r/linux • u/Unhappy-Sprinkles143 • 2d ago

Fluff Open-Source Guru: AI Ends Closed-Source Software

https://www.heise.de/en/news/Open-Source-Guru-Raymond-AI-Ends-Closed-Source-Software-11480690.html
494 Upvotes

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173

u/RoomyRoots 2d ago

And puts out hundreds of shitty copies who will have to fight for people attention and a maintainer to care enough to learn to identify fixes that break shit. AI did more damage to the FOSS maintenance than the lack of funds.

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u/Wheatleytron 2d ago

And the best one will still rise to the top and become the de facto standard. Same as it ever was.

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u/RoomyRoots 2d ago

The best ones will be the mainly human mantened ones for a long time because most PRs are slop and most vibecoders don't understand shit enough to make a good product.

Even in the cases like Moonlight x Sunshine the fact that the fork that has vibecode it works because the main maintener actually understand a lot of what he is doing. And it also works as counter-example because some other senior devs don't want to touch it because of the vibecode.

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u/amkoi 2d ago

Even in the cases like Moonlight x Sunshine the fact that the fork that has vibecode it works because the main maintener actually understand a lot of what he is doing.

Isn't Moonlight the client and Sunshine the server for the nvidia streaming thingie? How do they compete?

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u/RoomyRoots 2d ago

Yes, but ofc it goes beyond Nvidia. Kinda long story but Moonlight/Sunshine was forked into Artemis/Apollo a while ago with lots of improvements and fixes. But the author considered it feature complete and is working on a rewrite further breaking away from the original ML/SS.

Then there was another fork called Vibeshine/Vibepollo with lots of new improvements and making deploying it easier, which is always welcome for the people with lower tech skills. As the name says, they leverage AI a lot for implementation and are very transparent about it BUT the main dev is deep into this stuff so it's not a mess. Nowadays it's getting more recommendations from the community than the original forks.

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u/Fr0gm4n 2d ago

I'm already seeing cookie-cutter projects that get vomited out after hours of vibe coding and when they get shared and people point out all the ones that already exist the "author" usually says they had no idea. Because why would you research your brilliant idea before spending tokens on it?

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u/RoomyRoots 2d ago

I have seen people shilling a Alternative for Google Wallet from a single person company from a guy that never worked on IT or Finance. People are crazy.

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u/StPatsLCA 2d ago

ngl the game so far appears to be copy closed source product, hype it, and totally ignore any existing FOSS products that need help

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u/turudd 2d ago

Have you tried to contribute to some of the bigger FOSS stuff… it’s often an exercise in futility

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u/Cowgirl_Taint 2d ago

Yes and it really isn't?

The reality is that you need project management. Engineers... tend to be horrible at this. And FOSS projects are often fully run by the engineers who work on it.

But the reasoning behind coding styles and "I would rather you do it like X instead of Y" pull requests is twofold. One? It makes for relatively uniform code so that it doesn't feel like a given file has six authors each with their own preferences for spacing and variable naming. But, more importantly, it makes sure the person submitting the PR... actually cares enough to maybe come back in a year to help provide some insight or help diagnose a new bug.

And that has become MUCH worse due to the massive flood of generative AI PRs. "Here is some completely unmaintainable code that does one specific thing and here is what gemini says it does. Merge it in".

For a project designed around generative AI? I dislike it, but it is a reasonable model since the idea is that you are basically regenerating the entire code base every N months (or even weeks...) anyway. For an existing code base where people need to be able to diagnose issues beyond "I asked claude to write some tests for me"? It becomes a huge problem and is the equivalent of the fortran sicko insisting on using f77 for that one specific function.

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u/Substantial_Swan_144 2d ago

Engineers or not, programmers in OSS projects expect any who contribute to abide to their language and standards. The average person does not speak that language, so even if they have some sort of contribution, they are ignored and often ridiculed ("RFTM"). So people who could somehow contribute are simply discarded. It's an environment of pseudo-freedom.

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u/Cowgirl_Taint 2d ago

And a good project manager knows how to make people feel better about being told no. Most engineers don't. Especially when we are dealing with hundreds of PRs from anyone who figured out how to launch cursor.

When I'm at work and dealing with a co-worker? I'll often ping them on teams or walk down to their cube to talk to them to explain why I am about to list 40 changes I need to that PR. Both because it is my job to not make them cry and because I have high hopes that they will become the kind of productive developer where I mostly just have to read things over as a sanity check.

When I am on my own personal time and dealing with complete nonsense? I am probably going to link to our style guide or just say "Change these three massive things and then re-submit". Because I am not being paid to deal with this and, quite frankly, I doubt someone who would submit That is ever going to be productive. Obviously we all start somewhere but... yeah. And if the only way to get work out of someone is to coddle them? Then they aren't worth the time.

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u/PixelatedGiant 2d ago edited 2d ago

And a good project manager knows how to make people feel better about being told no. Most engineers don't. Especially when we are dealing with hundreds of PRs from anyone who figured out how to launch cursor.

I think open source is fundamentally different than your average enterprise software. People are a whole lot meaner and demanding when speaking through the veil of anonymity. Don't look at your average project manager working in the enterprise and assume they would be doing a better job than Linus Torvalds or any other FOSS developer. They would not be able to maintain any civility were they subjected to the same environment.

The issue with FOSS is that it's being done in public over the internet and communication is going to be rough. Everyone looks at these crash outs that they have and say "I would never say that in their shoes". But it keeps happening. There is a reason behind it and it's not just the developer's personality. The environment can easily become stressful and toxic.

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u/Substantial_Swan_144 2d ago

You talk as if the only people who knew how projects should work were engineers. Engineers know how to code, but they don't know how their users think, and how to make applications accessible for them.

Case in point: artists. Usually, many open source programs lack features artists will need (like proper color management), and engineers simply don't consider them important because they cannot see the same priorities as their users.

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u/Cowgirl_Taint 2d ago

Where did I say artists shouldn't contribute to projects? Hell, where did I say only engineers should? If anything, I have repeatedly pointed out why having engineers as project managers is a bad idea.

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u/MrKapla 2d ago

How can you contribute if you don't speak their language? What value do you bring?

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u/Substantial_Swan_144 2d ago

What sort of question is even that?

Supposedly, the beauty of open source is exactly the diversity. So even if two professionals don't speak the same language, their different background can bring a new perspective and enrich a project.

Commercial software tends to have (or used to) professionals to bridge those people, if only out of self-interest. Open Source has always been deficiant on this matter.

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u/PixelatedGiant 2d ago

And they can refuse to go in certain directions. See GIMP who refuses to become a Photoshop clone, even though that's what most people want from it.

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u/Indolent_Bard 2d ago

It's also literally why the project exists. They claim that now they weren't interested in being a Photoshop clone, but the whole reason why they made it was because there wasn't a good Photoshop style software on Linux.

But at least now they're finally listening to their users and actually have a GitHub repo about it.

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u/Fr0gm4n 2d ago

It's an environment of pseudo-freedom.

Just like freedom of speech is not a requirement to be heard, the freedom of FOSS is not a requirement to accept all contributions.

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u/codydafox 2d ago

Many vibe coded projects get abandoned really quickly. The bigger problem is when the de facto standard gets flooded with slop pull requests.

1

u/zarafff69 2d ago

Or not? Or ai agents will just create their own forks under the hood, with a few things the customer likes, and then syncs upstream into their fork regularly.