Open Source Now for Rich Peeps
December 3, 2025
Once upon a time, open source was the realm of startups in a niche market. Nolan Lawson wrote about “The Fate Of ‘Small’ Open Source” on his blog Read The Tea Leaves. He explains that more developers are using AI in their work and it’s step ahead of how coding used to be in the past. He observed a societal change that has been happening since the invention of the Internet: “I do think it’s a future where we prize instant answers over teaching and understanding.”
Old-fashioned research is now an art that few decide to master except in some circumstances. However, that doesn’t help the open source libraries that built the foundation of modern AI and most systems. Lawson waxes poetic about the ending of an era and what’s the point of doing something new in an old language. He uses a lot of big words and tech speak that most people won’t understand, but I did decipher that he’s upset that big corporations and AI chatbots are taking away the work.
He remains hopeful though:
“So if there’s a conclusion to this meandering blog post (excuse my squishy human brain; I didn’t use an LLM to write this), it’s just that: yes, LLMs have made some kinds of open source obsolete, but there’s still plenty of open source left to write. I’m excited to see what kinds of novel and unexpected things you all come up with.”
My squishy brain comprehends that the future is as bleak as the present but it’s all relative and how we decide to make it.
Whitney Grace, December 3, 2025
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