AI 시대, 오픈소스에는 무슨 일이 일어날까?

AI has changed the calculation on the benefits of Open Source. We have also been affected by this: more often than not, users today just prompt something to Claude or Codex, and then send us the result, with the level of quality ranging from mediocre to outright broken. Because we still place a high value on code reviews, and will continue to do so, this creates a situation where submissions can easily overwhelm the project maintainers. One common road we see people taking these days is the adoption of "the SQLite model": Open Source, but not Open Contribution, with a proprietary test suite to prevent the now aptly named "slopforks". There are often predictions that this will only increase. This is interesting to see, because our project, Turso, was born exactly in opposition to that model: we are a full rewrite of SQLite in Rust, with an Open Contribution model (which includes the entire test suite and testing methodology). In this article I want to make one thing very clear: Turso will continue to be a fully Open Source project, with a vibrant community. It is undeniable that AI has drastically changed the calculation on a lot of things, so we will examine what positive and negative effects we are seeing. Then we will discuss how we think about them from first principles, and what we plan to do to handle them. For us, the inspiration of building Open Source software has always been the Linux Kernel. Both Pekka and I have spent the first decade of our careers writing code for the Linux Kernel. I was consistently among the top contributors to the Kernel, while Pekka was one of the core maintainers of one of Linux' most important subsystems (memory management). We saw first-hand the transformative power of how a true Open Source community can unleash unbelievable levels of creativity and resilience, and we try every day to bring those lessons to life. From the start, we always stated that we don't see Open Source as a growth hack. We are replacing one of the key building blocks of the modern software stack. A piece of technology that is reliable and beloved, but doesn't allow any outsider to influence the direction of the project. In light of that, our main goal can be summed up as: Give people a seat at the table. The true power of Open Source is not realized when people write code for your project. It is realized when people can set the direction of the project. At the same time, design by committee is never the way to build anything. Giving people a seat at the table does not mean spreading chairs around, opening the doors, and letting anyone come from the street and take a seat. One of the ways people have commonly referred to Linus Torvalds in the Linux world was as the "benevolent dictator". Below him, the maintainers were the benevolent dictators of their own realms. It was always clear to everyone involved that there was no democracy there. People either follow the person in charge, or they walk. And the reason people stay and contribute is that the incentives of the benevolent dictator are perfectly aligned with the success of the project. The biggest difference between that and other arrangements is how those people get there. They are not randomly appointed, born into it, nor politically assigned. People got there because of the work that they did. By doing the work, and by showing that the work was high quality, those engineers have demonstrated a couple of things: At Turso, we follow a similar model. Contributors and maintainers are not appointed: they emerge. Someone who consistently submits high-quality, well-vetted work, engages thoughtfully in reviews, and demonstrates they understand the project's direction will naturally be given more responsibility and trust over time. Some common reasons software gets Open Sourced are: For the participants and newcomers to a community, there are many advantages of participating in OSS as well: This has traditionally been a fair trade for all involved, which is why Open Source works. Yes, your code can be trivially copied, forked, and used for free. But both the group releasing things as Open Source and the individuals and businesses contributing to the project gain more than what they lose. So it works. We are big believers in AI. By now, almost 100% of the code in Turso is written by AI tools. However: That work is exactly what we expect our contributors to do. SQLite is one of the pillars of our industry. We couldn't do any less if we want to carry forward the task of replacing it. We have been doing that work from the beginning. We were doing all of that, and writing code. Now we do all of that, just don't write the code that often. What is clear in that description is that regardless of who is writing the code, there is still a lot of work to be done. And because of that, nothing really changes in our motivation and calculation: we want to give people willing to do the important work, whatever that work might be, a chance of being a part of our commu