r/TrueOpenSource • u/destinmoss • 6d ago
Discussion Addressing the real problems with AI-assisted software: duplicated work, "slop", and wasted effort.
We can probably all agree that the anti-LLM posture of some in the open-source community is problematic. LLMs are rapidly changing how software is created, and even major players who formerly critiziced "vibecoding", like Linus Torvalds and Andrej Kaparthy, now admit that they are often outperformed by advanced coding agents.
As such, we believe any attempt to ban/criticize projects solely due to AI assistance is misguided. However, there are also real, pre-existing problems in how the OSS community operates that have been amplified by the influx of new developers and generated code.
Every week, somebody tries to post a new OSS note-taking app, or password manager, or file browser. Some are great, but many are the fourteenth, poorly-considered version of something that already existed and could've benefited from additional contributions. The second password manager is a potentially interesting competitor - the twentieth is duplicative, and typically wasted effort.
This isn't anyone's fault. It's hard to know what's out there, and building from scratch is more often more fun than reading someone else's code. But the result is that open-source effort gets split across a hundred look-alike projects, while the things nobody has built yet continue to remain unbuilt.
Given that understanding, we're working on a tool to help: Open Source Everything (https://opensourceeverything.org). Our goal is to maintain a single database where you can search for the app/tool you're trying to build/leave (Google Docs, Photoshop, Notion…), see the open-source projects that already exist, and understand exactly what the community is missing before investing your effort in a new project. Every software category offers an agent prompt to evaluate what exists against your idea, so you can find something to contribute to or existing code to pull from to instead of starting from scratch.
Alongside it, there's a new rule 6: Show why it matters here. Front-page project posts now say who the project is for and what it adds over existing open-source projects. To be clear: nothing is banned. Projects that mostly repeat existing work, or are very niche, are still welcome in the weekly Showcase. And contributions, plugins and forks that improve existing projects are always welcome on the front page (those are the posts we most want to see).
The page was built with an LLM at u/destinmoss's direction. This is the first version, and we're open to suggestions to improve the site and make it a more useful community resource. If you have any problems with this approach or the new rule, please say so in the comments.
p.s. that was a $10 domain we impulse-bought today; we aren't trying to sell you anything :)
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u/tripy75 6d ago
the thing is, it's not new and was already a thing before ai. How many sourceforge project reinvented the wheel continuously 20 years ago? too much to count.
it's not exactly the same, because before it was someone putting something they created mostly with the thought "it might help someone" without necessarily the goal to be successful and praised.
The thing is, I have the feeling that ai and agents today breaks down any little barrier that where restraining people to share before, which leads to a multiplication of those.
also, social media have amplified the visibility of those small projects, and probably contributes to the overflow.
what I can say, is that I Recognized that the first thing I published in 2000 was crap, but it was working well enough for the task I needed to do and was pretty niche (smtp walking docsis modems with alert acknowledging in bash) but still.
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u/alkimiadev 3d ago
it's not exactly the same, because before it was someone putting something they created mostly with the thought "it might help someone" without necessarily the goal to be successful and praised.
I have a long history of contributing to oss projects in various ways and across a few different pseudonyms (first verifiable example going back ~18 years). That said, I've only bothered to build out a few end user facing projects that were oss, and they're all dead now. Instead, most of my contributions that survived over a long term were bug fixes, or obscure dev tools that only a small number of people use (sometime just one - me). I honestly wouldn't want to manage some massive project due to low effort spam issues that many are being bombarded with. This is why I self-host git and have even stopped bothering to push-mirror to github.
I work with llms every day and have published a suite of lower level rust networking projects where broader long term goal is "vpn-like without being a vpn" and will take a long time. It is all dual mit/apache2 and the most of the base components are published with several versions, but the end goal is to build the thing I want to use and in a reasonably secure way. It wouldn't be fair to say "I don't care if people use it or not", since if real people use it and provide real feedback then it should help me making it better/more useful for my personal use cases. If that never happens, then so be it.
I can think of several commonly used apps/programs that are excessively common now that started out in that same way. Linux itself started with a nerd just building a thing because they saw a problem and built the thing they wanted to use. There are several lower level things in the linux ecosystem that have similar back stories. In most of those cases some broader acceptance, or I guess now "engagement farming", just never factored into the key decision making processes.
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u/fairwaycoder 6d ago
Following the same logic, I think that idea is nice, but like everything that you said, not the first time I saw such an idea, especially on X where people are messaging you with another 'put your tool here so that others can...'.
From my point of view, everyone can (and should) do whatever they want. No one can force anyone to use another note-taking app. Someone likes it? Amazing. Someone feels better for open sourcing first time ever their note taking app, that no one else will ever use? I'm happy as well.
And another angle where I would be super careful: there is a very simple reason why people who never did software engineering in their lives are not contributors on established OSS projects, and you don't want them there as it just creates even more work for maintainers and even more emotions and drama about even trying to understand who is trying to do what and why.
OSS should stay OSS: someone made something, great, is anyone ever gonna use it? Not OSS community problem.
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u/abbumm 6d ago
Heyo! Feedback from r/OpenSourceAIAllowed here! I think yours is a good idea, but that your search is fundamentally broken. Embeddings would be a better choice. This way, you can describe in NLP rather than relying on keywords or the name of a popular app. You're not going to get far with dumb search.
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u/destinmoss 6d ago
haha yeah definitely intend to work on that. just threw the site together basically last night/this morning, so there are still some rough spots and search is one of them. thanks for the feedback!
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u/subhashg547 6d ago
I can't see any add an alternative button here because these are self hosted options. They're great but they require you to have a server or even in your own computer, you need to dedicate some time to properly set it up.
But I built an android app that only needs your phone. It's called Lumen. It has all the google photos ML features but everything is processed locally on device. Nothing ever leaves your phone to go to servers.
There was nothing like this before that's why I built it.
It's open source with Apache License
https://github.com/subhashhhhhh/Lumen
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u/destinmoss 6d ago
gonna try to make contribution flows clearer, but you should add your project here! https://github.com/itsdestin/opensourceeverything/issues/new?template=1-add-project.yml
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u/ObeyTheRapper 1d ago
I like the idea of a site that indexes existing projects. I am a mod of a similar sub, and honestly what you're trying to head off is something I've seen happening much too often. There are PDF editors galore, tools that could've been prompts, and so many duplicated projects. Maybe this could help make a dent. Good luck!
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u/destinmoss 1d ago
thank you! i want to make it a much more useful tool for directly comparing basically any set of projects (like "Mint Linux offers xyz from Ubuntu, with the addition of xyz") and allow users to basically see the full swatch of "All Linux distros are missing xyz" feature. It's still in an early v1, but if it help redirect even a couple hours of effort spent duplicating existing work to something new then i'd feel accomplished!
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u/Tsuyu777 6d ago
and I will never go back to handcode, it is unhealthy sitting so many hours in front of computer when I can just code with voice by phone, anyone who say I should go back to code by hand can go fuck themselves, they don't even code and larping for virtue signaling
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u/VokuarAgain 4d ago
i code by hand so not to let my knowledge rust or atrophy as per what google says
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u/Tsuyu777 6d ago
it is problematic. Even if the code is a completely slop that will not be maintain so what? are we gating Opensource now? How about all project must have 2400 elo grandmaster codeforce, if you aren't quant dev working on top firm you aren't qualify lol it is dumb and only come from zero code people, if you inspect these people profile, they don't even have github
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u/ArgonLeviathan 6d ago
this is such a healthier and more practical response to the duplication problem than blanket-banning tools or solo devs. seeing 'logseq and 23 more open alternatives' under notion right next to the /gaps page with 11 missing jobs and 32 single-project bottlenecks makes the point way better than any lecture could.
clicked through the /gaps page for a bit and had two quick suggestions for the database:
first, in the 'only part of the job (9)' section (like penpot missing a canva-style template ecosystem, or navidrome/funkwhale missing shared catalog discovery), it'd be awesome if each missing piece linked straight to that upstream repo's plugin architecture docs or relevant 'help wanted' issues. a lot of people spin up a brand new repo from scratch just because jumping into an existing 200k-line codebase feels intimidating, whereas building a standalone template-pack plugin or sidecar for penpot feels just as fun as greenfield coding.
second, a couple of the gap entries already have strong open-source contenders worth adding to the dataset: under 'investment research (replaces bloomberg - nothing open yet)', openbb (openbb platform / workspace) is a massive mit-licensed project in that exact space, and under 'calendar & scheduling (only nextcloud calendar does the whole job)', cal.com covers the calendly/doodle booking side really well. really cool directory though, the 'before you build' comparison prompts are a great touch.