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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

#61

Post by robotmaxtron »

mike_hock wrote: post #55
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.

imho the prompt is part of a "design", not a build artifact (unless your build system is weird).

a deterministic build system for prompts is a called a compiler.

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

#62

Post by phkahler »

Permissive licensing is a large part of the issue TFA is talking about. GPL does not have those issues. All FLOSS suffers from AI ingesting the code and being able to output work-alike programs to some extent, but for now large GPL programs - Inkscape, Firefox, VLC, Blender, FreeCAD, KiCAD, the Linux kernel, etc are all safe - none of them are permissively licensed so nobody can proprietize them (is that a word?)

Unfortunately (in my opinion) the rewrite it in Rust movement also abandoned non-permissive licensing, so over time a progressively larger body of work will fall to this.

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

#63

Post by phkahler »

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.

Yeah Eric Raymond and open source were a bad move. Should have stuck to Free Software - as in GPL license. All that open source stuff was deliberately made corporation-friendly, which is not what's in the best interest of the code.

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

#64

Post by phkahler »

jeremyjh wrote: post #49
richardjennings wrote: post #28

This goes one of two ways. Either the LLM public capability is not sufficient to positively contribute, or it is. If it is not sufficient to positively contribute, open source projects become drowned in low quality contributions. If it is sufficient to positively contribute, we end up with multiple implementations of open source projects. Actually maybe it only goes one way.

Personally I’ve been forking a lot more OSS and modifying it for my own use with little regard to contributing back because I haven’t read any of it myself and am not going to make public claims about it. It used to be I’d spend hours or days fixing a bug or adding a feature and getting it merged upstream seemed to help validate that effort. Now there is no effort so no need for validation and I continue on my way. T…

>> The commits are in my fork if anyone wants them but I can’t imagine why anyone would.

This recently happened with solvespace (I am a maintainer). Someone posted a link to a fork with a bunch of goodies added. I think they just had AI implement some big features that had already been discussed and were either rejected or far future/maybe. That fork still exists but looks to be dead, as there hasn't been any new development since it first appeared. I had a good look at all the commits but I don't see any that I really want to grab as-is. Some of it looked a bit promising though.

I recommend you at least make upstream aware of your fork if there is anything in it that they might want.

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

#65

Post by calvinmorrison »

bhaak wrote: post #17
calvinmorrison wrote: post #5

The zero-cost fallacy: open-source software in the agentic era. Here's my thoughts on this. It's back to open source, not open maintainer or open usage. I am producing lots of new code, i am publishing it. I am NOT interested in starting a project or having other people contribute. It's a cambrian explosion, the cost of adding features is basically zero. I'm going with "patching software is more common and we need to…

> the cost of adding features is basically zero Adding features was always the easy part. Maintaining the code OTOH is not going to be easier. I see this with an experimental project I’m consciously vibecoding. The code base tends towards a spaghetti coded mess. Of course you can put in some refactoring prompts and the AI will reorganize the code. But that makes it worse actually. You have no mental model of the code…

adding features was not the easy part for me - in fact it was a barrier for expressing most ideas I had.

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

#67

Post by svachalek »

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…

Well it's not the dev who would want one, it's the agent, for the same reliability/security reasons that a dev historically would have.

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

#68

Post by jaggederest »

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…

I honestly wonder about what percentage of the toxicity of society is a result of the awful copyright regime. Certainly another good chunk is a result of the patent system being broken.

I guess these are not the top items in the societal problems list, but they really don't help.

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

#69

Post by selectodude »

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

GPT-5.6 just finished writing a shim for me in rust that sits between Broadcom’s bullshit kernel and a standard Linux user space to turn my mesh routers into standard computers. At some point I’m not sure what the difference is in practice.

Note: I can’t code. Not a line.

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

#70

Post by jaxn »

robotmaxtron wrote: post #61
mike_hock wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

imho the prompt is part of a "design", not a build artifact (unless your build system is weird). a deterministic build system for prompts is a called a compiler.

they are saying the prompt is the source, the code is the artifact. I think it is a valid comparison. when reviewing a PR, I do want to see the prompt(s) that generated the change.
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