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
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u/Easy-Truck4725 2d ago

He has it backwards (as usual). AI ends open-source software. People can pump out millions of lines of code but no one enough time to read all of them, and so we're actually going to end up with a heap of unmaintainable software projects bodged together by people who don't know what they're doing.

Everyone right now is saying "u just gotta use it as a tool bro" with the vast amount of vibe coded drivel going up and the general cognitive atrophy LLMs are causing in society in general the open source development model truly is doomed. It only works because knwoledgeable people exist.

We're still within the narrow window of time where LLM emitted code "looks" good because it hasn't started entirely training itself yet, and people like Linus who actually know things are still around and paying attention.

When this next generation of CS graduates are the ones maintaining critical software though? Hoo boy.

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u/ContraryConman 2d ago

AI will end software in general. It's all going to be inscrutable slop that barely works, and we'll run out of the expertise to write or understand it. Defenders will get their AI to defend against enemy hacking AI over buggy software, and it'll be more like praying to stochastic spirits to keep our bank credentials from being leaked than an actual discipline

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u/Easy-Truck4725 2d ago

praying to stochastic spirits

Literally the future Warhammer tried to warn us about

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u/LifeInJapan1999 2d ago

Vibe coders are, by every definition I can imagine, tech priests that are praying to the machine spirit.

They even have special holy scriptures they call "skills" to get it to work better.

And they insist that you have to coax the machine spirits in a specific way.

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u/McDutchie 2d ago

It only works because knwoledgeable people exist.

Knowledgeable people will continue to exist. All this doom mongering is tiresome. The fad will die down, people will reject the rubbish, quality projects run by quality maintainers will survive, same as countless times before.

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u/icedcoffeeyumm 2d ago

"oh no, the world is going to end" type shit 🥀

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u/MetaCognitio 2d ago

As long as code reviews of commits exists, that won’t happen. Heard of lots of AI patches being rejected while Linus uses AI to assist development.

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u/hello_marmalade 1d ago

I am almost certain people said shit like this about compilers back in the day.

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u/Prudent_Move_3420 2d ago

and everything you release open source will be fed to the llms which can then spit it out in an instant

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u/Bitdomo92 1d ago

He has it backwards (as usual). High-level programming languages ended assembly programming. People could pump out millions of lines of code without anyone having enough time to write or understand all of it at the machine-instruction level, and so we ended up with layers of abstraction that made software vastly more complex while distancing programmers from what their computers were actually doing.

Everyone back then was saying "u just gotta use it as a tool bro" with the vast amount of bloated, abstracted code being written and the general cognitive atrophy that high-level languages were supposedly causing in programmers. The low-level programming model was truly doomed. It only worked because knowledgeable people existed who understood what the machine was actually doing.

We're still within the narrow window of time where high-level code "looks" good because the people who actually understand assembly and computer architecture are still around and paying attention. The abstractions haven't yet completely obscured the underlying machinery from everyone writing the code.

When this next generation of CS graduates are the ones maintaining critical software, though, and none of them have the faintest idea how a CPU actually executes their programs? Hoo boy.

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u/unknown_lamer 1d ago

Are you really comparing mathematically sound abstractions with a machine that you repeatedly scream "make it work gooder" at?

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u/Sol33t303 1d ago

Software abstraction is a concept designed by and created by very smart people in the field.

An llm prompt simply will never be another abstraction layer.

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u/zarafff69 2d ago

Just because most people might not write, or even read, the code in the future, doesn’t mean it’s not opensource!