How vibe coding is killing open source
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How vibe coding is killing open source
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Re: How vibe coding is killing open source
#2I think vibe coding might de-emphasize software as a end product. That part is more doable.
But the general purpose machinery, the substrait we work on? That's hugely open source today, and will gladly accept and make use of that platform innovation that you can offer up.
The authors talk about it being harder to get traction. And that's both true because of LLMs, and also, has been the case for a while now. Theres so much open source already, so many great tools, that it takes real effort and distinction to stand out & call attention to yourself.
Re: How vibe coding is killing open source
#3It does seem like it's harming open source in a few ways:
* no longer any pressure to contribute upstream
* no longer any need to use a library at all
* Verbose PRs created with LLMs that are resume-padding
* False issues created with LLM-detection by unsophisticated users
Overall, we've lost the single meeting place of an open-source library that everyone meets at so we can create a better commons. That part is true. It will be interesting to see what follows from this.
I know that for very many small tools, I much prefer to just "write my own" (read: have Claude Code write me something). A friend showed me a worktree manager project on Github and instead of learning to use it, I just had Claude Code create one that was highly idiosyncratic to my needs. Iterative fuzzy search, single keybinding nav, and so on. These kinds of things have low ongoing maintenance and when I want a change I don't need to consult anyone or anything like that.
But we're not at the point where I'd like to run my own Linux-compatible kernel or where I'd even think of writing a Ghostty. So perhaps what's happened is that the baseline for an open-source project being worthwhile to others has increased.
For the moment, for a lot of small ones, I much prefer their feature list and README to their code. Amusing inversion.
Re: How vibe coding is killing open source
#4Open Source isn't a tech stack or a specific way of typing syntax, it’s an ideology. It’s the belief that knowledge and tools should be free to share, study and modify. You cannot kill an idea. Whether I write a function by hand or 'vibe' it into existence with an LLM, the act of liberating that code for others to use remains the same.
Re: How vibe coding is killing open source
#5I maintain multiple open source projects. In the past two months I've seen an uptick in AI-forgery attacks, and also an uptick in legitimate code contributions.
The AI-forgery attacks are highly polished, complete with forged user photos and fake social networking pages.
The legitimate code contributions are from people who have near-zero followers and no obvious track record.
This is topsy-turvy yet good news for open source because it focuses the work on the actual code, and many more people can learn how to contribute.
So long as code is good enough to get in the right ballpark for a PR, then I'm fine cleaning the work up a bit by hand then merging. IMHO this is a great leap forward for delivering better projects.
Re: How vibe coding is killing open source
#6Open Source isn't a tech stack or a specific way of typing syntax, it’s an ideology. It’s the belief that knowledge and tools should be free to share, study and modify. You cannot kill an idea. Whether I write a function by hand or 'vibe' it into existence with an LLM, the act of liberating that code for others to use remains the same.
What's not the same is that the LLMs used to create the code are highly centralized and controlled. I suspect it's only a matter of time until the content industries start trying to restrict what code LLMs are allowed to produce so that you can't use an LLM to bypass DRM.
Re: How vibe coding is killing open source
#7How many others are now reluctant to open source their code because they don't want it to end up in the training for an LLM? I certainly am.
Re: How vibe coding is killing open source
#8Open source and free software was the largest transfer of wealth in the form of techne freely from the craftspeople to the business people.
Knowing how to write a database could make one fabulously rich. Now the person who knows how to make and promote a simple crud app backed my MySql becomes the rich one, while the db people beg for donations.
Linux killed Sun/Solaris and SGI Irix
Developers have voluntarily moved further down in the chain of value - now just describing themselves as primarily a business liaison who can translate to code. All the computer whispering necessary to do all this is freely available and digestible for free.
LLMs are just the expected endpoint of this.
Re: How vibe coding is killing open source
#9It does seem like it's harming open source in a few ways: * no longer any pressure to contribute upstream * no longer any need to use a library at all * Verbose PRs created with LLMs that are resume-padding * False issues created with LLM-detection by unsophisticated users Overall, we've lost the single meeting place of an open-source library that everyone meets at so we can create a better commons. That part is true…
AI coding sort of reminds me of when ninite originally came out for windows. It was like a "build your own OS". Check boxes and get what you need in a simple executable.
AI coding is kind of similar. You tell it what you want and it just sort of pukes it out. You run it then forget about it for the most part.
I think AI coding is kind of going to hit a ceiling, maybe idk, but it'll become an essential part of "getting stuff done quickly".
Re: How vibe coding is killing open source
#10It does seem like it's harming open source in a few ways: * no longer any pressure to contribute upstream * no longer any need to use a library at all * Verbose PRs created with LLMs that are resume-padding * False issues created with LLM-detection by unsophisticated users Overall, we've lost the single meeting place of an open-source library that everyone meets at so we can create a better commons. That part is true…
> no longer any need to use a library at all
As someone who works on medical device software, I see this as a huge plus (maybe a con for FOSS specifically, but a net win overall).
I'm a big proponent of the go-ism "A little copying is better than a little dependency". Maybe we need a new proverb "A little generated code is better than a little dependency". Fewer dependencies = smaller cyberseucity burden, smaller regulatory burden, and more.
Now, obviously foregoing libsodium or something for generated code is a bad idea, but probably 90%+ of npm packages could probably go.