AI Is Reshaping Open Source Software and Straining the Systems That Sustain It
A new ACM TechBrief argues that AI is improving open source software and overwhelming the volunteers who sustain it at the same time. The economic stake is enormous – firms would spend 3.5 times more on software without open source, a demand-side value of $8.8 trillion – yet 60% of maintainers are unpaid. curl closed a seven-year bug bounty after its confirmation rate fell from above 15% to below 5%, tldraw shut external pull requests, and Kubernetes chose disclosure plus personal accountability instead of a ban.