Comment by korenmiklos

Author here. By "returns" we mean any reward the developer is aiming for, whether money, recognition, world fame, future jobs, helping fellow developers. Sorry, econ jargon.

AI agents can select and load the appropriate packages and libraries without the user even knowing the name of the library, let alone that of the developer. This reduces the visibility of developers among users, who are now less likely to give a star, sponsor, offer a job, recommend the library to others etc.

Even as a business user, say an agency building websites, I could have been a fedn of certain js frameworks, hosting meetups, buying swags, sponsoring development. I am less likely to do that if I have no idea what framework is powering the websites I build.

Our argument is that rewards fall faster with vibe coding than productivity increases. OSS developers lose motivation, they stop maintaining existing libraries, don't bother sharing new ones (even if they keep writing a lot of code for themselves).