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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

#101

Post by kgwxd »

ColdStream wrote: post #76
matheusmoreira wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 why I hope more people start to get behind the 'Perma computing' movement. https://permacomputing.net/ Even if you don't agree with the exact political stances of the authors, the broad goals are notable. I have said it for years now, perma-computing is the missing piece of the free software movement. There is no point in the software being complete free/open if you have hardware that is locked down. Maybe on…

I just got one of those M5 meshtastic things with a keyboard and screen. My kid is in love with it. We're just messaging each other for now, but there's a lot of nodes in our area, so we're going to get a few more devices for family/friends in the area.

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

#102

Post by hailvectron »

lstodd wrote: post #92
ColdStream wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, they took the eye off the ball. Instead of growing free software the harder but much more resilient way, they caved to corporations in the name of quick results. But those quick results have ultimately back fired on them a little. Open source is huge now but it has lost a lot of the enthusiasm. Much of it feels like just putting out code waiting to be absorbed by some larger parasitic entity that has a marketing…

There were ethics in veganism? Since when? It was always a religious movement, all the way back to Vedanta. A way to set yourself apart and then maybe feel better for not being "like those others".

There always have been. As a practicing vegan of over 20 years, I made the change consciously for ethical and moral reasons with no interest in "setting myself apart" or "feeling better for not 'being like those others'" by this decision. I do not proselytize, and try hard to not discuss this aspect of my lifestyle unless it becomes awkward to avoid it. Equating veganism to faith movements is superficial. Stating that people choose it to make statements to other people is cynical.

Also I don't know what GP is talking about when it comes to "it just couldn't last." Being vegan can still be a pain in the ass, but it's vastly easier to find "plant-based" options than it was 20 years ago. There seem to be more options every year.

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

#103

Post by whattheheckheck »

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…

Regression to the mean of shitty monarchy bullshit in the grand scheme of things

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

#104

Post by jdkoeck »

sshine wrote: post #54
overgard wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

> 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.

I have some questions.

Are you doing this for client-facing production code?

It seems you believe painting over APIs with some amount of documentation will guarantee the implementation is correct and well designed. Am I misreading that?

You say you still read code when code is « algorithmically hard ». How do you define that?

Software systems have requirements that are essential but not algorithmically hard. For instance, access control in a web application must be thorough and cover all REST resources. How do you know the implementation has the desired properties if you don’t read the code?

Do you have tests? How do you know they’re correct if you don’t read the code? Moreover, how do know if their coverage is sufficient if you don’t read the code?

Do you refactor code or is that not needed anymore?

I don’t understand your answer to the question of why anyone would publish a library if no one reads code anymore. « For the exact same reasons as before ». How so? This isn’t making sense.

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

#105

Post by submeta »

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.

Which prompt, though? Just the initial one, or the entire conversation? During a project you’ll prompt the agent dozens of times. Are all of those prompts considered the source?

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

#106

Post by pmontra »

jaxn wrote: post #70
robotmaxtron wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not sure what level of detail those prompts you write about have so I might misunderstand you.

Before AI we had prompts called "requirements" and of course they were the starting point for reviewing code: the customer needs X, the code doing that is Y.

With agents that prompt became much longer, with the original requirement a short note at the beginning of the conversation with the AI, but the resulting code is about the same size. Maybe in YOLO development the original requirement is all the AI needs but I'll be surprised because requirements from customers are too fuzzy and can be turned into very different features, often too different from what the customers had in mind.

Actually I never looked at the detailed prompts of coworkers, only at the original requirements from customers. How they instructed their agents is not particularly interesting except maybe to get a gist of the different approaches.

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

#107

Post by marcus_holmes »

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…

We're already seeing what happens: the agents write the code instead of importing the dependency.

This is happening at the moment because of the supply chain risks of dependencies. But if all the open projects stop being maintained it'll just happen more.

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

#108

Post by rixed »

hailvectron wrote: post #102
lstodd wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were ethics in veganism? Since when? It was always a religious movement, all the way back to Vedanta. A way to set yourself apart and then maybe feel better for not being "like those others".

There always have been. As a practicing vegan of over 20 years, I made the change consciously for ethical and moral reasons with no interest in "setting myself apart" or "feeling better for not 'being like those others'" by this decision. I do not proselytize, and try hard to not discuss this aspect of my lifestyle unless it becomes awkward to avoid it. Equating veganism to faith movements is superficial. Stating tha…

  >  I made the change consciously for ethical and moral reasons with no interest in "setting myself apart" or "feeling better for not 'being like those others'" by this decision
We all believe we do what we do for good reasons, yet we are wrong most of the times.

So, when I hear you saying that you are motivated by pure moral reasons, but not stating those reasons, I can't help but think "this guy is lying to himself", sorry.

Listen, I consider myself some kind of vegetarian: I feel shame for how we humans treat other animals in the food industry, I don't want to take part in it; therefore, I rarely buy meat (I rarely buy anything, actually). But when I go someplace and I'm not the cook, it won't even cross my mind to ask for "a vegetarian alternative"; I eat what is there because it doesn't matter. During the meal I might engage a discussion about how badly we treat animals and we could avoid participating. Not eating or cooking meat is not the point at all, not buying it is the point.

I have met a lot of vegetarians who just "can't eat meat", won't tell why, require a specific meal be prepared for them, exactly like some religious people won't eat pork or wtv, without ever explaining why not. Because they don't want to do proselytism or because they don't want to sound stupid? I'm sure which alternative you will choose for yourself, but I'm not convinced.

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

#109

Post by rixed »

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 would be fully onboard with you if the tools to generate all the code anyone need would not be proprietary and would run on a personal computer anyone could buy.

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

#110

Post by mcbishop »

ColdStream wrote: post #76
matheusmoreira wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 why I hope more people start to get behind the 'Perma computing' movement. https://permacomputing.net/ Even if you don't agree with the exact political stances of the authors, the broad goals are notable. I have said it for years now, perma-computing is the missing piece of the free software movement. There is no point in the software being complete free/open if you have hardware that is locked down. Maybe on…

I'm happy to now know about perma computing.

> up to the level of the mid 90s

So pair this with back-to-basics tech (e.g. text files)... that can serve us extremely well.

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