Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

thoughtworks.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 152 posts

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

#121

Post by efitz »

overgard wrote: post #34

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…

Nowadays reading HN comments I imagine what it was like watching a buggy whip manufacturers meeting around the time of Henry Ford. The world is changing and many previous assumptions are being exposed as not widely held.

Most people in the world don’t care how software comes into existence or what the source code looks like, and never did. Just like most people never cared how most anything else was made. We are seeing software turn from a handcrafted commodity to a mass produced product. The quality is getting better and the cost of production is getting cheaper and this is happening at an astonishing rate.

The world is changing. As much as you enjoyed lovingly crafting buggy whips; most people just want the car. It’s not cruelty; it’s that buggy whips were never the point.

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

#122

Post by m4rtink »

kgwxd wrote: post #101
ColdStream wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Check also MeshCore - works on the same hardware as MeshTastic (just flash a different firmware) and has some nice new features and seems to scale better than MeshTastic in big meshes. :)

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

#123

Post by tonyedgecombe »

jasonkester wrote: post #111

I had to flag this article for violating HN's policy against submitting things written by AI. Which is a shame, because the premise is intriguing. But it's pretty rude to expect every one of us to sift through ten pages of AI tells to reverse engineer the prompts that hold the information the author wanted to convey. As the saying goes, "if you couldn't be bothered to write it, why should I bother to read it?" So I a…

I’m not sure which is worse, content written by AI or people complaining about content being written by AI.

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

#124

Post by tonyedgecombe »

efitz wrote: post #121
overgard wrote: post #34

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…

Nowadays reading HN comments I imagine what it was like watching a buggy whip manufacturers meeting around the time of Henry Ford. The world is changing and many previous assumptions are being exposed as not widely held. Most people in the world don’t care how software comes into existence or what the source code looks like, and never did. Just like most people never cared how most anything else was made. We are seei…

>most people just want the car.

That didn’t happen on its own. It took a huge amount of marketing and lobbying to get where we are today.

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

#126

Post by conartist6 »

magicalist wrote: post #87
conartist6 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing that was possible then is less possible or less potent now. The narrative is not friendly to communities of people owning complex software by sharing work now, but neither was it then. If you believe it was all wrong , an incorrect formulation, then disregard it and do not despair to move on. If you think ESR got something right that nobody can see anymore, then your hope should be rooted in the knowledge of…

> If you think ESR got something right that nobody can see anymore, then your hope should be rooted in the knowledge of how much less than what's possible we are currently achieving So...the worse things are the better because we have more things to improve? Wouldn't it just be better if things weren't worse? Can't entirely tell if this is supposed to be inspirational or contrarian (I think maybe the first one?), but…

Well I'm hopeful because I'm not a passive observer here, but rather a bazaar builder.

I could talk for hours. If you want to hear what I have to say at length, come to the place where I build: https://discord.gg/NfMNyYN6cX

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

#127

Post by worthless-trash »

efitz wrote: post #121
overgard wrote: post #34

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…

Nowadays reading HN comments I imagine what it was like watching a buggy whip manufacturers meeting around the time of Henry Ford. The world is changing and many previous assumptions are being exposed as not widely held. Most people in the world don’t care how software comes into existence or what the source code looks like, and never did. Just like most people never cared how most anything else was made. We are seei…

I see more of it like cannibals sitting around a fire, trying to decide where they get their next meal from while side-eying their neighbors body fat percentage.

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

#128

Post by yummybrainz »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #123
jasonkester wrote: post #111

I had to flag this article for violating HN's policy against submitting things written by AI. Which is a shame, because the premise is intriguing. But it's pretty rude to expect every one of us to sift through ten pages of AI tells to reverse engineer the prompts that hold the information the author wanted to convey. As the saying goes, "if you couldn't be bothered to write it, why should I bother to read it?" So I a…

I’m not sure which is worse, content written by AI or people complaining about content being written by AI.

Pretty sure it's the former!

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

#129

Post by folkrav »

lstodd wrote: post #90
folkrav wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My latest feature was an overarching change across 4 different stacks, about a full work day of going back and forth iterating on different designs, generating workarounds for stack/language specific quirks and the business' usage patterns. Multiple fresh agent sessions, review passes, exploratory work with subagents, etc. "The prompt(s) that generated the change" in that context is multiple hours of discussion, Q&A,…

Yes. The value is in how you came to the design you expressed.

What puzzles me is, what matters is context. Most of the context would be the specific model I used and its training data, the result of tool calls, and the model's inner monologue/thinking (which is increasingly getting encrypted by frontier models). My prompts are a tiny sliver of that, and most of them dependended on the actual answers I was getting from the model in the middle of the whole process. Or the result of handoffs, or internal compactions.

What's the value of getting all my prompts if the rest of the equation is unknowable? Unless you mean the value is in the full agent log, but even then, frontier models and harnesses would still be hiding a major part of the equation from us.

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

#130

Post by bitwize »

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 fact that Eric Raymond has gone full fascist in the intervening years was absolutely not on my bingo card back in the late 90s, but it makes CatB even less relevant now.

Of course, he would tell you otherwise. He would say that the victory of the bazaar over the cathedral has only been accelerated by AI; indeed, he doesn't write code anymore and uses LLMs to develop everything. The scary part is, he might be right about that.

Post reply on HN