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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

#51

Post by matheusmoreira »

pixl97 wrote: post #25
pryelluw wrote: post #4

I’ve stopped all my open source contributions and projects. I’ve now moved my resources to organizing and supporting communities like python Atlanta. My commitment was always the community and not the code. I also want to see what will companies do once open source closes shop and fewer people know how to program. It’s why I’m making sure there is a local support network for those of us who still want to stay in soft…

I don't think the battle will be in open source software... I think it will be in hardware at our current rate. There has been ever increasing consolidation in the hardware world along with an ever growing acceptance of restrictions by the public 'for our safety'.

Yeah. Manufacturers are simultaneously pricing and locking us out of silicon. Computers are moving back to big iron tier mainframes, and it looks like remote attestation is the future so any non-corporate owned device will be essentially useless. Free software doesn't matter if we can't run it, or if we're ostracized from digital society should we figure out how to run it.

Everything that everyone who believed in free software worked towards is being destroyed. There is no way to fight back unless we figure out how to fab computers in garages. It was all for nothing. The future is bleak.

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

#52

Post by jeremyjh »

arjie wrote: post #47
jeremyjh wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The rest is not OSS. Some of it is. Lots of it is proprietary software too and maintained at no cost to me. I can't imagine how much network switching software my stuff goes through. Didn't pay anything for that.

If you pay someone for internet access you are paying for most of that, and I’m guessing you paid for the switch and router in your own house. But I was talking about the software running on your computer that your code invokes.

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

#53

Post by arjie »

jeremyjh wrote: post #52
arjie wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rest is not OSS. Some of it is. Lots of it is proprietary software too and maintained at no cost to me. I can't imagine how much network switching software my stuff goes through. Didn't pay anything for that.

If you pay someone for internet access you are paying for most of that, and I’m guessing you paid for the switch and router in your own house. But I was talking about the software running on your computer that your code invokes.

Sure, and I paid for all the contributions to Linux too in that respect. It's fine, if the unpaid ones want to not do any more work, that's fine too. It was always about user freedom, and now we have it.

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

#54

Post by sshine »

overgard wrote: post #48
sshine wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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!) That is neither the incentive of AI companies nor the truth. Availability of Open Source where stealing and illegal relicensing is not being litigated, is a perfect ecosystem for AI to work in. Maintainer exhaustion is totally a secondary effect, not intended. Th…

As far as I can tell, Anthropic's entire goal is to extinguish software development as a profession. They're not exactly subtle. If they do that, I don't see how they wouldn't take out open source with it as a consequence. If nobody even looks at code why would anyone bother to publish a library, much less care about making it maintainable? Shit, if everybody is vibe coding how long before your "average" dev has no i…

> Anthropic's entire goal is to extinguish software development as a profession

They’re killing “programmer”, not “code”.

> I don't see how they wouldn't take out open source with it as a consequence

An analogy: the automobile industry sought to make working horses redundant, not to go door-to-door and kill horses. Horses getting chopped was an indirect economic consequence.

> If nobody even looks at code why would anyone bother to publish a library, much less care about making it maintainable?

For the exact same reasons as before. Agentic programming still integrates well with the existing ecosystem; I’ll tell agents which libraries to use, so I know what to expect.

While I don’t read the implementation of anything any more unless there’s a hard algorithmic problem, I do make an effort to read and document APIs thoroughly.

Interfacing is exactly the same, it’s just agents doing it.

> if everybody is vibe coding how long before your "average" dev has no idea what a library even is or why you'd want one?

That is a very good question.

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

#55

Post by mike_hock »

robotmaxtron wrote: post #26

The agentic era definition of open source is garbage. Software that is not open source, is proprietary software. Open weight models, are not open source. Binary blobs in a repo with an Apache license, is not open source. Am I a retro-grouch? Probably. I guess it doesn't matter anymore what I think about it.

Also, slop code is not open source. It's not source, it's a build artifact. The prompt is the source. But we don't have a deterministic build system for it so publishing the prompt isn't even useful.

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

#56

Post by sshine »

krupan wrote: post #44
sshine wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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!) That is neither the incentive of AI companies nor the truth. Availability of Open Source where stealing and illegal relicensing is not being litigated, is a perfect ecosystem for AI to work in. Maintainer exhaustion is totally a secondary effect, not intended. Th…

I think you are correct on how it's playing out because AI cannot write software very well all on its own. The dream is that AI is so good that it can write all the code you need from scratch, replacing all and any code written by anyone else, but that's not happening

With guidance, it kind of is happening.

While, simultaneously, an abundance of slop is being made.

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

#57

Post by inigyou »

bitbasher wrote: post #9

I recently read Eric Raymond’s The Cathedral and the Bazaar. It was oddly sad to read. The enthusiasm and optimistic view of open source and the future of software and craftsmanship. Looking at it in 2026.. incredibly sad. Forget the bazaar. Back to the cathedral.

The bazaar has been overrun by an army of Cave Johnson's mantis-men. The cathedral is keeping its doors shut, carving out a mantis-free space inside. Occasionally they do controlled experiments on caged mantises.

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

#58

Post by [deleted] »

inigyou wrote: post #57
bitbasher wrote: post #9

I recently read Eric Raymond’s The Cathedral and the Bazaar. It was oddly sad to read. The enthusiasm and optimistic view of open source and the future of software and craftsmanship. Looking at it in 2026.. incredibly sad. Forget the bazaar. Back to the cathedral.

The bazaar has been overrun by an army of Cave Johnson's mantis-men. The cathedral is keeping its doors shut, carving out a mantis-free space inside. Occasionally they do controlled experiments on caged mantises.

[deleted]

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

#59

Post by whstl »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #51
pixl97 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the battle will be in open source software... I think it will be in hardware at our current rate. There has been ever increasing consolidation in the hardware world along with an ever growing acceptance of restrictions by the public 'for our safety'.

Yeah. Manufacturers are simultaneously pricing and locking us out of silicon. Computers are moving back to big iron tier mainframes, and it looks like remote attestation is the future so any non-corporate owned device will be essentially useless. Free software doesn't matter if we can't run it, or if we're ostracized from digital society should we figure out how to run it. Everything that everyone who believed in fre…

This is doubly bad with, in some cases, governments, banks and other institutions pretty much forcing us to own those locked-in devices to run their apps.

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

#60

Post by simoncion »

datakan wrote: post #6

>"For years, the software engineering industry has operated on a comfortable, perhaps lazy, myth: that open source software is an infinite, self-renewing public good that costs nothing to consume and requires nothing to sustain." Since when? Open source projects have for decades offered paid support. Projects like Red Hat, Snort, Security Onion and others. I don't know anyone that has ever thought this. It's always b…

> I don't know anyone that has ever thought this.

I've known many people who have thought that. None of them were programmers, and many of them were managers.

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