It seems open source loses the most from AI. Open source code trained the models, the models are being used to spam open source projects anywhere there's incentive, they can be used to chip away at open source business models by implementing paid features and providing the support, and eventually perhaps AI simply replaces most open source code
Extending on the same line, we will see programs like Google Summer of Code (GSoC) getting a massive revamp, or they will stop operating.
From my failed attempt, I remember that
- Students had to find a project matching their interests/skills and start contributing early.
- We used to talk about staying away from some projects with a low supply of students applying (or lurking in the GitHub/BitBucket issues) because of the complexity required for the projects.
Both of these acted as a creative filter for projects and landed them good students/contributors, but it completely goes away with AI being able to do that at scale.
> they can be used to chip away at open source business models by implementing paid features and providing the support
There are a lot of things to be sad about AI, but this is not it. Nobody has a right to a business model, especially one that assumes nobody will compete with you. If your business model relies on the rest of the world bring sucky so you can sell some value-added to open-core software, i'm happy when it fails.
I couldn't possibly disagree more. AI has created an entirely new way to contribute to open source. You can not, in addition to donating to the maintainers, donate your _tokens_ to fix bugs.
I wouldn't say open source code solely trained the models, surely there are CS courses and textbooks, official documentation as well as transcripts of talks and courses all factor in as well.
On another note, regarding AI replacing most open source code. I forget what tool it was, but I had a need for a very niche way of accessing an old Android device it was rooted, but if I used something like Disk Drill it would eventually crap out empty files. So I found a GUI someone made, and started asking Claude to add things I needed for it to a) let me preview directories it was seeing and b) let me sudo up, and let me download with a reasonable delay (1s I think) which basically worked, I never had issues again, it was a little slow to recover old photos, but oh well.
I debated pushing the code changes back into github, it works as expected, but it drifted from the maintainers own goals I'm sure.
I feel AI will have the same effect degrading Internet as social media did. This flood of dumb PRs, issues is one symptom of it. Other is AI accelerating the trend which TikTok started—short, shallow, low-effort content.
It's a shame since this technology is brilliant. But every tech company has drank the “AI is the future” Kool-aid, which means no one has incentive to seriously push back against the flood of low-effort, AI-generated slop. So, it's going to be race to the bottom for a while.
AI is not submitting the slop, people are.
This is not a technology, but ethics and respect problem.
From the same article:
> Not all AI-generated bug reports are nonsense. It’s not possible to determine the exact share, but Daniel Stenberg knows of more than a hundred good AI assisted reports that led to corrections.
Meaning: developers and researchers who use the tool as it's meant to work, as a tool, are leveraging it to improve curl. But they are not skipping the part of understanding the content of their reports, testing it, and only then submitting it.
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"open source" and "business model" in the same sentence... next you're gonna tell me to eat pudding with a fork.
How so? I think the Bazaar model has the most to gain - contributors can use LLMs to create PRs, and you can choose from a vast array of projects depending on how much you trust vibe coding.
It has also really accelerated the army of hustlers who can't actually code but want to get a contributor badge on major repos to put on their resume.
It's not like this sort of hustling didn't exist prior to LLMs but the volume has ballooned massively.