Fermi’s entire public identity, once you get past “Join today!”, is a ban. Not a careful policy about unreviewed dumps. A ban on any use of AI, including assistance, “for legal reasons.” Then they go back to cloning Discord on Node, posting into machine-ranked feeds, and asking GitHub (Microsoft’s Copilot factory) to host the mirror.
AI code due to not being GPLv3 compatable is not allowed in this repo. I thought this didn't need to be said, but it does. And to be clear, any use of AI is not allowed in Fermi.
Keep in mind that we do, under no circumstances, accept AI-generated, AI-assisted, or otherwise machine-generated contributions, for legal reasons.
No. Just no. It uses AI, and is not currently FOSS, with the most up to date source code being behind a paywall.
Fluxer gets no architecture review. The disqualifier is that a computer helped. The rest of the page is a tour of other people’s governance. The author of that tour was banned from Spacebar, in their own telling, for the same argument.
GCC’s 2026 AI policy is about whether LLM output is copyrightable enough to sit inside a copyleft enforcement chain. Fermi’s README pretends that is a GPLv3 problem, then ships three labels at once. One of those labels later moved. The sermon stayed on GPLv3.
| Where | What it said | What it says |
|---|---|---|
LICENSE |
GNU Affero GPL v3 | GNU Affero GPL v3 |
package.json license |
AGPL-3.0 (deprecated SPDX) | |
| README | “GPLv3 compatable” | “GPLv3 compatable” |
| Translatewiki | AGPL v3 | AGPL v3 |
On September 24, 2026 they noticed the npm field.
Commit 23c1e5c,
message: “apparently this was wrong.” One string changed:
GPL-3.0AGPL-3.0.
The README still preaches GPLv3. Translatewiki still says AGPL v3.
GPL-3.0 and
AGPL-3.0 are two licenses.
The FSF compatibility note
forbids relicensing GPL code as AGPL, or AGPL as GPL. Combining them in one program is allowed
only because each license’s section 13 says so.
AGPL section 13
also requires source for a modified version that users interact with over a network.
Fermi is a web client at fermi.chat. That is the case AGPL
exists for. Declaring GPL-3.0
The replacement string is still the wrong SPDX version of the right family.
SPDX deprecated the bare identifier AGPL-3.0
in license list 3.0. Current identifiers:
AGPL-3.0-only
and
AGPL-3.0-or-later.
Stallman asked people to stop writing AGPL-3.0
because it hides whether later FSF versions are allowed.
SPDX’s GNU-license rule
is the same: always suffix -only or -or-later.
Fermi’s LICENSE file already includes the FSF “How to Apply These Terms” template, which grants
“version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.” That grant is
AGPL-3.0-or-later. They never put that notice on source files. The npm field now
says the ambiguous deprecated ID. Older SPDX mapping treated bare AGPL-3.0 the
way it treated bare GPL-3.0: as this-version-only. The npm field and the FSF
template still disagree about a future AGPLv4.
A matching npm line would be "license": "AGPL-3.0-or-later". The AI ban is still
written as a GPLv3 problem. The word in the README is still “compatable.” A policy that bans
AI “because of GPLv3” while the tree is AGPL, and the npm field spent months saying GPL, is a
slogan with a git history.
commit 23c1e5c · package.json before · package.json after · LICENSE · README · SPDX AGPL-3.0 (deprecated) · AGPL-3.0-only · AGPL-3.0-or-later · FSF identifiers · FSF compatibility · SPDX GNU suffixes · npm license field · Translatewiki
Harmony’s contributing file goes further than GCC anyway. GCC still allows non-significant
use. Harmony bans “AI-assisted” and “otherwise machine-generated” under no circumstances.
Spellcheck is machine-generated. Search ranking is machine-generated.
npm install pulls a registry full of code that was touched by Copilot, Claude,
and Cursor in 2026. The rule is unenforceable, which is why it exists: as identity.
The old Jank Client README said the AI line “didn’t need to be said, but it doesn’t.” They later flipped the last word to “does.” Even the manifesto needed a patch.
Harmony’s README: “We aim to reverse engineer and add additional features to the Discord backend, while remaining completely backwards compatible with existing bots, applications, and clients.” That is the whole pitch. Clone the proprietary API. Keep the bots. Keep the chrome. Call it freedom.
Harmony is Spacebar after a two-week wait. Spacebar is Fosscord with a new name. The COPYING file still remembers 2021. Mathium05’s own post says they were “not a backend dev,” then they took the backend.
Dbadges.ts is Discord’s badge list, including HypeSquad, Nitro, and booster
tiers. Guild rail. Member list. Bot tags. GIF button. Official screenshot indistinguishable
from Discord at a glance. The homepage i18n key is still welcomeJank.
docs.melodychat.org: “feel free to ask questions in our discord.com guild.” Fermi blog CTAs: “or even the Harmony Discord Server.” A Discord alternative that cannot quit Discord is a costume.
You can dislike generative models. Plenty of people do, for labor, energy, or taste. Fermi’s version is a purity test aimed at other chat apps, written by a project whose existence is “we copied Discord’s homework and then forked the people who copied it first.”
Fermi is TypeScript compiled by SWC (a Rust compiler), served by Node, stored on Git forges, translated by Translatewiki, donated to via Liberapay, rendered in Chromium and WebKit, carried over the same transatlantic fiber that carries ChatGPT. The CPUs do not know they have been conscripted into a holy war.
GitHub, the public mirror, is Microsoft. Microsoft ships Copilot into the same UI that shows Fermi’s README. Codeberg restricted LLM content; Fermi moved the canonical repo there, then kept the GitHub mirror anyway, because that is where the stars are (hundreds on GitHub, a handful on Codeberg).
Weekly updates go to Reddit, whose feed is ranked by models. The blog has one-click share to Twitter, Facebook, and Bluesky. Those networks are advertising machines with a ranking model in the middle. You do not get to use the loudspeaker and then pretend electricity is a moral failing when someone else uses it to autocomplete a function.
| Stack they actually run | Node, npm, SWC, TypeScript, Docker, Nix flakes on Harmony, WebRTC, browsers. |
|---|---|
| Forums they actually post to | r/selfhosted, r/fermichat, a discord.com guild, Twitter/Facebook/Bluesky buttons. |
| Hosts they actually use | GitHub, Codeberg, Translatewiki, Liberapay, fermi.chat, blog.fermi.chat. |
| Rule they actually wrote | “any use of AI is not allowed.” |
A coherent anti-AI position would be: we will not accept unreviewed dumps, and we will disclose tools. Fermi wrote a purity oath, then asked the internet’s ranking models to please look at this week’s bundling changelog.
March 29, 2026: Mathium05 says they were banned from the Spacebar Discord “for arguing against AI use in projects.” Spacebar, in that telling, later claimed other reasons. Two weeks of silence. Then Harmony, named after a community vote Spacebar had already declined. An addendum in June 2026 gloats that an “AI fork” of Fermi went closed source.
That is the doctrine as product management. Disagree about Copilot, lose the Discord, take the git history. Then write 4,000 words about how the old project had “poor management.” Then post weekly in r/selfhosted as if the schism were a feature release.