Jazzband maintained some incredible Django packages and tools that made it possible for me to build a system at my $JOB that would have been impossible to do on my own. It is a true tragedy of the commons situation where I was expected do more with less, and I didn't have the ability to contribute back/donate anywhere near the value that these projects provided to $JOB or myself. I did contribute personally, but it's very clear how all of this value has been extracted and used by large companies to build higher and higher walls for themselves, and none of the people that actually make any of this work get more than crumbs.
is it unrealistic to think the companies that benefit from orgs such as this could donate a fraction of a percent of their wealth to keep them going? the responsibility always seems to fall most on those with the least resources.
It seems the open-source experiment has failed. Hundreds of billion-dollar companies have been built on millions of hours of free labor, on the backs of ten thousands of now-burnt-out maintainers. Yet, apart from token gestures, these exploiting entities have never shared substantial or equitable profits back.
For the next generation of OSS, it would be wise to stand together and introduce a new licensing model: if a company builds a product using an open-source library and reaches a specific revenue threshold (e.g., $XX million), they must compensate the authors proportional to the library's footprint in their codebase and/or its execution during daily operations.
Without teeth (and the resources to initiate the bite), companies will just freeload. Any attempts to monitor will require some degree of telemetry or proprietary solutions, with the associated blowback that generates.
The only model I've seen work in reality is open core (aside from the very few projects that have been successful with patronage)
we have a solution for that: GPL + commercial dual-licensing. the problem is that a) there is an entire anti-GPL crowd; although I'd just not give a shit about them, it's worth mentioning, b) who's gonna enforce the license?, c) how are you going to monetize internal use? what if your tech (e.g. a build system) is only really useful internally?
And then you'd be getting things like Hollywood accounting, where companies will claim that the "footprint" is not that large or simply find ways to hide their usage of FOSS.
The decision of the market seems pretty clear. We've been able to co-operate and build a software commons for decades, iterating on and improving shared infrastructure and solutions to problems common and niche. The work done for these commons, though, benefits everyone, and that's a hard sell for a profit-driven organization. So the commons are enriched with
a) volunteers
b) brief windows in which corporate decision makers are driven by ideology and good intentions, where those decisions carry momentum or license obligations (see Android, and how Google tries to claw it back)
c) corporations attempting to shape the larger landscape or commoditize their complement, see Facebook's work on React, or contributions to the Linux kernel
Of the above, only (a) or rarely and temporarily (b) are interested in collective wellbeing. Most of the labor and resources go into making moats and doing the bare minimum to keep the shared infrastructure alive.
Now companies selling LLM coding agents enter the scene, promising to eliminate their customers' dependence on the commons, and whatever minimal obligations they had to support it. Why use a standard solution when what used to be a library can now be generated on the fly and be part of your moat? Spot a security bug? Have an agent diagnose and fix it. No need to contribute to any upstream. Hell, no upstream would even accept whatever the LLM made without a bunch of cleanup and massaging to get it to conform the their style guides and standards.
Open source, free software, they're fundamentally about code. The intended audience for such code is machine and human. They're not compatible with a development cycle where craft is not a consideration and code is not meant to be read and understood. That is all to say: yes, it is unrealistic to expect companies to donate anything to the commons if they can find any other avenue. They prefer a future where computer programs are purchased by the token from model providers to one where they might have to unintentionally help out a competitor.
> Now companies selling LLM coding agents enter the scene, promising to eliminate their customers' dependence on the commons, and whatever minimal obligations they had to support it.
This is misguided. Maintenance of LLM code has a far greater cost than generating it.
> They prefer a future where computer programs are purchased by the token from model providers to one where they might have to unintentionally help out a competitor.
I don't think that's even a thought. The thought is that "no one can tell me no".
I'd be curious to know what portion of that 40% makes any meaningful income from their open source work. I would guess that most of those people are being paid a small appreciation amount for the work they're doing, not something resembling a living wage.
The Register post about the Slopocalypse to me feels tongue in cheek while this post seemingly takes it at face value. What's happening on GitHub is a mixed bag. I love what AI is doing to Ghostty.
Is my best guess. The GP is perhaps referring to ghostty repo adding helper files for Llm agents to operate as a cursory look at issues to placate issue submitters.
Jazzband maintained some incredible Django packages and tools that made it possible for me to build a system at my $JOB that would have been impossible to do on my own. It is a true tragedy of the commons situation where I was expected do more with less, and I didn't have the ability to contribute back/donate anywhere near the value that these projects provided to $JOB or myself. I did contribute personally, but it's very clear how all of this value has been extracted and used by large companies to build higher and higher walls for themselves, and none of the people that actually make any of this work get more than crumbs.
is it unrealistic to think the companies that benefit from orgs such as this could donate a fraction of a percent of their wealth to keep them going? the responsibility always seems to fall most on those with the least resources.
It seems the open-source experiment has failed. Hundreds of billion-dollar companies have been built on millions of hours of free labor, on the backs of ten thousands of now-burnt-out maintainers. Yet, apart from token gestures, these exploiting entities have never shared substantial or equitable profits back.
For the next generation of OSS, it would be wise to stand together and introduce a new licensing model: if a company builds a product using an open-source library and reaches a specific revenue threshold (e.g., $XX million), they must compensate the authors proportional to the library's footprint in their codebase and/or its execution during daily operations.
Without teeth (and the resources to initiate the bite), companies will just freeload. Any attempts to monitor will require some degree of telemetry or proprietary solutions, with the associated blowback that generates.
The only model I've seen work in reality is open core (aside from the very few projects that have been successful with patronage)
we have a solution for that: GPL + commercial dual-licensing. the problem is that a) there is an entire anti-GPL crowd; although I'd just not give a shit about them, it's worth mentioning, b) who's gonna enforce the license?, c) how are you going to monetize internal use? what if your tech (e.g. a build system) is only really useful internally?
And then you'd be getting things like Hollywood accounting, where companies will claim that the "footprint" is not that large or simply find ways to hide their usage of FOSS.
Good idea.
The MIT license and other "pushover" licenses was built in the pre-LLM era.
I don't think it is fit for purpose anymore since now maintainers are getting burnt out and most code is now being generated from OSS.
A new OSS license for the AI age must be made for newer libraries, projects and existing projects that want to change licenses.
The decision of the market seems pretty clear. We've been able to co-operate and build a software commons for decades, iterating on and improving shared infrastructure and solutions to problems common and niche. The work done for these commons, though, benefits everyone, and that's a hard sell for a profit-driven organization. So the commons are enriched with
a) volunteers
b) brief windows in which corporate decision makers are driven by ideology and good intentions, where those decisions carry momentum or license obligations (see Android, and how Google tries to claw it back)
c) corporations attempting to shape the larger landscape or commoditize their complement, see Facebook's work on React, or contributions to the Linux kernel
Of the above, only (a) or rarely and temporarily (b) are interested in collective wellbeing. Most of the labor and resources go into making moats and doing the bare minimum to keep the shared infrastructure alive.
Now companies selling LLM coding agents enter the scene, promising to eliminate their customers' dependence on the commons, and whatever minimal obligations they had to support it. Why use a standard solution when what used to be a library can now be generated on the fly and be part of your moat? Spot a security bug? Have an agent diagnose and fix it. No need to contribute to any upstream. Hell, no upstream would even accept whatever the LLM made without a bunch of cleanup and massaging to get it to conform the their style guides and standards.
Open source, free software, they're fundamentally about code. The intended audience for such code is machine and human. They're not compatible with a development cycle where craft is not a consideration and code is not meant to be read and understood. That is all to say: yes, it is unrealistic to expect companies to donate anything to the commons if they can find any other avenue. They prefer a future where computer programs are purchased by the token from model providers to one where they might have to unintentionally help out a competitor.
> Now companies selling LLM coding agents enter the scene, promising to eliminate their customers' dependence on the commons, and whatever minimal obligations they had to support it.
This is misguided. Maintenance of LLM code has a far greater cost than generating it.
> They prefer a future where computer programs are purchased by the token from model providers to one where they might have to unintentionally help out a competitor.
I don't think that's even a thought. The thought is that "no one can tell me no".
> This is misguided. Maintenance of LLM code has a far greater cost than generating it.
In corporate reality they don't care. They have their product, requirement. As it starts to rot it's easier to rebuild than to maintain.
If you can ask for an LLM with a skeleton crew team now they can do it all again in five years time with the next level of LLMs.
Unfortunate.
> 60% of maintainers are still unpaid.
That's actually not as bad as I would have guessed.
I'd be curious to know what portion of that 40% makes any meaningful income from their open source work. I would guess that most of those people are being paid a small appreciation amount for the work they're doing, not something resembling a living wage.
Wait, y'all are getting paid?
Yeah, I had the same thought. Expected it to be like 95%.
Jazzband have done the world a lot of good. They deserve better.
The Register post about the Slopocalypse to me feels tongue in cheek while this post seemingly takes it at face value. What's happening on GitHub is a mixed bag. I love what AI is doing to Ghostty.
You mean when AI caused the Ghostty maintainer to close PRs to outsiders?
What is happening with Ghostty?
https://github.com/ghostty-org/ghostty/tree/main/.agents/com...
Is my best guess. The GP is perhaps referring to ghostty repo adding helper files for Llm agents to operate as a cursory look at issues to placate issue submitters.