I got into #FLOSS because it was a community-driven approach to making computers empower people. Now, #opensource means "free training data for someone else's LLM."
I could ask, "What is the future of open source software," but I think that's the wrong question. I'd rather contemplate what community-driven, human-centering computing can look like in the era of scraping and slop.
@jrbe As far as we're concerned, the answer has and continues to be the same.
Actually build a fucking community. Document your values and stand for them. Don't sit back and wait for people to contribute - actively reach them out first, learn how they can help, and accommodate their onboarding. Make space for people with diverse skills. It is a community-oriented project - so do community and activism, not the code.
FOSS has long been dead in this regard, with every project just being 10 active nerds with 100 who ever submitted a PR while the usage is in tens of thousands being celebrated as some big success. No - each of those projects is a massive failure, even if the code solves some problems.
@KFears @jrbe the only reason the projects exist is to develop code that solved some nerd's problem. If community is the most important thing, there are social clubs of all kinds already.
Without an interest in the problem being solved, there's no reason to associate with the project. People with an interest in the problem will find their way to the project.
@jrbe the golden age of FOSS is definitely over. Many foundational, irreplaceable projects have been infected by AI generated contributions.
And completely regardless of the AI outputs quality, I doubt companies in the future will feel any incentive to contribute anything back; Some C-suite will always think they can wing it with AI.
So going forward, if we want a slop-free stack, we either have to stick to old versions or massively reduce scope. And that's not even touching hardware support
James R.B. Eastwood
KFears 🏳️⚧️
Howard Chu @ Symas
lhp
tsadilas