Is open source dead?
Everyone has the power now to make their own stacks of things.
The people aspect of open source is dead or dying. I don't think the bunny is going back in the box.
One nice thing about Open Source (at least for me) is different people doing the same thing in different ways and one of those happen to suit my taste perfectly. And in many cases, I won't be able to come with it myself even with Super Intelligence.
Evgeny Morozov has pointed out that using ai through chat interfaces is based on an individualised and privatised model, which (heavily paraphrased) is inherently anti-social.
With an extra layer now of people making small personalised tools, do bigger things still need teams of people who know what theyโre doing?
FWIW Iโd like to see more sharing of vibe coded tools instead of everyone making their own more less the same ones. Mine are here: pauladams.neocities.org
I don't think so. I have been using more open source software than ever before.
You may argue that with LLMs I have the power to make my own stack of things, but this doesn't eliminate that I still need knowledge to properly steer an LLM to create something worthwhile.
If I have no knowledge of what I intend to build, the best thing the LLM will generate is a half-assed copy of something that already exists. Which is what we have been drowning in the past couple of years.
AI can be a superpower in the hands of someone knowledgeable. That makes the people aspect of open source more important, not less.
If you offload your curiosity and desire to learn to AI, you will be a slave to it's limitations instead of being a master of its capabilities.
Of course not. I think it is much more relevant to ask "Is closed source dead?".
Anyone can now replace a proprietary program with a vibeslopped alternative which might suit them just as well. It will have the same level of trust (ie. none) and none of the other drawbacks.
You don't love writing YAML all day and debugging stupid pipelines that download the same binaries thousands of times a day while wondering why we spend so much on bandwidth?
I still remember Max getting sandwiched between the two Ferraris in the first ever wet night race (Singapore 2017). Today he finally managed to win a race there. That's quite a long wait.
Sick makes me calm. My mind goes quiet for some time. I can sit and look at the horizon. Or just contemplate the different shades of white of my ceiling while laying on my bed. I miss the silence of my youth.
I've been curious about the reasoning for prices too. Like, there has to be research behind it... But I agree it is far easier to buy four 2.5โฌ services than one for 5
You look in the corner, you see a guy quietly eating cigarette butts. It's ok. He's dealing with a lot of stress from work. He takes care of his family. Capitalism
Likewise... you look in the corner, you see a guy quietly eating cigarette butts. It's ok. He's dealing with a lot of stress for lack of work, or food, or future. He wants to take care of his family. Communism.
We havenโt figured out yet. Maybe we never will.
Last weeks post about "if you're not using an LLM router, how do you know wtf is going on" inspired me to spin up a couple of OSS options this week and wow were they right.
A bit of insomnia this early Tuesday morning. I call it โthe witching hourโ, whatever can go wrong, will go wrong and the brain is defenceless. Reality, of course, is more nuanced, but brain doesnโt care. :)