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The zero-cost fallacy: open-source software in the agentic era

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Re: The zero-cost fallacy: open-source software in the agentic era

#31

Post by theturtletalks »

cdrini wrote: post #15
theturtletalks wrote: post #13

Open-source alternatives are being launched at an ungodly pace and they are really polished. All these comments about AI Slop are underestimating how good these builders have gotten and AI lets you iterate really fast. If the builder actually uses the software he's building, the feedback loop is really efficient. I keep a directory of open-source alternatives and just in the past month, I've replaced applications I'v…

What open source alternatives have you switched to recently? Always on the lookout for good OS tools!

I replaced Raycast recently with Sol[0], but SuperCmd[1] is also really good.

And I’m testing Helium Browser[2]. It’s based on Chromium, but has changed a lot under the hood and I’ve been daily driving it.

Also replacing CapCut with OpenCut[3].

I’ve also completely ditched Codex CLI with Pi[4] and now am trying OMP[5].

0. https://github.com/ospfranco/sol

1. https://github.com/SuperCmdLabs/SuperCmd

2. https://github.com/imputnet/helium

3. https://github.com/OpenCut-app/OpenCut

4. https://github.com/earendil-works/pi

5. https://github.com/can1357/oh-my-pi

Re: The zero-cost fallacy: open-source software in the agentic era

#32

Post by pixl97 »

asdff wrote: post #24
drusepth wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically, the prevalence of AI "tells" like that (combined with the ubiquity of AI works passed off as human-written) will inevitably feed back into more use by non-AI writers who think they're normal. (Also, I'm never gonna give up my em dashes.)

This assumes non ai writers are drinking from the well of slop. Not all of course. Some people still read old books.

Old books don't tell you much about now in a great number of topics.

>Gell-Mann Amnesia effect

We're very familiar with this effect when it comes to the news, but since a lot of people are now looking at older information as some kind of escape it seems prudent to point out that old books themselves are of varying quality.

Moreso, how do you track said quality of old books in the modern age where their will be incentives to game the system (for example those that own publishing rights to said books). Some books will be high quality, but the information in them will be outdated due to changes in understanding. Other books might as well have been written by AI and transported to the past they hold so many bullshit claims.

The pareto distribution will cover the most popular books, but once you step into the long tail of research you've hit another no mans land of is it true or not.

Re: The zero-cost fallacy: open-source software in the agentic era

#34

Post by overgard »

I feel like the AI labs have an embrace-extend-extinguish model here like Microsoft of the 90s. Train your models on all the open source code, then extinguish the ecosystem since open source libraries are essentially a competitor. (If there were no libraries you'd have to ask the AI to do everything!) Like, personally I think the reason why AI works as well as it does for typescript is because it's essentially gluing together a lot of open source code written by humans. The interesting functionality is mostly in those libraries. A developer that doesn't want to use AI can still be pretty productive within that context, but if the ecosystem is absolutely decimated..

Re: The zero-cost fallacy: open-source software in the agentic era

#35

Post by arjie »

The promise of free software was that you, as a user, were not constrained by the software someone else wrote. You could modify it to see fit. Today, I can replicate most software that way. So the promise is more realized than before. The actual code is useful, yes, because it means I don't have to have it written but if it didn't exist I'd still get there.

The copyright and IP maximalism approaches aren't important to me. The world where everyone can have software written easily is much more appealing. The user freedom is better met.

Re: The zero-cost fallacy: open-source software in the agentic era

#36

Post by Forgeties79 »

arjie wrote: post #35

The promise of free software was that you, as a user, were not constrained by the software someone else wrote. You could modify it to see fit. Today, I can replicate most software that way. So the promise is more realized than before. The actual code is useful, yes, because it means I don't have to have it written but if it didn't exist I'd still get there. The copyright and IP maximalism approaches aren't important…

> The promise of free software was that you, as a user, were not constrained by the software someone else wrote. You could modify it to see fit.

Eh yes and no. The problem is I am not somebody who is comfortable building their own software, so I depend on the generous communities that create free, open source software I can reliably run on my computer. There are lots of people like me! So the benefit isn’t being able to adjust the software to my liking, it’s the knowledge that I can’t have the rug pulled out from under me as easily since I know in theory I can run the software locally, but realistically (hopefully!) somebody else is going to fork and maintain it.

Re: The zero-cost fallacy: open-source software in the agentic era

#37

Post by overgard »

zcw100 wrote: post #20

People need to stop yelling "Slop!" all the time and saying silly things like "every line of code was reviewed by a human". First, it's ridiculous. There is no possible way to verify that claim, determine what was or wasn't done after reviewing it, and there's no reason to review every single line. It's performative. I have a ton of stuff I haven't bothered contributing. Why? So I can deal with all the hate? When it…

It's not performative though. Slop is a burden. I'm sorry you feel excluded by that, but an AI generated PR is not of much value. The maintainer could just as easily do that, if that's what they wanted. Plus lets be realistic about why people contribute slop PRs, it's not for the betterment of the project usually, it's because they either want credit for a "contribution" they didn't bother to make themselves (If you give credit for that, then being a "contributor" is a worthless badge), or they're spamming people for bug bounties.

Re: The zero-cost fallacy: open-source software in the agentic era

#38

Post by jeremyjh »

arjie wrote: post #35

The promise of free software was that you, as a user, were not constrained by the software someone else wrote. You could modify it to see fit. Today, I can replicate most software that way. So the promise is more realized than before. The actual code is useful, yes, because it means I don't have to have it written but if it didn't exist I'd still get there. The copyright and IP maximalism approaches aren't important…

The software you have generated for your personal use is a micro fraction of all the software that it uses directly and indirectly to fulfill your needs. The rest is OSS maintained by someone at no cost to you.

Re: The zero-cost fallacy: open-source software in the agentic era

#39

Post by Cider9986 »

cdrini wrote: post #15
theturtletalks wrote: post #13

Open-source alternatives are being launched at an ungodly pace and they are really polished. All these comments about AI Slop are underestimating how good these builders have gotten and AI lets you iterate really fast. If the builder actually uses the software he's building, the feedback loop is really efficient. I keep a directory of open-source alternatives and just in the past month, I've replaced applications I'v…

What open source alternatives have you switched to recently? Always on the lookout for good OS tools!

OpenCode

SuperCMD

Zed

Typewhisper

Re: The zero-cost fallacy: open-source software in the agentic era

#40

Post by jeremyjh »

sschueller wrote: post #21

I love maintaining open source in an agentic world. I can be a complete asshole about contribution rules and coding standard as long as I define the AGENTS.md. The more strict the better and I can get good clean pull request without an endless back and fourth. I can even require updating the documentation! An OCD dream but you need to embrace it and configure it or you would get "AI slop".

Could you share a link to an example? I couldn’t find any PRs you merged this year.
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