Stages of grief about the effect of AI on open source. Denial: - AI code is slop! Nobody serious will use this. - Open source will keep working exactly like it always has. Anger: - These AI slop PRs are ruining GitHub! - Ban AI-generated code! - If you close PRs, you're not open source anymore! Bargaining: - Okay, AI can write code, but only if a human reviews every line. - Maybe adversarial AI review will make arbitrary external code intake safe again. Depression: - Wait, if code generation is basically free, what is a contribution anymore? - Is GitHub-style open source culture just going away? Acceptance: - Open source is still open source, even if the contribution model evolves. - Good issues, test cases, benchmarks, specifications, and ideas become the scarce inputs. - Upstream may stop accepting arbitrary code while forking becomes much easier. Bonus stage! Reconstruction: - Projects redesign around maintainer-controlled agents, issue-driven development, stronger test/validation infrastructure, and new ways for contributors to earn trust.

Over the coming years, more and more people will see parts of their expertise replicated by AI, and many of them are going to be extremely upset about it and shame you for thinking it's neat. The software profession is in the middle of this right now, and it's pretty ugly. It's coming to a lot of other professions soon. I'm curious whether they’ll take it as badly as some programmers have, or if we’re just an unusually sensitive bunch 😅