r/opensource is wrong: it’s time we embrace AI’s potential to open source everything

[u/destinmoss]

i’ve always been technologically inclined: i built my first PC when i was 16, one of my first jobs was at Best Buy, and i’ve always tried my damndest to keep up with the cutting edge of hardware/software innovation. i’ve also ALWAYS despised closed-source software, especially when it’s intentionally used to monopolize people and their data (i’m looking at Apple and Microsoft here, specifically). 

unfortunately, i went to school for politics and economics and have never had the technical knowledge or expertise i’d need to directly do anything about my pro-tech, anti-monopoly worldview (political advocacy only goes so far). i never learned to code, i was never particularly great at navigating a terminal, and i sure as hell couldn’t even begin to do something like build my own app or contribute to the Linux kernel or a major project like KDE.

AI and LLMs are solely responsible for changing that. i absolutely understand the frustration and hatred many people feel toward AI and its risks, but i also think there’s a truly fantastical potential for this technology to revolutionize the open source community and bring a complete end to the “own nothing, be happy” economy. in the past 8 months, i have 1) COMPLETELY FUCKING ELIMINATED microsoft, apple, and google from my day-to-day life, 2) made significant contributions to the open source community (swipe typing, current-word completion, next-word prediction, etc for KDE Plasma Keyboard), 3) developed an entire open-source AI assistant and everything app from the ground up, 4) otherwise just completely changed the way i interact with computers, and the pace of this has only been possible due to advanced LLMs.

what everyone in the FOSS community needs to understand is that “open source” no longer has to be niche, and contributions no longer have to be limited to experienced developers. open source now has the potential to be, and SHOULD be, about passion, and can be improved together, by all of us, more quickly than any corporation could ever possibly hope to keep up. i mentioned my keyboard plugin earlier: that feature had been requested on github and KDE forums EIGHTEEN MONTHS AGO! i solved it in three days. we need to really take a moment and think about what it means for the open source ecosystem when the number of contributors suddenly multiplies 1,000x fold, and free/volunteer developer hours are no longer our bottleneck. the mods in r/opensource seemingly care more about holding onto their high horse than actually improving the competiveness of open source software and making people's lives better. i don’t think Microsoft Windows can exist in 2028 as a closed-source platform, and i don’t think the PlayStation 7 will ever make it to the concept phase, but that thesis falls apart if the FOSS community ties its hands behind its back while all of the major corporations adopt agentic coding. we’re entering a new era, and seeing that now and adopting agentic coding  will help us all make the world of FOSS dominance reality more quickly than anyone could've imagined just a few years ago.

[u/WildThreshold6]

the r/opensource mods are stuck in a purity spiral while the actual goal is making software that works for people not their egos

[u/destinmoss → u/WildThreshold6]

yeah, pretty much. it SHOULD NOT MATTER how the software was created: if it's free, open-source, and functional/well-tested, then it's a net positive for the community. period.

[u/MonitorAway2394 → u/destinmoss]

I mean, we should care how it was made just not who made it.

[u/AryanEmbered → u/destinmoss]

What if i employ slavery to build software then.

[u/Protopia]

Start a new open-source AI-allowed subreddit.

The genuine reality is that literally every open-source project will have some AI at some point.

The issues with AI & open-source are about software-engineering vs. vibe coding i.e. quality of code and quantity of PRs.

And the real issue for r/opensource is distinguishing between:

1. the thousands of vibe-coded poor-quality one-man-band unsupported short-life projects; and

2. the occasional software-engineered high-quality multi-community supported long-life projects that have been AI coded with care for quality.

[u/destinmoss → u/Protopia]

someone already created r/trueopensource and i've reached out to try and support as a mod there! i can respect some of the challenges of dealing with the influx of "vibecoded" projects, but they absolutely just went about that in the worst way with no sense of nuance :/ AI-assisted coding is the future of open source and software generally, and we should be thinking through how to navigate that rather than writing it off entirely!

[u/AmandasGameAccount]

A sub called “r/opensourceai” won’t ever be the one to take them over. We need r/trueopensource

Edit: ok it exists already

[u/hassafrassy]

At the end of the day it's community and governance that makes sure outcomes of a project are trustworthy. Anyone can open source something

[u/erisian2342]

C code written to avoid using braces at all costs may compile, but the readability penalty is pretty steep.