American Monorail weave room, Elrod Collection – Greenville Historical Society

Making open source software used to be among the least controversial acts imaginable. The worst that could happen when you freely shared your work with the world was that no one cared. And if just one person did care enough to even say so, it was connection, it was community, it was everything.

Sharing truly was caring; for one's own development, for the receiver's enjoyment, and for the quality of the code.

Now, every act of giving is treated with suspicion. The gift of openness is no longer trustworthy on its own. The receivers of free software want to know how the gift came to be. Is it pure, or was it made with dirty machinery?

In the case of the latter, some especially angry, would-be recipients won't just ignore the giver and forego the gift, they'll attack the giver with the fervor of someone who has themselves been attacked, apparently by the voluntary offer on hand.

The anger is justified, but the target is tragically misguided, and it is fracturing the software developer community at a time when solidarity is the only way our technology will be ours to wield again.

There is no opting out

The tech we make more tech with is chiefly chosen for us, not by us.

Fewer industries are better at manufacturing demand than the devtools industry. When the corporate world wants a new technology adopted they have an army of marketers and good DevRel1 soldiers they'll send out to make the latest addition to the stack self-evident; the missing piece you didn't know you needed!

And two things can be true at once: The new thing wouldn't have risen to prominence the way it did without major financial backing, but it was also plain good tech with real utility.

Software developers prize their autonomy and are quick to judge peers who don't exercise their agency enough to leave that shitty company or drop that antiquated framework. But devs operate under the laws of economic realities just like the rest of the working class, and many have learned in recent years just how little power we workers actually have to protect ourselves when the jobs market is shrinking.

Suddenly, opting not to do React because "it doesn't suit my sensibilities as a developer" isn't a position you can afford to hold any longer, no more than the weaver artisans could afford to say no to a job at the factory.

So too with AI. Yes there were the early adopters who embraced it eagerly2, but far more have reluctantly come along for the ride simply because the industry decided this is how we do things now. Many probably even believe they were willing adopters, but really it's just a story they tell themselves as they cling to a fading sense of agency in their craft.

If you've opted out you're one of the lucky, privileged few that the ruthless march of industry hasn't conscripted yet. But don't conflate your enviable happenstance with a stronger backbone than your peers. I ask that you be more compassionate, for we are all cognizant of our entrapment and are working our way out of it as best we know how.

AI erodes trust

As an "open source social worker"3, I perceive the greatest cost of AI to be the erosion of trust among open software practitioners. It has utterly upended our gift economy, turning well meaning developers against each other in a cold civil war beset with spy games.

No one is safe. Speak about your use of AI in a side project and your community might shun you. Speak ill of AI and your employer might fire you. To practice open software now is to practice great caution at every turn. Every utterance about software needs to be qualified with a position, a declaration of allegiance or inoffensive ambivalence.

The community of practice that I've grown up with, played with, and built with is eating itself from the inside. It hurts. We're all hurting so bad that every few weeks there's a new announcement of a cherished peer leaving tech to save their sanity.

I feel like a weary old man reading the obituaries of people I used to know from the neighborhood, and find myself wondering how long until I join them.

I don't know how much time my waning tech career has got left in it, but I do know I'm done wasting any more of it being judgemental and angry at my fellow makers of public goods. Factory-made or not, I'm grateful for every gift I'm given.