I have to wonder whether after thirty plus years this field doesn't hold the same attraction that it did for my generation in the 1970-90s.

At Uni In 1975 writing code for assignments I was submitting punched cards to a batch system and collecting line printer output the next day.

A few years later it was a time sharing system with teletype terminals and later visual display units.

All pretty laborious but still fascinating as everything was still new - Lisp, Simula-67 etc etc.

With the advent of affordable hardware and af "personal" computing coupled with the explosion of software for these systems including development tools a whole generation for the first time had the opportunity convert their creativity and imagination into software applications.

I suspect now the gloss has worn off and possibly less than 10% of the comparable contemporary cohort have any interest in these aspects of IT. I have a young relation who is just completing a computer science degree and to my surprise he hasn't done any programming apart from a minimal first year introduction. (0r any more theoretical aspects of computer science.) Unfortunately more manglement studies I suspect.

Fairly obvious what the old cow here would be but is the new cow generative AI? In my decline I don't know what enthuses twenty to thirty year olds other than they seem to face a much greater struggle to make their way in this world which could understandably dampen their enthusiasm for anything else.

I might guess that we had reached peak open source several years before COVID with that pandemic obscuring the fact.

This poses the question of how large will the open source community be in the future and the composition of that community? I imagine somewhat smaller and the majority employed by "for profit" concerns followed at a distance by a variety of "not for profit" entities with a very much smaller population of amateur * contributors. My feeling is this will ultimately be to the detriment to open source and to computing, in the widest sense, generally.

At least the problem and inherent dangers have been identified. The cloister bells are tolling.

* in the literal sense (L.< amare)

It feels to me like we're asking the kids to surgically take over on maintenance and repair of arcane plumbing issues by freediving deep down into our old cow's cellulose-digesting inner bowels and multiple stomachs, under apnea. But they're trained to write smartphone apps in python cotton candy ... and soon, LLM-&-M nocode, that melts the phone straight in your hands (and mouth). This marshmallow coding generation will need its candy ass whipped back into shape before we can digest our way through this self-inflicted epidemic of intellectual obesity and fully reap the long-term benefits of the healthier FOSS eosystem and lifestyle IMHO ... doing software development right requires the strongest of S&M discipline!

Wait... are you saying I can't write an operating system using only Javascript which will run in your browser? I even already picked a name for it "Browser System", I want everyone to be able to run my BS which is why I am targeting the browser(*).

(*) Chrome only though!

You got slightly ahead of me. Everything's built for, and on, the Web which leads to a particular programming mindset that's not helpful for understanding systems. In addition, instead of trying to expand beyond this very ad-hoc environment a lot of effort goes in to forcing it on platforms where it just doesn't belong (IoT is a good example). Its not a very enticing world, especially as younger people have to be obsessed with making money just to live -- "mother's basement" long became an "auxiliary dwelling unit" is is rented out for serious money.

(I should also mention that I, like my mother, became gray haired in my 30s. Hair color has nothing to do with it -- sure a lot of older people are gray but often to have to look hard to find any hair at all!)

> Wait... are you saying I can't write an operating system using only Javascript which will run in your browser?

I dunno. The "emacs" OS has a lot of LISP in it.

Personally I've almost had enough, time is running out and I don't want to do this anymore. I'm 53 now I started coding when I was 9 years old and when I was 17 I would sit for 16-17 hours straight just coding and learning as everything was so new and exciting. These days I've made a nice pile from my skills and retirement is on the horizon. I want to spend more time with my family, I want put in more time to enjoy taking photos of birds at RSPB places. I still love tech, I still find I can do the job with enthusiasm but the magic is fading fast 'cos I know I've only got aroudn 30 years left and I want to do something else with my remaining time.

That's just me, I know a few others my age who were mental computer nerds as kids but now they just want to get through the last few years of their career and go do something else. You do something for 30 years, even something you're passionate about, there comes a day where you just don't want to do it anymore.

The sad thing is that the "new frontier" spirit of computing on the early 1980s for me was how it made me feel truly special, I knew I was once of a kind in my class, you could count the computer kids on the fingers of one hand and we banded together traded secrets, tried to outdo each other. These days if you want to know something Google or ChatGPT have all the answers, no need to learn how to make friends so you have someone to grow with and both better your skills.

Society and life have changed in the IT game, these days it's mostly just maintaining existing products. Get a problem, work it out and just email support, wait 2 hours and fix arrives. Coding is just the same out stuff I've been doing for years 'cos companies don't take risks anymore, too much regulation and too much risk control, some of it is a good thing but it stifles creativity.

I can fully understand the serious issues that FOSS is about to face, the old guard are burned out or just plain bored, a lifetime spent on something is a long time and without fresh blood we're going to have a problem on our hands.

On a personal level, what you say rings loud and clear. I’m 57 and I’m definitely feeling the “had enough of it”.

In terms of new blood not coming through, I also think there’s definitely a lack of skills in the young ‘uns. All the useful stuff - OSs, big complex useful programs etc - are all written in C or C++, both of which seem to be largely shunned by the new breed, in favour or shiny shiny of the day; javascript (seriously?), Python, whatever. And there’s definitely a deep lack of systems knowledge now; that’s an education issue - how are you supposed to grasp the importance of really basic stuff like data types, data alignment, address spaces, what a linker does etc when you learn using Python? Half the people these days struggle with understanding what a pointer is!! (Isn’t that a really BAD thing that C has?). Oh and assembler - NOBODY uses assembler any more, right?

Given this background, I’m not at all surprised there’s nobody coming up to take over major projects.

>

> javascript (seriously?), Python, whatever. And there’s definitely a deep lack of systems knowledge now; that’s an education issue

>

Ultimately, these are the non-technical guys that decades ago wouldn't even be on a computer, so you can discard them from the pool.

The fact is that there are still large amounts of really talented young people coming out who are jumping straight into C and C++ (lets be honest, these are the only ones that matter for a few lifespans!). We are in a good position here. Many engage on mailing lists and IRC and really are trying.

My only concern is that there is a lot of noise these days. It is more difficult for the most talented guys to stand out and take a lead on important directions.

And there’s definitely a deep lack of systems knowledge now; that’s an education issue

They say the young generation are "digital natives", but they have no clue whatsoever what a computer is, what it does and how it works. They are generally consumers and at best (bad) users.

Learning the nitty gritty stuff is hard work and our hardware is so fast that you can get away with (very) sloppy coding. Learning the intricate stuff has never been a stronghold in education. It is mostly done by experimenting and long hours hacking stuff. If there should be one addition to the curriculum, then it should be practice classes doing high-level stuff on bare-bone minimal hardware; i.e. learning to deal with limits and boundaries.

But the problem is not only hardware knowledge. Many have no clue how a build-chain works or what you actually need to make a distributable program or firmware. A lot of new code I see nowadays falls in the category "The internet suggestion looks good, the 15276 dependencies loaded and the IDE says its OK and it compiles, lets run it in production".

And, besides, the effort to make something good and fast is high and your manager does not appreciate it.

And, BTW, yes, I (still) use assembly. Especially in microcontrollers. Oh,... I'm one of those old guys.

Re your comment "They say the young generation are "digital natives", but they have no clue whatsoever what a computer is, what it does and how it works. They are generally consumers and at best (bad) users."

That Amazon advert on TV makes me cringe, Amazon saying what a wonderful employer they are and give an example of a warehouse worker who has moved on to be a software developer and they quip that his teenage son says "his coding skills aren't bad". Geesh, what does the average teenager today know about coding skills? In my youth I was doing hardcore programming in assembly language with a compiler I'd written myself.

"Digital native" never meant "knowledgeable assembly language programmer". It only meant "can probably use a computer successfully without needing support". Don't assume that the people saying it are attributing skills they probably don't understand themselves.

I was a late starter - mid 30's before I started to get into any software development. Before that it was all electronics. I'm now 75, and finding it harder to concentrate for long periods, but still want to carry on being part of the team I work with. I think it depends more on just what you are doing in the field - and why.

Your stereotype might not be helping. I'm a relatively young (adult, working in industry for a while) programmer, and yes, I too was taught C and assembly and systems programming in general. I don't use the assembler now because my code runs on servers, and if it switches from X64 to ARM servers we don't want to have to compile it again, but I can, have, do, and will write C programs whenever it is useful. If I switch to somewhere where writing in assembler has a point, I know the concepts involved, and while I won't start as quickly as those who already do it, I can do that as well.

I also know enough not to assume that C is always the right hammer for any nail that comes along. Obviously for things like the Linux kernel, you will need a language that compiles to efficient machine code, and there are other areas where that is of paramount importance. Even there, C is not the only such language. However, a lot of software, if written in C, will run in less CPU time and take a lot more development time, and in many cases, CPU time is so cheap that the improvement is irrelevant. People who make assumptions that those who choose to use something other than C do so because they are not smart or knowledgeable enough to use that tool can often be wrong.

Imho it's far simpler than most people think.

The reason why open source is not growing anymore and is actually shrinking, because by now even the most zealous fans have realized, that it was all built on a false premise and offered false promises. OS doesn't really make the world a better place, it just allows others to take advantage of those who have put time and effort into it, without receiving any payment in return. Or if they did, then the whole point of that open source development was to displace competitors and inrcrease demand for complementer products.

Also the source itself is being available is less and less relevant with online services and big data taking over from locally run software. The role of the software itself has become marginal in most cases, and the service and the data are either locked down to begin with, or is not even feasible for everyone wanting to store and process them themselves. Like what use do you have for your media player or codec being open source, if the content you could play with it is only available through online services and takes up petabytes and exabytes of storage? What use is it if the social media app source code is available, if there's only place for one or for a few central social media hubs? What use do you have for open source AI models, when training them requires 1000s of high-end accelerator cards costing >$10.000 each, downloading and storing petabytes of training data, and the resulting model weights are not available openly as is the source? Etc.

Some of use have realized this decades ago - after we have also put several years of hard work into OSS projects -, others are realizing it just now. Open source mostly benefits behemoths like Google, Facebook, Apple, etc. and the most a small everyday guy can get out of it is not having to pay $50 or 100 for a Windows licence. The average developer, who put 1000s of work hours into OS project is even worse off, and is in an actually net negative of several hundred thousands of dollars (when comparing how much he gained through OS, and how much he put into it).

Those who still do open source mostly do it, because

1. they're paid for it (in which case it's not really open source, as originally conceived, and again merely a business tool to disrupt the market, crush competition or generate demand for non-open-source services, parts, etc)

2. they still didn't realize all the above, or are just unable to admit it to themselves. they're considering only their sunk (personal time and effort) costs, and don't want to give up on the (false) idea, because that would also mean admitting to they having wasted large chunks of their lives on said false idea.

The latter people will be slowly too old to contribute and even possibly die, and the former will still be around, but they're not really making open source stuff, and with said rise of the cloud and data the source being available will be getting even less and less irrelevant, than it is today.

I know this post will not be popular (especially amongst "believers"), but it's still he truth, unfortunately.

Open source mostly benefits behemoths like Google, Facebook, Apple, etc.

And where are those behemoths all from? Corporate psychopathy is alive and well. That's the problem, not open source.

Perhaps a solution is something like the [1]FUTO licence which means corporates which use open source projects should pay for them.

[1] https://www.futo.org/about/futo-statement-on-opensource/

Except that most attempts to encode that into a license get something very similar to proprietary. Sure, you can see the source, but we reserve the right to charge you for using it and if you don't pay us, you're breaking a contract. That sounds a lot like what anyone using Oracle Java, or anyone who Oracle thinks might be using Oracle Java, are hearing. Part of open source is that the users are free to use, modify, and redistribute, and they don't have to ask for permission. Yes, there are a few licenses such as the new one that Bruce Perens has been working on which claim to keep those freedoms while still requiring payment, but they're contradictory; either I can redistribute modifications and therefore avoid any requirement to pay, or I can't because it would avoid the requirement to pay. You can't have both.

If it has failed so badly, then stop doing it. I'd be sorry to see that happen, but I can't claim to be a full-time open source dev. I write proprietary for my employer to get money, and then write open source in my free time with the knowledge that I will get little or no money from doing so. But don't tell me you're writing open source then deny users the freedoms that used to provide.

The other problem is churn.

Writing software is only half the story - even once it's 100% finished, done, itch successfully scratched, it won't be many years before something changes and it can no longer be built on current systems. I've abandoned software I wrote in the past because the subject was no longer interesting to me (I'm not going to update photo printing software when I no longer have a printer at home) - and I'm not alone in that. My leisure time is limited, I can either spend it exploring new and interesting things or I can spend it maintaining old boring things - I can't do both. If someone wants to pay me to do the latter I might consider it.

Similarly, because of the constant churn, I elected not to target either GCC or LLVM when I started a toy CPU project a couple of years ago - instead using vbcc because it's small, lightweight, and can be built in seconds. The chances are very high that it will be buildable without modification a decade from now.

That's also one of the reasons I'm now into the Retro scene. Just yesterday I revisited an old piece of Amiga code and updated it for use in a new project. There's something quite satisfying about a copyright header in a source file which reads "Copyright (c) 1998, 2014 ...."

Hmmmm, then again, one could also be of the opinion that relying solely on closed-source (private), rather than open-source (public), could foster [1]John Deere ization of software-driven systems and machines, where private enterprise interests have " total control over everything 24/7, [respect no] privacy, [no] right to repair and [...] they'll be able to pull the strings behind the curtain as they wish ", which would not be too good really. Imho, we should make sure that open source code continues to thrive.

[1] https://forums.theregister.com/forum/all/2024/05/22/john_deere_vms_legacy/#c_4866673

@FF22 - So true. Open source is a victim of its own success, being mainstream/corporate now, so involvement is "work" rather than "hobby".

Beers for the unsung heroes who created the foundations of Open Source. ---->

NB, "fresh" blood doesn't necessarily mean "young" blood.

"1. they're paid for it (in which case it's not really open source, as originally conceived,"

AFAICS it was originally conceived, in the main, by people in academia who were being "paid", either actual payments or students on whatever student maintenance was applicable. I don't think it was conceived as being the province of any group more restricted than "those able to contribute". Those being paid by, e.g. Intel may be paid to come up with a specific product for their employer. But the academic or student also has a product in mind - the usual academic product of a publication to enhance their career. It's just that releasing a FOSS is an alternative form of publication to the usual academic paper.

Your 'simple' analysis may, or may not, be close to the truth. Whatever it is it is an analysis of a single aspect of FLOSS usage—the corporate adoption/hijacking of FLOSS.

FLOSS, as a philosophical and practical outworking is far more than that one particular branch, significant as that branch may be to global IT.

The most important reality of FLOSS isn't the 'free, as in beer', but the 'freedom' to write to the code you want to write and to allow others to deploy/modify it.

Whether I spend ten hours or a thousand on my bit of code is irrelevant to my willingness to allow it to be shared. Once I have set that code free it is no concern of mine whether others choose to use it for their financial benefit, or whether anyone (including myself) maintains it. If these things do concern me, I should choose an appropriate license, or not release the code under any kind of FLOSS basis—I am entitled to make my code proprietary if I want to.

There is clearly a problem for ongoing maintenance and development of important FLOSS projects, but that is a downstream issue, separate from the significance of FLOSS as a principle and as an objective practice.

No code has an intrinsic right to exist, however useful/remunerative anyone finds it.

The purpose of FLOSS is to provide a playing field, not to determine who plays on it or for how long.

> The most important reality of FLOSS isn't the 'free, as in beer', but the 'freedom' to write to the code you want to write and to allow others to deploy/modify it.

It does madden me the obsession that some commentators have about remuneration and how corps are getting a free ride, so therefore "bad". I'm sure it is a cultural blind spot.

That might matter for some, but the freedom *is* the whole point for me. Telling me that it's bad for companies to be using my code without paying for it is by design, and that somehow I am deluded or doing humanity a disservice or some other b*llocks.

There are serious issues in getting and educating new talented staff. While open source's problems are apparent to world+dog, how does this compare to closed source equivalents?

Based on the piss-poor quality of MS products (and patches) in recent years I suspect not much better, but has anyone got insight as to how the development models actually compare in practice?

IBM's [1]certainly having problems finding new staff, in part because they don't seem to quite know how to go about it.

[1] https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/08/ibm_mainframe_skill/

What they don't know about will largely be how to fix their reputation for dumping employees rather than paying them what their experience is worth.

I think Steven's problem is going to what sounds like an old fart's conference (I speak as a very old fart myself) and being surprised to find himself surrounded by old farts and specifically those of the conference-going variety. If there are any Linus clones beavering away somewhere would they have been invited? Would they have the funds to go if invited? If they were funded to go would they have stayed after taking a quick look at what was on offer?

Who travels international to a conference?

Bunch of old farts, that want to meet face to face. Younger folk are more used to online

The age of a developer is not a particularly important issue. Though their level of experience might be.

What does matter is who is going to support all this stuff when the original authors make their final exit()