All my new code will be closed-source from now on. I've contributed millions of lines of carefully written OSS code over the past decade, spent thousands of hours helping other people. If you want to… | Marc J. Schmidt | 437 comments
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All my new code will be closed-source from now on. I've contributed millions of lines of carefully written OSS code over the past decade, spent thousands of hours helping other people. If you want to use my libraries (1M+ downloads/month) in the future, you have to pay. I made good money funneling people through my OSS and being recognized as expert in several fields. This was entirely based on HUMANS knowing and seeing me by USING and INTERACTING with my code. No humans will ever read my docs again when coding agents do it in seconds. Nobody will even know it's me who built it. Look at Tailwind: 75 million downloads/month, more popular than ever, revenue down 80%, docs traffic down 40%, 75% of engineering team laid off. Someone submitted a PR to add LLM-optimized docs and Wathan had to decline - optimizing for agents accelerates his business's death. He's being asked to build the infrastructure for his own obsolescence. Two of the most common OSS business models: - Open Core: Give away the library, sell premium once you reach critical mass (Tailwind UI, Prisma Accelerate, Supabase Cloud...) - Expertise Moat: Be THE expert in your library - consulting gigs, speaking, higher salary Tailwind just proved the first one is dying. Agents bypass the documentation funnel. They don't see your premium tier. Every project relying on docs-to-premium conversion will face the same pressure: Prisma, Drizzle, MikroORM, Strapi, and many more. The core insight: OSS monetization was always about attention. Human eyeballs on your docs, brand, expertise. That attention has literally moved into attention layers. Your docs trained the models that now make visiting you unnecessary. Human attention paid. Artificial attention doesn't. Some OSS will keep going - wealthy devs doing it for fun or education. That's not a system, that's charity. Most popular OSS runs on economic incentives. Destroy them, they stop playing. Why go closed-source? When the monetization funnel is broken, you move payment to the only point that still exists: access. OSS gave away access hoping to monetize attention downstream. Agents broke downstream. Closed-source gates access directly. The final irony: OSS trained the models now killing it. We built our own replacement. My prediction: a new marketplace emerges, built for agents. Want your agent to use Tailwind? Prisma? Pay per access. Libraries become APIs with meters. The old model: free code -> human attention -> monetization. The new model: pay at the gate or your agent doesn't get in. | 437 comments on LinkedIn

All my new code will be closed-source from now on. I’ve contributed millions of lines of carefully written OSS code over the past decade, spent thousands of hours helping other people. If you want to use my libraries (1M+ downloads/month) in the future, you have to pay.

I made good money funneling people through my OSS and being recognized as expert in several fields. This was entirely based on HUMANS knowing and seeing me by USING and INTERACTING with my code. No humans will ever read my docs again when coding agents do it in seconds. Nobody will even know it’s me who built it.

Look at Tailwind: 75 million downloads/month, more popular than ever, revenue down 80%, docs traffic down 40%, 75% of engineering team laid off. Someone submitted a PR to add LLM-optimized docs and Wathan had to decline - optimizing for agents accelerates his business’s death. He’s being asked to build the infrastructure for his own obsolescence.

Two of the most common OSS business models:

  • Open Core: Give away the library, sell premium once you reach critical mass (Tailwind UI, Prisma Accelerate, Supabase Cloud…)
  • Expertise Moat: Be THE expert in your library - consulting gigs, speaking, higher salary

Tailwind just proved the first one is dying. Agents bypass the documentation funnel. They don’t see your premium tier. Every project relying on docs-to-premium conversion will face the same pressure: Prisma, Drizzle, MikroORM, Strapi, and many more.

The core insight: OSS monetization was always about attention. Human eyeballs on your docs, brand, expertise. That attention has literally moved into attention layers. Your docs trained the models that now make visiting you unnecessary. Human attention paid. Artificial attention doesn’t.

Some OSS will keep going - wealthy devs doing it for fun or education. That’s not a system, that’s charity. Most popular OSS runs on economic incentives. Destroy them, they stop playing.

Why go closed-source? When the monetization funnel is broken, you move payment to the only point that still exists: access. OSS gave away access hoping to monetize attention downstream. Agents broke downstream. Closed-source gates access directly. The final irony: OSS trained the models now killing it. We built our own replacement.

My prediction: a new marketplace emerges, built for agents. Want your agent to use Tailwind? Prisma? Pay per access. Libraries become APIs with meters. The old model: free code -> human attention -> monetization. The new model: pay at the gate or your agent doesn’t get in.

  • PolarKraken@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    6·
    13 hours ago

    I don’t think you can compare high quality mature OSS projects to busking. I love buskers and busking, I’m old school punk. But the analogy to busking in the software world would be just random devs’ small personal projects.

    The better analogy for a big mature project and the phenomena the author is describing:

    • team of people create a large scale professional grade musical performance and allow attendance for free
    • til now, enough people come to the free show that spend money in other ways to sustain the whole thing
    • now, gigantic companies stole everything in the show, put it into their giant entertainment library, giving nothing back, and there are no longer enough attendees to support the free show

    I can see disagreeing with what to do about the problem, but it’s bizarre to me to see the “fuck AI in every way” place turn around and attack this guy.

    • kumi@feddit.onlineEnglish
      2·
      7 hours ago

      I’m involved with people organizing free rave parties of all sizes and production grades and it’s something I hold dear so your analogy hits close to home!

      They all have income streams from outside the scene, including the ones responsible for events with thousands of attendants. While there are countless stories of people making industry connections promoting their careers and getting work there, a DJ or producer expecting they will be able to sustain a professional career purely through scene exposure or free parties is delusional.

      That a few have been fortunate and resourceful enough to do so for a while is great but it’s not an indictement of the scene if one of them makes a “The Scene Is Dead” post on Instagram that they’re tired of the freeloaders and only doing paid gigs from now on. If they then continue publicly theorizing on how one could successfully financially exploit this community, they shouldn’t be surprised if the people who have been volunteering (usually a better characterization than charity IMO) for years feel rubbed the wrong way.

      it’s bizarre to me to see the “fuck AI in every way” place turn around and attack this guy

      Agreed in the mobbing of the wider thread but I hope you don’t see that going on here?

        • kumi@feddit.onlineEnglish
          2·
          6 hours ago

          And thank you for the refining exchange!

          I also recognize that both the rave scene and free software are enabled in part by people with cushy high-paying jobs and what Lemmy would call rich kids who don’t mind sinking some money (and sometimes employer goodwill) into their passion without expecting any returns.