Then it wouldn’t be free as in FOSS

I had the same perception as you before I read the article, so I presume we both made the same wrong assumption. Apologies if I misunderstood your comment.

It’s not suggesting anyone changes the licenses to enforce this. Instead, it suggests that the package repositories should charge companies for access. Companies that want to use a free mirror will, but many will pay for convenience of using the official repository. A cut of that money is then automatically shared to maintainers.

What made me think along those lines is that someone I know vibe-coded their own personal/private XMPP client recently. I’m sure it has lots of problems, but it does what they need and has a nice UI that looks how they wanted. In their case, it doesn’t need to be bug-free - just bug-free on their machine, for the tasks that they do with it.

But for some software, I definitely agree about the reliability and edge-cases / environments. Knowing 1000s of people have tested my backup software and ironed out the bugs is a big plus. I can’t imagine many people would want to use a vibe-coded one.

Thinking about Blender, IIRC, their filetype is effectively a memory dump of the process. So, if I worked in an animation studio and wanted a custom feature, I’d definitely write a plugin instead of making a bespoke tool. But then again, if I could export to .ofx or another common format, and have everything import perfectly, I’d be more tempted to go for a bespoke tool again. It’s interesting to think through the scenarios.

I use AI at work, but not at home.

There was an interesting post here which reasons through when it’s ethical to use proprietary software to further FOSS. I generally agree with the argument, but AI doesn’t meet that threshold for me.

I think our goal should be for everyone to be able to use FOSS for everything. That means, if we use proprietary tools, we have to be able to replace them eventually. Otherwise, we’re just dependent.

But that doesn’t seem possible with AI yet. If there was a project making a truly open AI (open weights, open, consensually retrieved and properly licensed training data, open harnesses, open training infra etc.), and using existing AIs somehow helped with that, I’d be all for it.

Another aspect is how it shifts the way things are made. Projects are built on collaboration and shared understanding, but AI is such a different way of working - so what does it mean for some people in a project to use it and others not to? Why would I spend a week working on a very tight, clean patch when someone else can re-implement literally the whole project in an hour? And why would they contribute to this shared project at all, when they can build something tailored exactly to their needs by themselves?

It makes me wonder if FOSS as we know it will become less important, but open standards will become more important. Since you can make software tailored exactly to your needs, clients will proliferate. But when you have to integrate with others, you still have to negotiate and come to an agreement on how to connect together, so that work will be even more valuable.