Eh, I don't believe that. Smartphones have amazing cameras, and we still have photographers. There are CNC saws and mills that will ship you your perfectly realised CAD prints, yet there are still carpenters and a vibrant community of people making their own furniture. These examples go on and on.

Without any kind of offence implied: As maintainer of a few open source projects, I'm happy if it stops being an employability optimisation vector. Many of the people who don't code for fun but to get hired by FAANG aren't really bringing joy to others anyway.

If we end up with a small web of enthusiasts who write software for solving challenges, connecting intellectually with likeminded people, and altruism—then I'm fine with that. Let companies pay for writing software! Reduce the giant dependency chains! Have less infrastructure dedicated to distributing all that open source code!

What will remain after that is the actual open source code true to the idea.

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ipaddr 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Photographers use cameras so increasing cameras makes more photographers.

CNC saws use to take pencil draws as input and now they can handle files. People always made handmade furniture while CNCs existed.

Open source projects around a need will continue. Things like youtube downloader fills a need. But many projects were showing off what you as a developer can write to impress a community. Those are dead. Projects that showcased new coding styles or ways to do things are dead.

Faang open source employment was never a thing. Faang filtered by leetcode, referrals, clout and h1 visas.

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9dev 10 hours ago | parent [-]

> Open source projects around a need will continue. Things like youtube downloader fills a need.

Good! We like things filling a need.

> But many projects were showing off what you as a developer can write to impress a community. Those are dead.

Good! The world doesn't need more vanity.

> Projects that showcased new coding styles or ways to do things are dead.

That I doubt. People who want to share ideas for the sake of discussing these on an intellectual level will absolutely continue to do so. An LLM doesn't help in any way in this domain.

> Faang open source employment was never a thing. Faang filtered by leetcode, referrals, clout and h1 visas.

Replace FAANG with SMB companies, then. The point is that people were only doing open source as a means to bolster their CV. There is nothing lost to the open source community as a whole if these people leave. Yes, the amount of contributions and projects will shrink. I'm arguing that that's okay: The vital pieces that need to be maintained will be maintained by companies that are forced to pay for that maintenance, and people who enjoy making and participating in open source software development will continue to do so.

	▲	ipaddr an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Why would companies keep open sourcing for anything new if vanity is off of the table. Many companies open sourced as a signal or to find free help. Those are not important anymore. 99 percent of developers go to the effort of open sourcing for vanity reasons. They want to show off what they made hope others like it. The world of solutions to core problems is such a small part of open source The other thing to consider is you will have mountains of AI slope like tailwind landing pages and alike crowding out original thought.

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em-bee 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

exactly this. FOSS was always driven by those who could code and did so driven by their own intrinsic motivation. those people won't disappear. there may be less people because some are more driven by quick results and while in the past they had to code to get there, now they don't, which means they won't discover the joy of coding.

but for others coding will become an art and craft like woodworking or other hobbies that require mastery.

	▲	ipaddr an hour ago \| parent [-]
		People wrote code in the hopes that others would read it think positive about them and maybe improve things. Those projects are going away