Remember when projects were getting overwhelmed by PRs from students just editing a line in a README so they could win a t-shirt? That was 2020, and they weren't using AI. The open source community has been going downhill for a while. The new generation isn't getting mentored by the old generation, so stable, old-fogey methods established by Linux distributions are eschewed by the new kids. Technology advancement has made open source interactions a little too easy, and unnecessarily fragile. Some ecosystems focus way too much on crappy reusable components, and don't focus enough on supply chain security.
Here's the good news: AI cannot destroy open source. As long as there's somebody in their bedroom hacking out a project for themselves, that then decides to share it somehow on the internet, it's still alive. It wouldn't be a bad thing for us to standardize open source a bit more, like templates for contributors' guides, automation to help troubleshoot bug reports, and training for new maintainers (to help them understand they have choices and don't need to give up their life to maintain a small project). And it's fine to disable PRs and issues. You don't have to use GitHub, or any service at all.
I get your core point, but the reality is it CAN destroy the ecosystem around OSS upon which it heavily relies: discoverability and community. I don't think you're accurately representing just how much noise and confusion AI slop creates. When it comes to using github it's not because it is an amazing application, but because that's were the people are.
>As long as there's somebody in their bedroom hacking out a project for themselves, that then decides to share it somehow on the internet, it's still alive.
You don't even need somebody. AI agents themselves can make and share projects.
> AI agents themselves can make and share projects
Copyright can't be assigned yo agents. You cant have Open Source without copyright as the enforcement mechanism. Millions of AI-generated, public-domain projects with no social proof to distinguish them is uncharted territory. My prediction is it would be shit-territory amd worse than what we have currently.
>You cant have Open Source without copyright as the enforcement mechanism.
Enforce what. Attribution? Open Source software doesn't requires software to require attribution for it to be considered open source. Public domain software can be open source.
The license. Public domain and open source are distinct, IMO, legally, and with regards to communities (or lack thereof).
> Public domain software can be open source.
Maybe? I can't name a single public domain project off the top of my head, but I can name at least a couple for each of the Apache, BSD-/MIT-style[1] or GPL licenses.
I got curious on how they solved contributions since "public domain" means different things in different jurisdictions[0] - unlike copyright. It turns out they didn't solve it - there's a subsection on the SQLite that declares it is "Open Source, nor Open Contribution[1]". Much like Android, this follows the letter of Open Source, but not the spirit of it.
I'll stand by my earlier assertion; wrangling public domain AI contributions is an even gnarlier problem to solve.
0. Indeed, it may even be non-existent. Maintainers would want to protect the project from being "infected" by contributions with permaglued-copyright.
> Remember when projects were getting overwhelmed by PRs from students just editing a line in a README so they could win a t-shirt? That was 2020, and they weren't using AI.
similar thing happened again when a popular educational video demonstrated and called to action to add your name to a popular github repo.
Here's the good news: AI cannot destroy open source. As long as there's somebody in their bedroom hacking out a project for themselves, that then decides to share it somehow on the internet, it's still alive. It wouldn't be a bad thing for us to standardize open source a bit more, like templates for contributors' guides, automation to help troubleshoot bug reports, and training for new maintainers (to help them understand they have choices and don't need to give up their life to maintain a small project). And it's fine to disable PRs and issues. You don't have to use GitHub, or any service at all.