theory. Yeah. Like it adds to their daily active users. Like any place you go, it looks like the site has activity. So there's, it's, it's supposed to push and pull in order to decide like what they actually do about the bot traffic. So.

Scott Tolinski

Yes. On that same note as Reddit Closing in that regard, another community on Reddit has also closed. And that is the R open source, which is the largest Reddit open source community, has shut its doors to anybody who even glances at the word AI. They've made it very clear that you can't even use, if you do not speak English well, you cannot even use AI to translate your text. And they suggest that maybe this isn't the community for you if you do not speak English well. They literally say that. I think they've lost their mind over at open source. When you can't even talk about are you sharing your screen?

CJ Reynolds

Sorry.

Scott Tolinski

No, I'm not. I'm just talking in general. If you cannot even talk about the Linux kernel contributions or anything in regards to any of that stuff, you are out of your mind. You've taken the exact opposite stance of open source in general and have closed it down. It's crazy to think like, oh, I'm…

Wes Bos

that's it. That's obviously nailed. Everybody has everything that's open source version and everyone makes a new open source version of something and then abandons it a week later.

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.

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