How will LLMs affect open source quality?
- How will LLMs affect open source quality?
- It definitely undermines the business models of e.g. Tailwind.
- Those models are unlikely to ever work again.
- But now engineers don't need to use libraries.
- "Obviously I'm not going to write my own cron syntax parser" in a world of LLMs transforms to "Obviously I won't even consider using libraries to do that."
- Open sourcing a library is a lot of effort.
- It used to be that the amount of effort to write the code was large, and the amount to maintain it was large.
- But now LLMs mess with that calculus.
- If you can knock out 10 libraries in a day of work, you won't open source them because you have to.
- The effort to maintain them dwarfs the time to create them.
- The complexity threshold that makes it worth open sourcing has risen significantly.
- For example, would you use kubernetes or build your own subset?
- You need the experience to guide the creation of this code well but it's super powerful.
- The people who have relevant experience can get the LLMs to write bespoke "libraries" with the flick of the wrist.
- Other people will not benefit from that expertise.