AI will kill open source

As of writing, I have the particular privilege of working on open source code as a full-time, salary-paying job. I have to attach a conditional to that because the open source nature of it isn’t a guarantee—what I do could get put behind a wall next week for all I know—it’s only open because someone higher in the organisation allows it to be. Being able to do stuff in the open and witness how it spreads, mutates and feeds back on itself is a major draw of the job for me. Whilst I’m no Linux-headed evangelist, I do love open source software. I also sincerely think that generative AI (genAI) is an existential risk to all open source software projects. AI is the thief of joy One of the supposed ‘selling points’ of genAI in development is that it makes code creation easy. Rather than writing code yourself, you can write a detailed prompt and feed it into a machine that will magic the code out of thin air instead, saving effort (if not money) and leaving more time to write new…