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A world that runs on increasingly powerful AI coding tools is one where software creation is cheap \u2014 or so the thinking goes \u2014 leaving little room for traditional software companies. As one analyst report<\/a> put it, \u201cvibe coding will allow startups to replicate the features of complex SaaS platforms.\u201d<\/p>\n Cue the hand-wringing and declarations that software companies are doomed. <\/p>\n Open-source software projects that use agents to paper over long-standing resource constraints should logically be among the first to benefit from the era of cheap code. But that equation just doesn\u2019t quite stick. In practice, the impact of AI coding tools on open source software has been far more mixed.<\/p>\n AI coding tools have caused as many problems as they have solved, according to industry experts. The easy-to-use and accessible nature of AI coding tools has enabled a flood of bad code that threatens to overwhelm projects. Building new features is easier than ever, but maintaining them is just as hard and threatens to further fragment software ecosystems. <\/p>\n The result is a more complicated story than simple software abundance. Perhaps, the predicted, imminent death of the software engineer in this new AI era is premature. <\/p>\n Across the board, projects with open codebases are noticing a decline in the average quality of submissions, likely a result of AI tools lowering barriers to entry. <\/p>\n \u201cFor people who are junior to the VLC codebase, the quality of the merge requests we see is abysmal,\u201d Jean-Baptiste Kempf, the CEO of the VideoLan Organization that oversees VLC, said in a recent interview. <\/p>\n Techcrunch event<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tBoston, MA<\/span> Kempf is still optimistic about AI coding tools overall but says they\u2019re best \u201cfor experienced developers.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n There have been similar problems at Blender, a 3D modeling tool that has been maintained as open source since 2002. Blender Foundation CEO Franceso Siddi said LLM-assisted contributions typically \u201cwasted reviewers\u2019 time and affected their motivation.\u201d Blender is still developing an official policy for AI coding tools, but Siddi said they are \u201cneither mandated nor recommended for contributors or core developers.\u201d<\/p>\n The flood of merge requests has gotten so bad that open-source developers are building new tools to manage it. <\/p>\n Earlier this month, developer Mitchell Hashimoto launched a system that would limit GitHub contributions to \u201cvouched\u201d users, effectively closing the open-door policy for open-source software. As Hashimoto put it in the announcement, \u201cAI eliminated the natural barrier to entry that let OSS projects trust by default.\u201d<\/p>\nQuality vs quantity<\/h2>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tJune 23, 2026<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n