> I’m still trying to figure out what kinds of open source are worth writing in this new era
Is there any upside to opensourcing anything anymore? Anything published today becomes training data for the next model, with no attribution to the original work.
If the goal is to experiment, share ideas, or let others learn from the work, maybe the better default now is "source available", instead of FOSS in the classic sense. It gives people visibility while setting clearer boundaries on how the work can be used.
I learned most of what I know thanks to FOSS projects so I'm still on the fence on this.
I keep seeing this attitude and I don't really understand it at all; there's no upside to publishing open source work because it might be utilized by more people, is that correct?
Or is it the attribution? There are many many libraries I have used and continue to use and I don't know the author's internet handle or Christian name. Does that matter? Why?
I have written a lot of code that my name is no longer attached to. I don't care and I don't know why anyone does. If it were valuable I would have made more money off of it in the first place, and I don't have the ego to just care that people know it's my code either.
I want the things I do today to have an upside for people in the future. If that means I write code that gets incorporated into a model that people use to build things N number of years from now, that's great. That's awesome. Why the hell is that apparently so demotivating to some people?
> there's no upside to publishing open source work because it might be utilized by more people, is that correct?
I believe the perspective here is "I make code for fellow hackers to look into, critique, be educated on, or simply play with". If you see the hacker scene as a social one, LLM's are an awful black hole that sucks up everything around it and ruins this collaboration.
Not to mention that the hacker scene was traditionally thought to be a rejection of what we now call "Big Tech". Corporate was free to grab the code, but it didn't matter much as long as the scene was kept. Now even that invisible social contract is broken.
But I suppose if you're of a diehard FOSS mentality, "Free" means "Free". Free to be used to build, or destroy society at its whim. a hivemind to meld into and progress the overall understanding of science, for science's sake.
I'll admit the last few years have had me questioning what I truly want to do within the on these two mentalities.
> I want the things I do today to have an upside for people in the future.
I think most would agree with this, but the way things work today don't support it. As of now, AI gains are privatized while the losses are socialized. Until that one-sided imbalance is addressed, LLM's "use" of open source is unbounded and nonreciprocal.
Attribution is a big part of the human experience. Your response frames it as ego driven, but it's also what motivates people to maintain code that is not usually compensated, it's also what builds reputation, trust, communities, and even careers.
Until that’s figured out, we can still share, but maybe in ways that are closer to one another, or under distribution models that reflect the reality we’re in rather than the one we used to have.
People were publishing "open source" not because they gave a shit, but to pad their resumes to get hired at FAANG - like they're paid by the number of projects published on Github It was always human slop. I'm glad this practice is dying. Soon we might be able to reinstate the assumption that the remaining open source projects contain interesting ideas that are worth your eyeball time to look at.
You're not obligated to give away your mind for free. You're free to share, of course. But sharing implies reciprocity, a back and forth. The internet used to be like that, but if the environment changes, you adapt your behavior accordingly.
In the long run I think it's time to starve the system from input until it's attitude reverts to reciprocal. It's not what I'd want, but it seems necessary. People learn from consequences, not from words alone
This is kinda how I've felt for months. I don't have any interest in continuing existing open source projects and don't want to create any new ones.
What's the point?
All of my personal projects for the past few months have been entirely private, I don't even host them on Github anymore, I have a private Forgejo instance I use instead.
I also don't trust any new open source project I stumble upon anymore unless I know it was started at least a year ago.
Code is only useful if it's used. I could write a ton of code and be buried with it, or publish it for people (or AI software, or dolphins or aliens) to use. Who has the energy to have Anubis measure whether my code, or yours, is ethical enough? I'm going to die someday!
Is there any upside to opensourcing anything anymore? Anything published today becomes training data for the next model, with no attribution to the original work.
If the goal is to experiment, share ideas, or let others learn from the work, maybe the better default now is "source available", instead of FOSS in the classic sense. It gives people visibility while setting clearer boundaries on how the work can be used.
I learned most of what I know thanks to FOSS projects so I'm still on the fence on this.