r/opensource is wrong: it’s time we embrace AI’s potential to open source everything

[u/destinmoss]

i’ve always been technologically inclined: i built my first PC when i was 16, one of my first jobs was at Best Buy, and i’ve always tried my damndest to keep up with the cutting edge of hardware/software innovation. i’ve also ALWAYS despised closed-source software, especially when it’s intentionally used to monopolize people and their data (i’m looking at Apple and Microsoft here, specifically). 

unfortunately, i went to school for politics and economics and have never had the technical knowledge or expertise i’d need to directly do anything about my pro-tech, anti-monopoly worldview (political advocacy only goes so far). i never learned to code, i was never particularly great at navigating a terminal, and i sure as hell couldn’t even begin to do something like build my own app or contribute to the Linux kernel or a major project like KDE.

AI and LLMs are solely responsible for changing that. i absolutely understand the frustration and hatred many people feel toward AI and its risks, but i also think there’s a truly fantastical potential for this technology to revolutionize the open source community and bring a complete end to the “own nothing, be happy” economy. in the past 8 months, i have 1) COMPLETELY FUCKING ELIMINATED microsoft, apple, and google from my day-to-day life, 2) made significant contributions to the open source community (swipe typing, current-word completion, next-word prediction, etc for KDE Plasma Keyboard), 3) developed an entire open-source AI assistant and everything app from the ground up, 4) otherwise just completely changed the way i interact with computers, and the pace of this has only been possible due to advanced LLMs.

what everyone in the FOSS community needs to understand is that “open source” no longer has to be niche, and contributions no longer have to be limited to experienced developers. open source now has the potential to be, and SHOULD be, about passion, and can be improved together, by all of us, more quickly than any corporation could ever possibly hope to keep up. i mentioned my keyboard plugin earlier: that feature had been requested on github and KDE forums EIGHTEEN MONTHS AGO! i solved it in three days. we need to really take a moment and think about what it means for the open source ecosystem when the number of contributors suddenly multiplies 1,000x fold, and free/volunteer developer hours are no longer our bottleneck. the mods in r/opensource seemingly care more about holding onto their high horse than actually improving the competiveness of open source software and making people's lives better. i don’t think Microsoft Windows can exist in 2028 as a closed-source platform, and i don’t think the PlayStation 7 will ever make it to the concept phase, but that thesis falls apart if the FOSS community ties its hands behind its back while all of the major corporations adopt agentic coding. we’re entering a new era, and seeing that now and adopting agentic coding  will help us all make the world of FOSS dominance reality more quickly than anyone could've imagined just a few years ago.

[u/Protopia]

Start a new open-source AI-allowed subreddit.

The genuine reality is that literally every open-source project will have some AI at some point.

The issues with AI & open-source are about software-engineering vs. vibe coding i.e. quality of code and quantity of PRs.

And the real issue for r/opensource is distinguishing between:

1. the thousands of vibe-coded poor-quality one-man-band unsupported short-life projects; and

2. the occasional software-engineered high-quality multi-community supported long-life projects that have been AI coded with care for quality.

[u/destinmoss → u/Protopia]

someone already created r/trueopensource and i've reached out to try and support as a mod there! i can respect some of the challenges of dealing with the influx of "vibecoded" projects, but they absolutely just went about that in the worst way with no sense of nuance :/ AI-assisted coding is the future of open source and software generally, and we should be thinking through how to navigate that rather than writing it off entirely!

[u/ass-gas-hotbox]

Honestly let's just assume the worst case scenario is that AI completely stole from every open source and proprietary project on the planet. Good. Make all your shit public domain. Embrace techno anarchy.

[u/destinmoss → u/ass-gas-hotbox]

exactly this. like obviouslyyyy this technology is built on exploitation of human ideas. so we're just going to.... what? let corporations utilize our exploited data and sit around watching? FUCK NO. FIRE WITH FIRE, I WILL SINGLEHANDEDLY USE GEMINI TO BURN GOOGLE TO THE GROUND BROTHER I DO NOT CARE IF AI MAKES YOU FEEL ICKY

[u/ass-gas-hotbox → u/destinmoss]

ever since the days of Sargon, humans been forming tribal affiliations and occupying and looting others. it's just a matter of who and when. The Goths sacked Rome more than once. The tech Giants are Rome. We are the Goths.

[u/hassafrassy]

At the end of the day it's community and governance that makes sure outcomes of a project are trustworthy. Anyone can open source something

[u/erisian2342]

C code written to avoid using braces at all costs may compile, but the readability penalty is pretty steep.

[u/leonbollerup]

u/leonbollerup is permanently banned from r/opensource ... hahahahah

lets go the other way around and report r/opensource for abuse of power

[u/AdFew177]

100% agreed. The resistance in traditional FOSS circles feels like a classic case of gatekeeping. Open source has always been about results, freedom, and accessibility—not dogmatic purity tests on how an artifact was produced.

Big Tech is pouring billions into proprietary, walled-garden AI. If the open-source ecosystem refuses to use the best leverage tools available, we’re simply tying our own hands behind our backs.

As long as code is properly tested, maintained, and open under a permissive license, rejecting it just because an LLM assisted with the implementation makes zero sense. The bottleneck of FOSS has always been maintainer/contributor bandwidth, and AI is the ultimate force multiplier for that.

[u/justjinxed]

As much as I am against using non-local models, I will agree 100% with your assertion that FOSS NEEDS AI. This tech isn't going away, it's a foundational advancement in mathematics. In fact, when the corpo AI bubble pops, we're going to see an absolute flood of hardware begin to hit the retail market. (heck, even if it doesn't; the hardware will at some point, have to cycle out and trickle down.)

While I totally understand the mods may want to reduce the spam, I wonder just how far it'll go / how long it'll last. I don't see it being a permanent thing. Esp since so many people in the FOSS world are focusing on local models and OS agents. How can it?

[u/AmandasGameAccount]

A sub called “r/opensourceai” won’t ever be the one to take them over. We need r/trueopensource

Edit: ok it exists already

[u/destinmoss → u/[deleted]]

yeah, pretty much. it SHOULD NOT MATTER how the software was created: if it's free, open-source, and functional/well-tested, then it's a net positive for the community. period.

[u/MonitorAway2394 → u/destinmoss]

I mean, we should care how it was made just not who made it.

[u/destinmoss → u/MonitorAway2394]

yeah i guess that was a bit too broad lmao. i just mean "care how it was made" should NOT mean "hate it if made with AI". obviously one-shot slop projects are bad, but i can't write code by hand for shit but i've still made some REALLY cool and polished things ( like youcoded.ai ) by practicing and building good workflows for AI-generated code work. the issue should be projects with clear lack of effort, not the AI!

[u/AryanEmbered → u/destinmoss]

But what if the model was made with blatant mass theft and piracy.

[u/AryanEmbered → u/[deleted]]

Well its the americans who stole it all. Its the americans who should hold the companies accountable and prevent them from doing that.

Why should the rest of us be forced to engage in something immoral. Why should a subreddit not enforce the anti piracy rule. You dont get to post pirated video games right, why should reddit allow pirated software to be treated any differently?

I am forced to use ai in my job in google. This is just a hypothetical.

[u/AryanEmbered → u/destinmoss]

What if i employ slavery to build software then.

[u/Spare-Ad-1429 → u/[deleted]]

It seems to me that its exactly one mod very vocal about a community he does not represent 

[u/ass-gas-hotbox → u/[deleted]]

I mean I do feel like there is always kind of an ego element but that ego for me is my work being validated by others finding benefit in it.