Maintainers on Stormy Peters

Is AI Killing Open Source Software?

Sun, 12 Apr 2026 08:06:52 -0700

I love giving talks that explore big questions — the kind that are facing all of us right now and that nobody has fully figured out yet. “Is AI Killing Open Source Software?” is exactly that kind of question. It actually reminds me of a talk I gave really early in my career where I was worried that paying maintainers to work on open source would kill open source. (Spoiler: it didn’t.) I like doing research, having lots of conversations, and then bringing it all to an audience to start a bigger conversation.

Be Clear About How Things Work (How Open Source Can Work with Companies)

Thu, 24 Sep 2020 14:44:52 -0700

This post is one of a series of posts about what open source software projects can do (if they wish to) to make it easier for companies to participate in their projects.

When a company wants to get involved in an open source software, often they need some help understanding how things work. Sometimes it’s the developer who wants to contribute that has questions. Sometimes it’s their management who wants to understand what type of commitment they are making and what they can expect.

Why People Don't Contribute to Your Open Source Project

Wed, 14 Feb 2018 15:28:43 -0700

I just listened to Mike McQuaid’s FOSDEM talk, Why People Don’t Contribute to Your Open Source Project. Â If you are interested in communities and how they grow, I highly recommend you take a half hour and watch it.

Some of the things I got from the talk:

I get asked a lot what the difference between a contributor and a maintainer is. Mike does a great job of explaining it around minute 4:00. Contributors are people who write code or docs or do triage for your project but who need help from others to get their work included. Maintainers are people that review and merge contributions.
You should users as your source for contributors. The type of contributor that is not a user is not likely someone you want.
Once maintainers are not users, they are not likely to continue contributing. So if you stop using your project, you need to start recruiting someone else to maintain it because it’s unlikely that you’ll continue to maintain it.
Most maintainers are talked into it. Nobody thinks they are qualified at first.

I did wonder what Mike would think about open source software projects where most of the contributors are people paid by a company to work on it. There are projects that are unlikely to be used by individuals, that are primarily supported by paid contributors. Do the same rules apply?