(2022-07-19) Brander Is Open Source Rselected

Gordon Brander: Is open source r-selected? Basically swarms vs tanks, in video game terms.

This is a simplification. Not every species maps well to this heuristic, but r/K do seem to be interesting defensible points in the colonization-competition tradeoff.

One way software reproduces is through literally getting copied

Another way software might reproduce is through memes. Concepts like hashmaps are reproduced across many programming languages. You can’t npm install Uber, but the concept of Uber can be reproduced and even mutated.

What kind of software wants to be K-selected? What wants to be r-selected?

Aggregators seem K-selected. They are big, few in number

Programming languages and protocols also seem K-selected to me. They operate at the infrastructure pace layer

Is open source more like an elephant or a dandelion seed?

On the one hand, Linux feels like an elephant. On the other hand, the proliferation of one-function modules and micropackages on NPM sure feel like dandelion seeds.

There is one major wrinkle in this narrative. r-selected species thrive where food is abundant. Rabbits rarely run out of grass, but open source is under constant threat of starvation.

While all this plays out, there is an asteroid hurtling toward us that seems likely to upend the whole ecosystem, for better and worse. This is GitHub Copilot. It is AI code autocompletion.

output from newer, larger large language models, like DALL-E.

how long before we can generate entire software libraries?

What does this do to open source, to software in general? If maintainer attention is the bottleneck for r-selected open source, what happens when LLMs start writing software?

Is maintenance necessary when you can generate new libraries from scratch? Will open source become so cheap you can throw it away?

Who owns these hypothetical LLMs? Will they become the next point of aggregation? I can picture AI-powered IDEs that have the strategic significance of game engines in the sense that you can’t build without them.