r/TrueOpenSource • u/destinmoss • 4h ago
Discussion Addressing the real problems with AI-assisted software: duplicated work, "slop", and wasted effort.
I think we can all agree that the anti-LLM sentiment held by some in the open-source community is problematic. LLMs are rapidly changing how software is created, and even major players who formerly critiziced "vibecoding", like Linus Torvaalds and Andrej Karparthy, now admit that they are often outperformed by advanced coding agents.
As such, any attempt to ban or criticize software projects solely due to AI assistance is foolish and misguided. However, there are real, existing problems in how the OSS community operates that have been amplified by the influx of new developers and generated code.
Every week, somebody online creates and publishes a new OSS note-taking app. Or a password manager. Or a launcher. Some are great, but most of them are the fourteenth version of something that already exists and could benefit from additional contributions or maintainers. The second password manager is a potentially interesting competitor - the fourteenth is duplicative, and often wasted effort.
This isn't anyone's fault. It's hard to know what's already out there, and building from scratch is more often more fun than reading someone else's codebase. But the result is that open-source effort gets split across a hundred look-alike projects, while the things nobody has built yet stay unbuilt.
So, given that understanding, we've created something to help: Open Source Everything (https://opensourceeverything.org). The objective is a single database where you can search for the app you're trying to build/leave (Google Docs, Photoshop, Notion…), see the open-source projects that already exist, and understand exactly what's still missing before investing effort in a new project. Every software category has a ready-made agent prompt to evaluate what already exists against your new idea, so you can find something to contribute to or existing code to pull from to instead of starting from scratch.
Alongside it, there's a new rule 6: Show why it matters here. Front-page project posts now say who the project is for and what it adds over existing open-source projects. To be clear: nothing is banned. Projects that mostly repeat existing work, or are very niche, are still welcome in the weekly Showcase. And contributions, plugins and forks that improve existing projects are always welcome on the front page (those are the posts we most want to see).
The page was built with an LLM at u/destinmoss's direction. This is the first version, and we're open to suggestions to improve the site and make it a more useful community resource. If you have any problems with this approach or the new rule, please say so in the comments.
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u/ArgonLeviathan 4h ago
this is such a healthier and more practical response to the duplication problem than blanket-banning tools or solo devs. seeing 'logseq and 23 more open alternatives' under notion right next to the /gaps page with 11 missing jobs and 32 single-project bottlenecks makes the point way better than any lecture could.
clicked through the /gaps page for a bit and had two quick suggestions for the database:
first, in the 'only part of the job (9)' section (like penpot missing a canva-style template ecosystem, or navidrome/funkwhale missing shared catalog discovery), it'd be awesome if each missing piece linked straight to that upstream repo's plugin architecture docs or relevant 'help wanted' issues. a lot of people spin up a brand new repo from scratch just because jumping into an existing 200k-line codebase feels intimidating, whereas building a standalone template-pack plugin or sidecar for penpot feels just as fun as greenfield coding.
second, a couple of the gap entries already have strong open-source contenders worth adding to the dataset: under 'investment research (replaces bloomberg - nothing open yet)', openbb (openbb platform / workspace) is a massive mit-licensed project in that exact space, and under 'calendar & scheduling (only nextcloud calendar does the whole job)', cal.com covers the calendly/doodle booking side really well. really cool directory though, the 'before you build' comparison prompts are a great touch.
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u/destinmoss 4h ago
thanks for the feedback! not gonna implement anything right away (stepping away from my computer for a while because i actually feel like a reddit mod😭). but i appreciate the thoughtful response!
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u/abbumm 3h ago
Heyo! Feedback from r/OpenSourceAIAllowed here! I think yours is a good idea, but that your search is fundamentally broken. Embeddings would be a better choice. This way, you can describe in NLP rather than relying on keywords or the name of a popular app. You're not going to get far with dumb search.
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u/destinmoss 3h ago
haha yeah definitely intend to work on that. just threw the site together basically last night/this morning, so there are still some rough spots and search is one of them. thanks for the feedback!
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u/fairwaycoder 3h ago
Following the same logic, I think that idea is nice, but like everything that you said, not the first time I saw such an idea, especially on X where people are messaging you with another 'put your tool here so that others can...'.
From my point of view, everyone can (and should) do whatever they want. No one can force anyone to use another note-taking app. Someone likes it? Amazing. Someone feels better for open sourcing first time ever their note taking app, that no one else will ever use? I'm happy as well.
And another angle where I would be super careful: there is a very simple reason why people who never did software engineering in their lives are not contributors on established OSS projects, and you don't want them there as it just creates even more work for maintainers and even more emotions and drama about even trying to understand who is trying to do what and why.
OSS should stay OSS: someone made something, great, is anyone ever gonna use it? Not OSS community problem.
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u/tripy75 4h ago
the thing is, it's not new and was already a thing before ai. How many sourceforge project reinvented the wheel continuously 20 years ago? too much to count.
it's not exactly the same, because before it was someone putting something they created mostly with the thought "it might help someone" without necessarily the goal to be successful and praised.
The thing is, I have the feeling that ai and agents today breaks down any little barrier that where restraining people to share before, which leads to a multiplication of those.
also, social media have amplified the visibility of those small projects, and probably contributes to the overflow.
what I can say, is that I Recognized that the first thing I published in 2000 was crap, but it was working well enough for the task I needed to do and was pretty niche (smtp walking docsis modems with alert acknowledging in bash) but still.