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Vibe Coding Is Killing Open Source Software, Researchers Argue:
According to a new study from a team of researchers in Europe, vibe coding is killing open-source software (OSS) and it's happening faster than anyone predicted.
Thanks to vibe coding, a colloquialism for the practice of quickly writing code with the assistance of an LLM, anyone with a small amount of technical knowledge can churn out computer code and deploy software, even if they don't fully review or understand all the code they churn out. But there's a hidden cost. Vibe coding relies on vast amounts of open-source software, a trove of libraries, databases, and user knowledge that's been built up over decades.
Open-source projects rely on community support to survive. They're collaborative projects where the people who use them give back, either in time, money, or knowledge, to help maintain the projects. Humans have to come in and fix bugs and maintain libraries.
Vibe coders, according to these researchers, don't give back.
The study Vibe Coding Kills Open Source, takes an economic view of the problem and asks the question: is vibe coding economically sustainable? Can OSS survive when so many of its users are takers and not givers? According to the study, no.
"Our main result is that under traditional OSS business models, where maintainers primarily monetize direct user engagement...higher adoption of vibe coding reduces OSS provision and lowers welfare," the study said. "In the long-run equilibrium, mediated usage erodes the revenue base that sustains OSS, raises the quality threshold for sharing, and reduces the mass of shared packages...the decline can be rapid because the same magnification mechanism that amplifies positive shocks to software demand also amplifies negative shocks to monetizable engagement. In other words, feedback loops that once accelerated growth now accelerate contraction."
[...] According to Koren, vibe-coders simply don't give back to the OSS communities they're taking from. "The convenience of delegating your work to the AI agent is too strong. There are some superstar projects like Openclaw that generate a lot of community interest but I suspect the majority of vibe coders do not keep OSS developers in their minds," he said. "I am guilty of this myself. Initially I limited my vibe coding to languages I can read if not write, like TypeScript. But for my personal projects I also vibe code in Go, and I don't even know what its package manager is called, let alone be familiar with its libraries."
The study said that vibe coding is reducing the cost of software development, but that there are other costs people aren't considering. "The interaction with human users is collapsing faster than development costs are falling," Koren told 404 Media. "The key insight is that vibe coding is very easy to adopt. Even for a small increase in capability, a lot of people would switch. And recent coding models are very capable. AI companies have also begun targeting business users and other knowledge workers, which further eats into the potential 'deep-pocket' user base of OSS."
This won't end well. "Vibe coding is not sustainable without open source," Koren said. "You cannot just freeze the current state of OSS and live off of that. Projects need to be maintained, bugs fixed, security vulnerabilities patched. If OSS collapses, vibe coding will go down with it. I think we have to speak up and act now to stop that from happening."
He said that major AI firms like Anthropic and OpenAI can't continue to free ride on OSS or the whole system will collapse. "We propose a revenue sharing model based on actual usage data," he said. "The details would have to be worked out, but the technology is there to make such a business model feasible for OSS."
[...] "Popular libraries will keep finding sponsors," Koren said. "Smaller, niche projects are more likely to suffer. But many currently successful projects, like Linux, git, TeX, or grep, started out with one person trying to scratch their own itch. If the maintainers of small projects give up, who will produce the next Linux?"
arXiv link: https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.15494
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Tuesday February 10, @06:12PM (4 children)
Non-FreeBSD, really, that sort of attitude is why nobody takes people like you seriously. There's more than a little irony in promoting less free licences as being more free.
(Score: 2) by Bentonite on Wednesday February 11, @03:10AM (3 children)
As I am serious, I refuse to write something that is not true.
NonFreeBSD is not free software, as it contains proprietary software that takes the users freedom - it contains many unlicensed files and many proprietary software programs without source code.
See below for just a few of the proprietary programs included in the "src" tree (included in the default install);
https://cgit.freebsd.org/src/tree/sys/contrib/dev [freebsd.org]
https://cgit.freebsd.org/src/tree/sys/contrib/dev/nvidia/LICENCE.nvidia [freebsd.org]
https://cgit.freebsd.org/src/tree/sys/contrib/dev/nvidia/tegra124_xusb.bin.uu [freebsd.org]
https://cgit.freebsd.org/src/tree/sys/contrib/dev/nvidia/tegra210_xusb.bin.uu [freebsd.org]
https://cgit.freebsd.org/src/tree/sys/contrib/dev/otus/otus-license [freebsd.org]
https://cgit.freebsd.org/src/tree/sys/contrib/dev/otus/otus-init [freebsd.org]
https://cgit.freebsd.org/src/tree/sys/contrib/dev/iwm/LICENSE [freebsd.org]
https://cgit.freebsd.org/src/tree/sys/contrib/dev/iwm [freebsd.org]
One of the reasons why BSD's use weak licenses like the 3-clause BSD, is that such permits taking the users freedom by including proprietary software anywhere (even right in the kernel).
You're confused between freedom and power.
Strong free licenses like the GPLv{1,2,3} gives both the developers and the users freedom, as you and everyone else can (or ask someone else to do so on behalf of them);
- Run the program as you wish, for any purpose.
- Study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
- Redistribute copies so you can help others.
- Distribute copies of your modified versions to others. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
Although, strong licenses don't grant the *power* to take these freedoms away from others, to ensure that the software remains free for everyone.
While weak licenses can grant these 4 freedoms (provided the software is validly licensed and has complete corresponding source code available under the same, or another free license - so not the BSD's - only parts of the BSD's), those also grant the *power* to take any or all of the 4 freedoms - so what happens every single time, is that a proprietary software developer comes along and exercises the granted power to take the users freedom.
As you can see, clearly strong licenses are more free (as those ensure freedom), while weak licenses are less free (as those ensure freedom usually doesn't result).
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Wednesday February 11, @03:38PM (2 children)
Again, that is childish and not likely to win anybody over to your side.
(Score: 2) by Bentonite on Thursday February 12, @01:48AM (1 child)
There is nothing childish about a strong argument and backing it up the facts.
What is childish is you attacking me personally, rather than my argument (but I guess you can't criticize the argument to the same standard, as all you have are falsehoods, so what else can you do?).
I am not trying to win the too far gone - just demonstrating that I was right again and allowing people to learn something.
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Thursday February 12, @03:04AM
It's not a strong argument, it's a bunch of name calling and generally idiotic views. You're certainly entitled to have your opinions, but the name calling isn't helpful, nor is completely missing the point.