Comment by ipaddr
12 hours ago
Photographers use cameras so increasing cameras makes more photographers.
CNC saws use to take pencil draws as input and now they can handle files. People always made handmade furniture while CNCs existed.
Open source projects around a need will continue. Things like youtube downloader fills a need. But many projects were showing off what you as a developer can write to impress a community. Those are dead. Projects that showcased new coding styles or ways to do things are dead.
Faang open source employment was never a thing. Faang filtered by leetcode, referrals, clout and h1 visas.
> Open source projects around a need will continue. Things like youtube downloader fills a need.
Good! We like things filling a need.
> But many projects were showing off what you as a developer can write to impress a community. Those are dead.
Good! The world doesn't need more vanity.
> Projects that showcased new coding styles or ways to do things are dead.
That I doubt. People who want to share ideas for the sake of discussing these on an intellectual level will absolutely continue to do so. An LLM doesn't help in any way in this domain.
> Faang open source employment was never a thing. Faang filtered by leetcode, referrals, clout and h1 visas.
Replace FAANG with SMB companies, then. The point is that people were only doing open source as a means to bolster their CV. There is nothing lost to the open source community as a whole if these people leave. Yes, the amount of contributions and projects will shrink. I'm arguing that that's okay: The vital pieces that need to be maintained will be maintained by companies that are forced to pay for that maintenance, and people who enjoy making and participating in open source software development will continue to do so.
Why would companies keep open sourcing for anything new if vanity is off of the table. Many companies open sourced as a signal or to find free help. Those are not important anymore.
99 percent of developers go to the effort of open sourcing for vanity reasons. They want to show off what they made hope others like it.
The world of solutions to core problems is such a small part of open source
The other thing to consider is you will have mountains of AI slope like tailwind landing pages and alike crowding out original thought.