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How vibe coding is killing open source

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Re: How vibe coding is killing open source

#21

Post by rpodraza »

no_wizard wrote: post #16
umvi wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 reg…

> probably 90%+ of npm packages could probably go I feel npm gets held to an unreasonable standard. The fact is tons of beginners across the world publish packages to it. Some projects publish lots of packages to it that only make sense for those projects but are public anyway then you have the bulwark pa lager that most orgs use. It is unfair to me that it’s always held as the “problematic registry”. When you have a…

I think you are completely oblivious to the problems plaguing the NPM ecosystem. When you start a typical frontend project using modern technology, you will introduce hundreds, if not thousands of small packages. These packages get new security holes daily, are often maintained by single people, are subject to being removed, to the supply chain attacks, download random crap from github, etc. Each of them should ideally be approved and monitored for changes, uploaded to the company repo to avoid build problem when it gets taken down, etc.

Compare this to Java ecosystem where a typical project will get an order of magnitude fewer packages, from vendors you can mostly trust.

Re: How vibe coding is killing open source

#22

Post by cosmic_cheese »

arjie wrote: post #3

It 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 may be worth considering how much the impact of LLMs is exacerbated by friction in the contribution process.

Many projects require a great deal of bureaucracy, hoop-jumping, and sheer dogged persistence to get changes merged. It shouldn't be surprising if some are electing it easier to just vibe-customize their own private forks as they see fit, both skipping that whole mess and allowing for modifications that would've never been approved of in mainline anyway.

Re: How vibe coding is killing open source

#23

Post by pelasaco »

dom96 wrote: post #7

How 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.

some startups are already avoiding the open source route, exactly because of that. You publish your code, then 2 weeks later, we have dozen of "$PROJ in $LANG rewritten". 30000 LOC + super verbose README.md done in one week, in less than 10 commits, from somebody that never wrote a single line of OSS.

Re: How vibe coding is killing open source

#24

Post by makerdiety »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #8

Open 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…

Beautiful. I like the displacement of human labor.

Re: How vibe coding is killing open source

#25

Post by honestduane »

dom96 wrote: post #7

How 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.

This is honestly why I have stopped contributing to open source.

I was fine with my work being a gift for all of humanity equally, but I did not consent with it being a gift to a for-profit company that I'm not personally benefiting from, that wont even follow the spirit of the open source license.

If AI doesn't have to follow the GPL, then I'm not going to create GPL code.

Re: How vibe coding is killing open source

#26

Post by Lerc »

I really don't like the narrative of 'X is killing Y', or 'Z is dead' Everything being treated as an existential threat.

I'm also not particularly fond of the other extreme of toxic positivity where any problem is just a challenge and everybody is excited to take them on.

Once seems to understate the level of agency people have and the other seems to overstate.

The world is changing. Adapting does seem to be the rational approach.

I don't think Open Source is being killed but it does need to manage the current situation in a way that provides the best outcome.

I have been thinking that there may be merit in AI branches or forks. Open source projects direct any AI produced PRs to the AI branch. Maintainers of that branch curate the changes to send upstream. The maintainers of the original branch need not take an active involvement in the AI branch. If the AI branch is inadequately maintained or curated, then upstream simply receives no patches. In a sense it creates an opportunity for people who want to contribute. It produces a new area where people can compartmentalise their involvement without disrupting the wider project. This would lower the barrier of entry to productively supporting an open source project.

I doubt the benefit of resume-padding will persist long in an AI world. By the very nature of their act, they are showing what they are claiming to do is unremarkable.

Re: How vibe coding is killing open source

#27

Post by charcircuit »

>This also removes the typical more organic selection process of libraries and tooling, replacing it with whatever was most prevalent in the LLM’s training data

Another article written by someone who doesn't actually use AI. Claude will literally search "XYZ library 2025" to find libraries. That is essentially equivalent to how it's always worked. It's not just what is in the dataset.

Re: How vibe coding is killing open source

#28

Post by waynesonfire »

I don't understand this article. ChatGPT made Google search and SO irrelevant so vibe coding is killing open source? ... That's a stretch.

> The LLM will not interact with the developers of a library or tool, nor submit usable bug reports, or be aware of any potential issues no matter how well-documented.

Arn't these interactions responsible for the claimed burn-out suffered by open-source maintainers? If you want interaction then, I don't know, go to a conference? Again, I don't get the issue. Seems like a good thing! Users are able to find answers and solutions to their quesitons more efficiently--all the while, still using the open-source library. The usage chart is still seeing tremendous growth! Developers are still using the library to solve their problems. It seems like exactly what open-source was intended for.

The issue to me is that, the incentives for investing in open-source have changed for some maintainers in such a way that they're no longer in alignment with their return on their investment. Maybe there are fewere people interacting with them and so fewer people to discover how "great" they are. Maybe fewer eye balls on their resume. The point is, open-source was a means to an end. And, so, frankly, I don't give a shit.

LLMs are making open-source technology accessible to more people and that's a good thing.

Re: How vibe coding is killing open source

#29

Post by embedding-shape »

charcircuit wrote: post #27

>This also removes the typical more organic selection process of libraries and tooling, replacing it with whatever was most prevalent in the LLM’s training data Another article written by someone who doesn't actually use AI. Claude will literally search "XYZ library 2025" to find libraries. That is essentially equivalent to how it's always worked. It's not just what is in the dataset.

> "XYZ library 2025"

I'm fairly sure you made a typo, but considering the context, it's a pretty funny typo and would kind of demonstrate the point parent was trying to make :)

I agree with you overall though, the CLI agents of today don't really suffer from that issue, how good the model is at using tools and understanding what they're doing is much more important than what specific APIs they remember from the training data.

Re: How vibe coding is killing open source

#30

Post by ivan_gammel »

I doubt it’s killing open source. The “too big to fail” software will be maintained no matter what, but the contribution model will change. It is not great, but we can live with it - majority of users of OSS never touch the code, so nothing is going to change for them. For a few enthusiasts the barrier will be higher, but we need some trust building incorporated in the process anyway.

The small libraries will be eliminated as a viable solution for production use, but that’s a good thing. They are supply chain risk, which is significantly amplified in the LLM age.

It may happen and it will be great if it happens, when open training datasets will replace those libraries to recalibrate LLM output and shift it from legacy to more modern approaches, as well as teaching how to achieve certain things.

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