Free and open source software projects are in transition

Re:Free and open source software projects are in transition by sesm on Monday July 31, 2023 @12:58PM (#36945529)

I was thinking about the essence of open source recently, and I came to the following conclusion: open source is when you treat people as developers, not as users. Which means: it should be trivial to build and run from source, debug, add extra logs and apply patches. Moreover, creating and applying your own patches should be encouraged, anything that can be easily patched shouldn't be a configuration option.

Most corporate "open source" fails this test, they treat people as users, create marketing websites while publishing zero developer documentation.

What's interesting, JS ecosystem accidentally has this property, thanks to packages being distributed as source, standard logging system (console.log) and widespread use of `patch-package` tool.

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Re:Free and open source software projects are in transition by bee_rider on Monday July 31, 2023 @01:39PM (#36946143)

Not everyone can code in a way that is useful for development, but one way of looking at it could be: actually treating people like a community, rather than users.

Unfortunately the phrase “community” has been degraded a bit by companies who want a more in-group-feeling-inducing way of describing their users. But, in a real community, people support each other and try to push projects forward, contributing in the fashion that best suits their skills, and toward goals that best fit their interests.

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Re:Free and open source software projects are in transition by J_Shelby_J on Monday July 31, 2023 @03:13PM (#36947403)

In the age of LLMs everyone is a dev.

What's the next iteration of SaaS then?

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Re:Free and open source software projects are in transition by majewsky on Monday July 31, 2023 @04:26PM (#36948298)

Most uses of LLMs for development that I've seen are for writing code, when the majority of dev time is spent reading code. What offerings exist to read through an existing codebase and ask questions of it? Do contemporary LLMs have enough lookbehind for that?

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Re:Free and open source software projects are in transition by J_Shelby_J on Monday July 31, 2023 @05:01PM (#36948766)

We are years from way from the average user being able to replace X SaaS tool with available open source software they run themselves.

Even now, the average person could have GPT walk them through replacing WIX with their own self hosted website. When I say "dev," I probably misspoke. I meant more in the sense that the average person will be able to implement existing software in a way that was previously unreachable.

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