Recently, while chatting with friends about what's happening in the software industry, I often compare it to short videos. At first I thought it was just an analogy, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized the underlying logic is almost identical.
How Short Videos Took Off
Initially, watching videos came with costs. Data was expensive—a video could be dozens of megabytes. Who dared to binge-watch when running low on data at the end of the month? Later, 4G became widespread, followed by 5G. Data plans got cheaper and cheaper, making it effortless to watch videos anytime, anywhere. The barrier to watching videos was essentially eliminated.
The production side was changing simultaneously. In the past, shooting and editing a video yourself felt like building a rocket, to exaggerate a bit. Then Jianying (CapCut) came out, along with live streaming—you could just point the camera at your face and shoot, and people would watch immediately. Production costs were compressed close to zero.
When both ends dropped to near zero, the platform in the middle exploded.
I used to look at this industry's data at my company. In 2017, the short video advertising market was roughly 50-60 billion RMB. A few years later, it surged to over 200 billion, and later with e-commerce and live streaming added, the entire ecosystem hit over 400 billion. The lion's share of profits was captured by Douyin (TikTok) and Kuaishou.
The Software Industry Is Reliving This
Previously, for an open source project, downloading and installing posed quite a barrier for ordinary people. The documentation was mediocre, environment configuration was full of pitfalls, and non-technical people basically couldn't get it working. Now it's different—when you encounter problems, just ask ChatGPT or DeepSeek, and it guides you step by step. Most open source projects can get running. Acquiring software has become much simpler.
GitHub's data tells the story. In 2025, global developers exceeded 180 million, with over 36 million new additions in one year—equivalent to one new registration every second. India added 5.2 million in a year, while Indonesia grew from 900,000 in 2020 to over 4.3 million. 80% of new users used Copilot in their first week. Many aren't programmers in the traditional sense; AI has lowered the barrier to entering the open source community.
After our team started using open source community infrastructure, we found many colleagues had actually used it before, or at least registered accounts. With the proliferation of AI, people can now simply ask, "How do I install and use this software?" and follow the steps to basically get it working.
The changes on the production side are even more dramatic. Coding agents are driving software development costs toward zero. Previously, building an MVP required at least a small team several months. Now, one person plus a coding agent can produce something usable in a few days. Cursor has over a million DAU, and by early 2026, its annualized revenue exceeded $2 billion. 84% of developers are using or planning to use AI coding tools; 41% of code already involves AI generation.
Recently, I've seen people sharing that they previously knew nothing about technology, but now have open sourced projects on GitHub with thousands of stars, which they find incredible. MIT Technology Review listed "generative programming" as one of the top 10 breakthrough technologies of 2026. Entrepreneurs, marketers, and designers are all starting to build software directly with AI tools. One growth marketer built a cryptocurrency visualization app using ChatGPT plus Lovable without knowing how to code. This was unthinkable before.
Production costs approach zero, acquisition costs also approach zero. As the platform in the middle, the open source community is facing the same situation as short videos.
OpenClaw
OpenClaw deserves a separate discussion.
This project launched only at the end of 2025, and already has over 250,000 stars—the fastest-growing open source project in GitHub history. Linux took many years to reach that number.
The reaction it sparked in China is even more interesting. In March, nearly a thousand people queued outside Tencent's headquarters in Shenzhen to have engineers help them install OpenClaw. The line included students, retirees, and office workers—not just programmers. "Raising a crawfish" (a pun referring to the project's name) became a meme. Longgang District in Shenzhen offered subsidies up to 10 million RMB for teams starting businesses based on OpenClaw; Wuxi followed with 5 million. Alibaba Cloud, Tencent Cloud, ByteDance, JD.com, and Baidu have all launched their own versions.
Looking at OpenClaw alone, you might think it's just a popular project. But viewed through the framework I just described, it's actually a microcosm of platform effects beginning to manifest. Producers use coding agents for rapid iteration; users leverage AI to get started quickly; GitHub handles distribution at near-zero cost. The cycle from a good software's birth to adoption by hundreds of thousands of people used to take a long time; now the speed is completely different.
Recommendation: Pay Attention to Open Source Communities
Looking ahead, I believe open source communities mean to the software industry what short video platforms mean to the entertainment industry.
In 2025, GitHub added 121 million new repositories—230 new projects created every minute—with over 500 million pull requests merged in a year. AI-related projects grew 178% in one year, with over 1.1 million repositories using LLM SDKs.
Open source communities are no longer just places for programmers to exchange code. Production happens here, distribution happens here, collaboration happens here, and influence grows from here. With results from open source projects, you can already leverage significant traffic and resources.
If you're in the software industry, whether in tech or product, I recommend seriously paying attention to open source communities. Not the "keep an eye on it" kind, but treating it as a core channel to cultivate.
The driving forces behind this are AI and coding agents. But at the phenomenon level, you'll see good software in open source communities spreading and diffusing at exaggerated speeds—just like how short video platforms exploded after the widespread adoption of 4G and smartphones.
For those already in the software industry, this is worth paying extra attention to.
Originally published at https://guanjiawei.ai/en/blog/opensource-is-the-new-douyin
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