The open source movement spent decades
fighting for everyone's rightto change software, through free access to code and permissive licenses to release improvements. But at the dawn of the AI revolution, as this mission is finally being broadly fulfilled, it's clear that "everyone" never actually meanteveryoneto some.See, all programmers are equal, but some programmers are more equal than others. If you're a programmer being assisted by AI, you're not a
realprogrammer. Therefore you aren't entitled to the same supposedly universal open source rights. Or so the self-serving thinking goes in the growing number of anti-agent camps springing up as part of a modern Luddite movement.Projects big and small have been
[erecting](https://github.com/flathub-infra/documentation/commit/992f57b30de98ddbd5e80959e9672998c83c8c97)
[new](https://ziglang.org/code-of-conduct/)
[participation](https://www.netbsd.org/developers/commit-guidelines.html)
barrierson contributions aided by AI to preserve the privileges of the old programmer guilds.
This is a protectionist tale as old as time.
And the justifications are just as tired: It's about quality! It's about attribution! It's about workers! Spare me. It's about you, your insecurities, and your privileges.
Humans have been writing shitty software, with dodgy attribution and plenty of bugs, since five minutes after the profession materialized. Agents aren't perfect, slop is a problem, but giving more people the power to enjoy
malleable computersis undoubtedly a huge win for the founding vision of open source. But as with so many social movements that purport to fight for freedom or equality, this AI backlash reeks of status games, envy, and what Nietzsche called
ressentiment:How dare you make or change software without suffering through all that I had to endure learning this trade! This precious power is my reward for enduring the social humiliation of being a nerd!
What should be celebrated as the spread of computing freedoms is instead condemned because it diminishes the exclusivity of those who possessed it first.
Don't succumb to this insular, fearful, protectionist thinking. Programming is evolving. We don't know exactly what the final shape will look like, but giving more people access to the fruits of computing freedoms is worth resisting the temptation to close the gates of participation.