An Optimistic Outlook for the Future of Open-Source

1/30/2026

I was introduced to the concept of "open source" roughly 20 years ago when, lacking access to Microsoft Office, one of my middle school teachers loaned me a thumb drive loaded with the installer for Open Office. I vaguely recall the concept being introduced as software that works like the software we use at school, but is free because anyone can contribute to the source code to improve it. And while that might be an incomplete and/or slight misunderstanding of the nature of open-source, that is still the fundamental embodiment of the concept that lives in my mind to this day. I saw open-source as something that wasn't just a way of sharing code, it was philosophically profound. Making the source code of a project aligned with good, it was a way to make the world a little bit better by sharing techniques used in the code with the community that surrounded it.

When the era of open-source software was truly on the rise, open-source projects like Open Office stood as statements against closed-source commercial competitors. A significant milestone was the range of "social" code hosting sites like SourceForge and Google Code which became popular and allowed projects to be hosted freely. The benefits were obvious. On the surface was visibility into the inner workings of the code, there was a sense of safety and trust because it was easy to shine a light on the inner workings of the application. Deeper and more powerful were the communities that emerged around supporting and maintaining the code, countless experts and enthusiasts alike distributed across a global network.

The rise of GitHub marked another turning point. For the first time there was a significant move where source control became centralized, not just for one, but for a vast majority of software projects.

However, a lot has changed. I'll say it again, a lot has changed in software and technology since I first started learning about the code that becomes the applications we use (when I was editing data files that came with that Open Office installer to try to change the names of menu items and modify splash screens because I thought that was the "source code" 🤣). The elapsing time has given way in progressing curtain calls as the release of the first iPhones has ebbed into memory, containerization technology and the buzz of "the cloud" has waned into a mostly ideal hybrid of its former hype, and even concepts like Agile and SCRUM (at least in my corner of the world) have become a bit more akin to old-timey folk medicine than readily prescribed courses of action.

My optimism towards the benefits of open-source began its decline around 2019 when amidst the influx of GitHub issues on projects I maintained, a vast majority of which were duplicates and cases where individuals didn't seem to take the time to read documentation, I completely lost my interest in continuing to build or improve these projects that had brought me so much joy and had become central parts of my life.

For a time, I thought I was done forever with open-source. The same power that people have to help develop and support a project can also destroy it. Large companies, seeing the clear advantages of open-source, have the (potential) ability to leverage a tremendous amount of time and human power towards creating and maintaining software repositories. It's easy to forget that the majority of open-source projects are maintained by individuals. Further still, individuals who are using a fraction of their available time to support these projects.

The onslaught of wave after wave of new coders crashing against a GitHub issue tracker or comment thread is a force to be reckoned with.

Similar events have affected others. My deepest sympathy goes out to the creator of the wiringPi library:

I’ve had over 10,000 emails from people who upgraded their Pi and found that code stopped working because they...

~ wiringpi.com/wiringpi-deprecated/

Another instance was VersionEye. It was easy to set up and I really liked being able to "follow" a package and get email notifications when a new version was released. Around October of 2017, VersionEye's founder, Robert Reiz, announced in a blog post that he was shutting down VersionEye.

Right now VersionEye.com has more than 50K signed up users from all around the world. Sad fact is that 99.8% are NOT paying anything for the service. 99.8% are using the cloud solution for free. And even worst, they cause a lot of support. They write emails, tweets and open new tickets on GitHub like there is no tomorrow. Especially the non paying users are very demanding if it comes to new features, sometimes in a very rude way. Or they complain that the free tier is too restrictive. A big part of my day is occupied by responding to support emails/tweets/GH-tickets. And somehow my inbox is never getting empty and that is stressing me! It’s like running in a hamster wheel without making any progress. I know how to build scalable software, but most of the time I’m busy with answering emails from people who are not paying for the service.

~ blog.versioneye.com/2017/10/19/versioneye-sunset-process/

So what has renewed my optimism?

Despite the technological and economic risks, believe it or not it's AI.

My impression is that we reached an inflection point, roughly in the middle of October this past year (2025) where one can practically wish code and software with complex functionality into existence. This was the significant moment for me when I realized that AI didn't just represent a fad, or an overzealous auto-correct, but rather that we are in fact dealing with something that will fuel significantly expanding technology-driven change. Something that will become an embedded component of every aspect of modern life in the same way it is near impossible to exist in the modern world without some form of computer or mobile device. If I'm wrong, then I'm excited to acknowledge it going forward, but at this point I have a strong track record of making accurate scientific and technological predictions.

But the part that has me the most excited isn't the macro-view. For individuals, the threshold to create has been lowered, and the breadth of people who now have the ability to innovate with software and other mediums has been greatly expanded.

In the same way that open-source first challenged large commercial vendors by providing predominantly free alternatives to paid software, I see AI tools offering the same ability. Apps can get replicated easily, this leads to a breakdown of subscription and fremium models because someone can just make a similar product that is completely free. Competition now comes from quality, not thresholds of technological difficulty, and the tools to learn and build these things are more available than ever.

My hope and vision is that AI leads to an era of expanded creativity, widespread innovation, and the ability for individuals and small groups to scale their ideas to massive levels, without having to bear the brunt of medial tasks that consume heavy amounts of their time and energy.