Comment by daxfohl
4 months ago
> Application composition from open source components became the dominant way of constructing applications over the last decade.
I'm just as interested in why this ^ happened. I imagine it's pretty unique to software? I don't hear of car companies publishing component designs free for competitors to use, or pharmaceuticals freely waiving the IP in their patents or processes. Certainly not as "the dominant way of" doing business.
I wonder if LLM coding assistants had come about earlier, whether this would have been as prevalent. Companies might have been more inclined to create more of their own tooling from scratch since LLMs make it cheap (in theory). Individuals might have been less inclined to work on open source as hobbies because LLMs make it less personal. Companies might be less inclined to adopt open-source LLM-managed libraries because it's too chaotic.
I think open source software took off because it’s more standalone than the other things you listed and this makes the rewards much higher.
If I write some code, it needs a computer and environment to run. If I’m writing for what’s popular, that’s pretty much a given. In short, for code the design is the product.
If I design a pharmaceutical, someone still has to make it. Same for car parts. This effort is actually greater than the effort of design. If you include regulation, it’s way higher.
So, this great feedback loop of creation-impact-collaboration never forms. The loop would be too big and involve too much other stuff.
The closest thing isn’t actually manufacturing, it’s more like writing and music. People have been reusing each other’s stuff forever in those spaces.