The way forward for open supply
Open supply isn’t dying, however the “open” half is being redefined. We’re transferring away from the period of radical transparency, of “anybody can contribute,” and heading towards an period of radical curation. The way forward for open supply, briefly, could belong to the few, not the various. Sure, open supply’s “neighborhood” was all the time a little bit of a lie, however AI has lastly made the lie unsustainable. We’re returning to a world the place the one individuals who matter are those who really write the code, not those who immediate a machine to do it for them. The period of the drive-by contributor is being changed by an period of the verified human.
On this new world, essentially the most profitable open supply initiatives would be the ones which might be essentially the most troublesome to contribute to. They’ll demand a excessive stage of human effort, human context, and human relationship. They’ll reject the slop loops and the agentic psychosis in favor of gradual, deliberate, and deeply private improvement. The bazaar was a enjoyable thought whereas it lasted, however it couldn’t survive the arrival of the robots. The way forward for open supply is smaller, quieter, and rather more unique. That may be the one approach it survives.
In sum, we don’t want extra code; we’d like extra care. Take care of the people who shepherd the communities and create code that may endure past a easy immediate.
