A couple weeks ago, I spoke at All Things Open in Raleigh, NC. It was my first time at this conference, and it won’t be my last. The overall vibe of this event was different from many of the other tech events I attend, because ATO focuses on the human parts of open source – community.
Open source is alive and well#
Despite the steady stream of “AI doomer” takes predicting the end of open source, walking the halls at ATO made it clear that the OSS community is alive and well.
That’s largely because writing code was never the hard part of open source. The real work has always been the human layer: communication, shared vision, problem solving, and taste. It’s the mentorship and deliberate growth of junior folks into seasoned contributors. Healthy communities are made of collaborators rallied around a shared interest – not individuals grandstanding for “internet points.”
When code becomes cheap#
At the same time, communities are struggling right now, particularly with the friction introduced by AI.
For decades, we operated under the assumption that a code contribution represented effort and investment. Now that generating code is cheap, code contributions are no longer inherently valuable. When someone can generate a massive pull request in seconds without deeply understanding the problem (or the solution!!), all the hard work falls to a maintainer. This is a communication breakdown on both sides.
Compounding this problem is the rise in “influcencers” and general youtube “hater culture”, where the attention gets them paid, rather than the impact of the work.
Strive to be a better community member, not an influencer. What projects need most right now isn’t more raw lines of code – it’s humility, kindness, compassion, and patience.
Money vs. Culture#
Big money (and greed), paired with a lot of uncertainty about the future of the tech industry, is putting an enormous amount of stress on open source communities right now. (I genuinely hope future social scientists do research on what tech communities are going through right now!)
There is a quote that keeps coming to mind lately: “Everyone wants a village, but nobody wants to be a villager.” Open source has always worked on a “give first, then receive” model, just like most healthy “real life” communities. If you want a thriving ecosystem to rely on, you have to show up and do villager work. Talk to your fellow villagers, and be ready to compromise for consensus.
If you’re looking for positive examples of how to sustain that spirit, look to tenured communities. As a new acquaintance said at ATO “find the graybeards.” Events like ATO, HOPE, or any community that has survived for more than ten years. Look to old-school hacker culture, from before tech was mainstream and before big money became such a toxic influence. Its roots – my roots – are in curiosity, creativity, and solving problems together.
What makes ATO different#
ATO itself is a great example of what intentional community-building looks like, and it stands out from a lot of the other conferences I’ve attended:
- Deep local roots: By keeping a consistent home in Raleigh, ATO brings together the local tech and university community with the broader industry year after year. It feels grounded in a real place.
- ATO hypes their sponsors! ❤️ At many conferences, sponsor relations can feel like a necessary evil. ATO actively celebrates their sponsors and dedicates specific parts of the event experience to individual sponsors - lunch by IBM, tshirts funded by RedHat, etc. That creates a better marketing opportunity than having your logo plastered on a giant sign as a “Platinum sponsor”, and makes sponsors feel like genuine partners in keeping the event accessible.
I left Raleigh feeling recharged and reminded of why I got into open source in the first place – the problems, and the people. Now, back to being a villager (and a graybeard 🧙 ).