AI will kill open source

I’m of an opposite mind. I reckon the author wrote this in the dip, and we’ll see a rebound soon where FOSS is strengthened by anti-AI sentiments.

We need to stop being agnostic, draw a line, and begin rejecting any genAI involvement in open source before it’s actually too late.

exactly.

Overall I agree, but it is missing and important aspect: maintainability.

This is maybe the most insidious part of LLM use to write code. Since LLMs have no real understanding of the structure of the project they will duplicate functions and generally make a mess that very quickly becomes unmaintainable by humans. The only “solution” LLM users have for that is perpetually rewriting large swaths of the codebase introducing new bugs, removing features and so on.

Since open-source software is usually especially long lived and maintained by a changing group of people, this results in code bases that are like asbestos that no one wants to even touch.

In addition to the other comments here, we can’t rule out the human love for hobbies either. Did I spend 2 days hand coding an entire blog that I won’t show to anyone just for fun to learn some HTML and CSS? Hell yeah I did. Will I use that knowledge to make something less chaotically coded that I can actually be proud of? More than likely.

Obviously that won’t be a large percentage of the market if even a noticeable one but, I’d like to think hobbyists will help preserve some good open source projects.

I was thinking the other day how easy it would be for someone malicious to put a back door in whatever AI slop they make

I’d almost rather see all AI generated content be posted to its own separate open source platform “GitSlop” or something

😩 If you want to be absurdly narrow minded and treat OSI like some deity, their word like a holy book, and anything outside of that scripture or benediction as heresy, then maybe you’ll see the arrival of AI as some kind of ragnarok.

Opensource will change but it won’t be “killed”. You can’t and won’t stop people putting the code for their projects online. The stuff you (or your agent or whatever) publish will continue to be used as an open portfolio.

A good amount of stuff published will be filth and indistinguishable from clonker filth or human filth. Additionally, local AI will also become more common. Making your code indistinguishable will also make the “AI code is unlicensable” argument worthless. Go prove that the trash heap I published was written while drunk and high or by an AI.

I hope my drive-by PRs don’t come off in the same way.

For example, as the simplest no-description, no-comment example, when I see typos or wording errors in text on a random blog I check if there’s a direct way to contribute - to GitHub edit and submit a PR, and when there is, I do that.

There’s nothing for me to say or describe, really, and it’s not like I interacted with their project or community before or even plan to after. (Sometimes I do look into the issue tracker etc depending on the project or website. But that’s beside the raised concern.)

I see it more of a collective and open collaboration. But that’s not necessarily visible on the receiving end.