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Comment by BugsJustFindMe | Hacker News Reader

People keep saying that closed source software will be dead soon, but I'm pretty sure that commercial open source software will also be dead and all that will be left of a profitable profession will be some fraction of non-enumerable SaaS interactions live-streaming pixels to thin clients.

As a thought experiment, how many companies do you know that make enough positive revenue to recoup development and marketing costs from a completely open source download that doesn't rely on something other than the open source software itself for profitability, like a proprietary component or some kind of hosting or network or human support service to drive value? I can think of none.

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That would de-facto be the end of the internet.

Between feeds, the slopification of discourse and the transition to streaming pixels, we're now looking at TV 2.0

End of software at least. I don't see the internet changing much (from a 80s-90s-00s framework perspective, the internet is already over anyway).

We're exchanging hypertext instead of streaming pixels

Virtually all routing equipment is built on top of open source software

Links aren't as permanent as TBL wanted to, but are crawlable and there are public archives which can (still) manage the storage requirements

If you think the internet is already dead, I think you may need glasses

> We're exchanging hypertext instead of streaming pixels

Eh. That makes no difference to the progression I'm talking about here. The internet is _already_ click-on-demand so to speak[0]. Software is mostly not yet. But it will soon also be.

[0] - You could replace all hrefs and documents with SPAs that render a pixel stream to canvas and almost nobody would ever notice. After all, the ultimate interface between your computer and your face is pixels (or waveforms), not hypertext.

I didn't say it's not dying, just that it's not already dead. Make of that what you will.

A small percentage of people have always been the only ones that care about anything technical, it's just a consequence of division of labor. That's why expert opinions used to matter.

Streaming pixels would make archiving it all practically impossible. It would also be the fatal blow in the war against general purpose computing. I'd ask you whose side you're on, but I'm pretty sure I already know.

> I'd ask you whose side you're on

I'm on the side of being extremely pessimistic about the future viability of making software for a living. This thread is not a moral statement, just an observation and prediction.

It's not just about you.

And your parent post, with all of its significant edits is an example into why archiving is important.

> with all of its significant edits

My greatest moral failing is pressing done before I'm done.

> why archiving is important

Unfortunate things happen all the time. We'll need to find new ways to archive.

> > with all of its significant edits

> My greatest moral failing is pressing done before I'm done.

> > why archiving is important

> Unfortunate things happen all the time. We'll need to find new ways to archive.

In this case, the unfortunate thing was that you got caught.

You greatest moral failing is that you have no morals, which is why your primary concern is "how will _I_ earn a living tomorrow?"

As for the new ways to archive, I'm certain that LLMs are your proposal, hence my not bothering to ask whose side you're on.

> I'm certain that LLMs are your proposal

What a weird thing to say. Do you always stick so hard to assumptions about people that are diametrically wrong instead of asking or listening to what they say, or is this a new thing? I guess now we've found your great moral failing too. :/

Oh, I heard you and it was all static.

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