In which I show how, over the last few years, the world has rapidly moved from open-source software being produced and maintained by online communities, to software projects being built and maintained in isolation. By single developers, with ever-decreasing input from others. AI coding tools are now dramatically accelerating movement away from code as a collective endeavour to "coding alone". I conclude by describing how such progression need not be considered inevitable. Every step has reflected the collective influence of countless individual human decisions. The fate of open-source software communities is still determined by us.

Generative AI is changing how software is produced and used. In vibe coding, an AI agent builds software by selecting and assembling open-source software (OSS), often without users directly reading documentation, reporting bugs, or otherwise engaging with maintainers. We study the equilibrium effects of vibe coding on the OSS ecosystem. We develop a model with endogenous entry and heterogeneous project quality in which OSS is a scalable input into producing more software. Users choose whether to use OSS directly or through vibe coding. Vibe coding raises productivity by lowering the cost of using and building on existing code, but it also weakens the user engagement through which many maintainers earn returns. When OSS is monetized only through direct user engagement, greater adoption of vibe coding lowers entry and sharing, reduces the availability and quality of OSS, and reduces welfare despite higher productivity. Sustaining OSS at its current scale under widespread vibe coding requires major changes in how maintainers are paid. An event-study design exploiting the staggered rollout of different AI models shows that when a website component begins to be recommended by frontier coding models, its downloads rise while its GitHub stars fall, consistent with the model's demand-diversion channel.

H5P empowers everyone to create, share and reuse interactive content - all you need is a web browser and a web site that supports H5P.

OERcamp.global 2027: Join the international online event for OER, open education, exchange and collaborative learning.

BASIC is Back. From $299.99. Learn more