Comment by stego-tech

Frustratingly, while I sympathize with their very real plight, I also have to agree with OP’s ultimate decision.

OSS was exploited by hyperscalers to build trillion-dollar industries atop of, but without ever suitably compensating, the creators of much of those tools for their work or sharing in the profit. Before AI, the community was already at a breaking point between private enterprise spouting “supply chain” bullshit at them to demand fixes and attention, or steamrolled small devs to prop up a big corp’s trademark or product, all the while never actually paying enough for the proper development and support of those products - look at NPM (leftpad and kik) as prime examples. Now you have these same big tech ghouls scraping small sites into oblivion with hostile bots, making token predictors that are deliberately engineered to never, ever direct someone to a primary source or site except as an absolute last resort (to keep folks “in app” for engagement metrics), and openly pitching AI coding agents as replacements for human coders forever.

In that context, it’s no fucking wonder that the OSS community is becoming increasingly hostile to the very norms that have left most of them broke and increasingly destitute. Hell, for up-and-coming devs emerging from bootcamps, the mantra of “contribute to OSS” makes zero sense in a Capitalist marketplace that’s pivoting hard towards AI-as-human-replacement; as the OP points out, why bother training your own replacement?

OSS won’t die, but this is a particularly painful chapter that emphasizes it cannot support itself through the (non-existent) generosity of Capital. Alternate funding schemes and organization models are needed to prepare and support it for the future, be they government grants, Academia sponsors, or outright Gov-funded Private or Public Corporations (e.g., BBC, Corporation for Public Broadcasting (RIP), etc). Updates to OSS licensing schemes barring use-cases or with more substantial teeth for commercial use are also needed, toeing the line between empowering users of general computing and extracting reasonable payments from businesses or enterprises.