Recent alarms about the "gutting" of OSS revenue by AI are valid, but they feel remarkably familiar. If anything, Tailwind's current struggle will likely end in a major funding round or a strategic acquisition.
Why though?
Because we’ve seen this movie before(or a similar one, of sorts), and the protagonist usually finds a way to survive - sadly, not always the in a way that they initially envisioned for their project/s. For me, personally, it's saddening that their team has to embark on this train of feels.
The "Cloud-Native" Ghost of OSS Past.
Before AI was the "extractor," the big cloud providers were the "strip-miners."
Cast your mind back to 2018. When "Cloud Native" exploded, giants took open-source staples like Redis and Elasticsearch, packaged them as managed services, and billed millions. They didn't contribute back significant code, and they certainly didn't share the revenue.
The narrative then was identical to the one we see now: "No one will ever start an OSS company again because Big Tech will just 'eat' the product the moment it gains traction."
The outcome?
The Licensing Evolution: We saw the birth of the SSPL and BSL. Creators stopped being "nice" and started being "sustainable."
Superior Experience: OSS creators proved they could build better "Cloud" versions of their own tools than the giants (think MongoDB Atlas or Vercel).
Community Loyalty: Developers, for the most part, stuck with the "authentic" versions. Quality and community outweighed generic forks.
The AI Shift: A New Sense of Injustice
While the community is rallying behind Tailwind, this situation has exposed a deep-seated feeling of injustice that the artists and designers have been vocal about AI copyright for years.
Developers, however, have stayed relatively quiet, perhaps because we value efficiency above all else.
But that’s changing.
We are reaching a tipping point where the uncompensated ingestion of our "raw ore" is becoming impossible to ignore.
Where do we go from here?
Photo by Julia Craice on Unsplash
If we don't fix the incentive structure, we face a "maintenance desert" where the most widely used pieces of software are simply abandoned by exhausted creators.
I believe we are on the verge of a new paradigm.
Whether it’s a new breed of AI-aware licenses, algorithmic code fingerprinting, or a total shift in how we deliver OSS work, a "rebalancing" is coming.
Open source isn't dying; it's just being forced to evolve, again.
What is your version of how things will turn out or how you wish for them to turn out?
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