HN

Comments (122)

• Menu

  apatheticonion
  Having over a decade of open source software I've written freely available online, I actually really appreciate the value that AI && LLMs have provided me.The thing that leaves a bad taste in my mouth is the fact that my works were likely included in the training data and, if it doesn't violate my licenses (GNU 2/3), it certainly feels against the spirit of what I intended when distributing my works.I was made redundant recently "due to AI" (questionable) and it feels like my works in some way contributed to my redundancy where my works contributed to the profits made by these AI megacorps while I am left a victim.I wish I could be provided a dividend or royalty, however small, for my contribution to these LLMs but that will never happen.I've been looking for a copy-left "source available" license that allows me to distribute code openly but has a clause that says "if you would like to use these sources to train an LLM, please contact me and we'll work something out". I haven't yet found that.I'm guessing that such a license would not be enforceable because I am not in the US, but at least it would be nice to declare my intent and who knows what the future looks like.
• Menu

  floathub
  Free software has never mattered more.All the infrastructure that runs the whole AI-over-the-internet juggernaut is essentially all open source.Heck, even Claude Code would be far less useful without grep, diff, git, head, etc., etc., etc. And one can easily see a day where something like a local sort Claude Code talking to Open Weight and Open Source models is the core dev tool.
• Menu

  anilgulecha
  FOSS is dead - long live, FOSS.FOSS came up around the core idea of liberating software for hardware, and later on was sustained by the idea of a commodity of commons we can build on. But with LLMs we have alternative pathways/enablement for the freedoms:Freedom 0 (Run): LLMs troubleshoot environments and guide installations, making software executable for anyone.Freedom 1 (Study/Change): make modifications, including lowering bar of technical knowledge.Freedom 2 (Redistribute): LLMs force redistribution by building specs and reimplementing if needed.Freedom 3 (Improve/Distribute): Everyone gets the improvement they want.As our can see LLM makes these freedoms more democratic, beyond pure technical capability.For those that cared only about these 4 freedoms, LLMs enable these in spades. But those who looked additionally for business, signalling and community values of free software (I include myself in this), these were not guaranteed by FOSS, and we find ourselves figuring out how to make up for these losses.
• Menu

  Grokify
  Open source has never been more alive for me. I have been publishing low key for years, and AI has expanded that capability more than 100 fold, in all directions. I had previously published packages in multiple languages but recently started to cut back to just one manually. But now with AI, I started to expand languages again. Instead of feeling constrained by toolchains I feel comfortable with, I feel freedom to publish more and more.The benefits to publishing AI generated code as open source are immense including code hosting and CI/CD pipelines for build, test, lint, security scans, etc. In additional to CI/CD pipelines, my repos have commits authored by Claude, Dependabot, GitHub Advanced Security Bot, Copilot, etc. All of this makes the code more reliable and maintainable, for both human and AI authored code.Some thoughts on two recent posts:1. 90% of Claude-linked output going to GitHub repos w <2 stars (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47521157): I'm generally too busy to publishing code to promote, but at some time it might settle down. Additionally, with how fast AI can generate and refactor code, it can take some time before the code is stable enough to promote.2. So where are all the AI apps? (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47503006): They are in GitHub with <2 stars! They are there but without promotion it takes a while to get started in popularity. That being said, I'm starting to get some PRs.
• Menu

  Bockit
  It’s such a fun time to have 1+ decade(s) of experience in software. Knowing what simple and good are (for me), and being able to articulate it has let me create so much personal software for myself and my family. It has really felt like turning ideas into reality, about as fast as I can think of them or they can suggest them. And adding specific features, just for our needs. The latest one was a slack canvas replacement, as we moved from slack to self-hosted matrix + element but missed the multiplayer, persistent monthly notes file we used. Even getting matrix set up in the first place was a breeze.$20/month with your provider of choice unlocks a lot.Edit: the underlying point being, yes to the article. Either building upon the foundations of open source to making personal things, or just modifying a fork for my own needs.
• Menu

  woeirua
  I’m not so sure… what I see as more likely is that coding agents will just strip parts from open source libraries to build bespoke applications for users. Users will be ecstatic because they get exactly what they want and they don’t have to worry about upstream supply chain attacks. Maintainers get screwed because no one contributes back to the main code base. In the end open source software becomes critical to the ecosystem, but gets none of the credit.
• Menu

  est31
  If I look around in the FLOSS communities, I see a lot of skepticism towards LLMs. The main concerns are:1. they were trained on FLOSS repositories without consent of the authors, including GPL and AGPL repos2. the best models are proprietary3. folks making low-effort contribution attempts using AI (PRs, security reports, etc).I agree those are legitimate problems but LLMs are the new reality, they are not going to go away. Much more powerful lobbies than the OSS ones are losing fights against the LLM companies (the big copyright holders in media).But while companies can use LLMs to build replacements for GPL licensed code (where those LLMs have that GPL code probably in their training set), the reverse thing can also be done: one can break monopolies open using LLMs, and build so much open source software using LLMs.In the end, the GPL is only a means to an end.
• Menu

  theturtletalks
  5 years ago, I set out to build an open-source, interoperable marketplace powered by open-source SaaS. It felt like a pipe dream, but AI has made the dream into fruition. People are underestimating how much AI is a threat to rent seeking middlemen in every industry.
• Menu

  jaynate
  “Their relationship with the software is one of pure dependency, and when the software doesn’t do what they need, they just… live with it”Or, more likely, they churn off the product.The SaaS platforms that will survive are busy RIGHT NOW revamping their APIs, implementing oauth, and generally reorganizing their products to be discovered and manipulated by agents. Failing in this effort will ultimately result in the demise of any given platform. This goes for larger SaaS companies, too, it’ll just take longer.
• bustah
  This is a microcosm of a much larger problem. When AI writes code, reviews code, and now apparently manages its own git operations — who's actually in control of the codebase?The "dangerously-skip-permissions" flag getting blamed here is telling. We're building tools where the safe default is friction, so users disable the safety to get work done, and then the tool does something destructive. That's not a user error — that's a design pattern that reliably produces failures at scale.The broader data is concerning: AI-generated code has 2.74x more security vulnerabilities than human-written code, and reviewing it takes 3.6x longer. Now add autonomous git operations to that mix. The code review problem becomes a code ownership problem — if the AI is writing it, reviewing it, and managing the repository, what exactly is the human's role? We dug into this at sloppish.com/ghost-in-the-codebase
• throwaw12
  > SaaS scaled by exploiting a licensing loophole that let vendors avoid sharing their modifications.AI is going to exploit even more: "Given the repository -> Construct tech spec -> Build project based on tech spec"At this stage, I want everyone just close their source, stop working on open source until this issue of licensing gets resolved.Any improvement you make to the open source code will be leveraged in ways you didn't intend it to be used, eventually making you redundant in the process
• agentultra
  I think it will wall people off from software.I don’t know what SaaS has to do with FOSS. The point of FOSS was to allow me to modify the software I run on my system. If the device drivers for some hardware I depend on are no longer supported by the company I bought it from, if it’s open source, I can modify and extend the software myself.The Copy Left licenses ensure that I share my modifications back if I distribute them. It’s a thing for the public good.Agent-based software development walls people off from that. Mostly by ensuring that the provenance of the code it generates is not known and by deskilling people so that they don’t know what to prompt or how to fix their code.
• Menu

  pdntspa
  What's the chance this website is powered by postgresql?
• elif
  agree completely. When the megacorps are building hundreds of datacenters and openly talking about plans to charge for software "like a utility," there has never been a clearer mandate for the need for FOSS, and IMO there has never been as much momentum behind it either.these are exciting times, that are coming despite any pessimism rooted in our out-dated software paradigms.
• SchemaLoad
  Maybe, but I don't really believe users can or want to start designing software, if it was even possible which today it isn't really unless you already have software dev skills.That would basically make users a product manager and UX designer, which they aren't really capable of currently. At most they will discover what they think they want isn't what they actually want.
• panny
  >agents don’t leaveI think Pete Hegseth would disagree with this statement.
• heliumtera
  Oh yeah, sure, nothing scream freedom louder than following anthropic and openai suggestions without a second thought.
• anon
  undefined
• Menu

  vicchenai
  The real unlock here isn't users becoming devs, it's maintainers becoming 10x more productive. Most OSS projects die because the maintainer burned out fixing bugs nobody wants to fix. If agents can handle the boring parts (triage, repro, patch obvious stuff) the maintainer can focus on design decisions and reviewing PRs instead of drowning in issues. That changes the economics completely.
• anon
  undefined
• Menu

  zar1048576
  I wonder if there will be a different phenomena — namely everyone just developing their own personal version of what they want rather than relying on what someone else built. Nowadays, if the core functionality is straightforward enough, I find that I just end up building it myself so I can tailor it to my exact needs. It takes less time than trying to understand and adapt someone else’s code base, especially if it’s (mostly) AI generated and contains a great deal of code slop.
• we4a
  First of all, free software still matters. Then, being a slave to a $200 subscription to a oligarch application that launders other people's copyright is not what Stallman envisioned.The AI propaganda articles are getting more devious my the minute. It's not just propaganda---it's Bernays-level manipulation!
• zephen
  The article makes zero sense to me.It compares and contrasts open source and free software, and then gives an example of how free software is better than closed software.But if the premise of the article, that the agent will take the package you pick and adapt it to your needs, is correct, then honestly the agent won't give a rat's ass whether the starting point was free source or open source.
• jongjong
  What I'm hoping for is for more competition in the tech sector. I'm tired of companies foisting Microsoft or Oracle products on everyone! WTF! The current tech sector feels like all companies are subsidiaries of Big Tech... It's likely a direct result of passive investing... Everyone who has any money and controls a small or medium sized company likely owns stock of Microsoft, Apple, Meta, Google, Amazon... So they mandate their companies to use products from those big tech companies. So all the small-fish founders feel like they are dogfooding their own investments... And that's preventing new entrants from getting a foothold in B2B space... Feels like all the small companies are working for Big Tech.Conflict of interests is the norm. It should be illegal for a company founder or director to own stock of a supplier. It should be illegal for shareholders to own stocks of two competing companies. Index funds should be illegal.
• lowsong
  I worry people are lacking context about how SaaS products are purchased if they think LLMs and "vibe coding" are going to replace them. It's almost never the feature set. Often it's capex vs opex budgeting (i.e., it's easier to get approval for a monthly cost than a upfront capital cost) but the biggest one is liability.Companies buy these contracts for support and to have a throat to choke if things go wrong. It doesn't matter how much you pay your AI vendor, if you use their product to "vibe code" a SaaS replacement and it fails in some way and you lose a bunch of money/time/customers/reputation/whatever, then that's on you.This is as much a political consideration as a financial one. If you're a C-suite and you let your staff make something (LLM generated or not) and it gets compromised then you're the one who signed off on the risky project and it's your ass on the line. If you buy a big established SaaS, do your compliance due-diligence (SOC2, ISO27001, etc.), and they get compromised then you were just following best practice. Coding agents don't change this.The truth is that the people making the choice about what to buy or build are usually not the people using the end result. If someone down the food chain had to spend a bunch of time with "brittle hacks" to make their workflow work, they're not going to care at all. All they want is the minimum possible to meet whatever the requirement is, that isn't going to come back to bite them later.SaaS isn't about software, it's about shifting blame.
• Menu

  phendrenad2
  The debate in the comment section here really boils down to: upstream freedom vs downstream freedom.Copyleft licenses like GPL/Apache mandate upstream freedom: Upstream has the "freedom" to use anything downstream, including anything written by a corporation.Non-copyleft FOSS licenses like MIT/BSD are about downstream freedom, which is more of a philosophically utilitarian view, where anyone who receives the software is free to use it however they want, including not giving their changes back to the community, on the assumption that this maximizes the utility of this free software in the world.If you prioritize the former goal, then coding agents are a huge problem for you. If the latter, then coding agents are the best thing ever, because they give everyone access to an effectively unlimited amount of cheap code.
• vpribish
  right. because free software stopped mattering. what an asshole headline
• anon
  undefined
• Menu

  threethirtytwo
  I think the opposite. It will make all software matter less.If trendlines continue... It will be faster for AI to vibe code said software to your customized specifications than to sign up for a SaaS and learn it."Claude, create a project management tool that simplifies jira, customize it to my workflow."So a lot of apps will actually become closed source personalized builds.
• anon
  undefined
• FergusArgyll
  tl-didn't finish but I absolutely do this already. Much of the software I use is foss and codex adjusts it to my needs. Sometimes it's really good software and I end up adding something that already exists. Whatever, tokens are free...
• jongjong
  Unfortunately for me, I believe that the algorithms won't allow me to get exposure for my work no matter how good it is so there is literally no benefit for me to do open source. Though I would love to, I'm not in a position to work for free. Exposure is required to monetize open source. It has to reach a certain scale of adoption.The worst part is building something open source, getting positive feedback, helping a couple of startups and then some big corporation comes along and implements a similar product and then everyone gets forced by their bosses to use the corporate product against their will and people eventually forget your product exists because there are no high-paying jobs allowing people to use it.With hindsight, Open Source is basically a con for corporations to get free labor. When you make software free for everyone, really you're just making it free for corporations to Embrace, Extend, Extinguish... They invest a huge amount of effort to suppress the sources of the ideas.Our entire system is heavily optimized for decoupling products from their makers. We have almost no idea who is making any of the products we buy. I believe there is a reason for that. Open source is no different.When we lived in caves, everyone in the tribe knew who caught the fish or who speared the buffalo. They would rightly get credit. Now, it's like; because none of the rich people are doing any useful work, they can only maintain credibility by obfuscating the source of the products we buy. They do nothing but control stuff. Controlling stuff does not add value. Once a process is organized, additional control only serves to destroy value through rent extraction.
• anvevoice
  [dead]
• imta71770
  [dead]
• steffs
  [dead]
• wontopos
  [dead]
• peaklineops
  [dead]
• bustah
  [dead]
• ryguz
  [dead]
• MeetRickAI
  [dead]
• clawfund
  [dead]
• leandro-person
  I’m impressed by how current times make us consider so many completely opposite scenarios. I think it can indeed foster progress, but it can also have negative impacts.