I really don't get those takes. AI is the best thing that ever happened to the Free Software world, it is basically turning any software into Free Software. You can just throw file formats, protocols or even plain binaries at the AI and it'll reverse engineer everything in a pinch. Users can finally modify software themselves, which was always the goal of the Free Software world, but very rarely happened in actuality, since it was just so damn complicated. AI lowered the barrier of entry tremendously, not just in terms of required knowledge, but especially time. Same with Creative Commons, sharing art and stuff, was a nice gesture, but rarely useful, since the level of work to modify a work to fit your project was pretty close to just doing it from scratch anyway. With AI everybody can toy around with image generators and get what they want.
Is a social contract being broken? Yeah, kind of, but the problems that that contract existed to solve are no longer a thing. Creation is now easy and commodified. We finally have computer we can interact with in natural language, something people tried to do for at least 70 years and never made any significant progress on until LLM arrived.
If you want to gatekeep or only create stuff to boost your own ego or portfolio, then AI might be an issue, if you actually want to build stuff, AI is godsend. We are essentially living in the StarTrek future with Holodecks and replicators and people still find reason to complain.
It’s become pretty difficult in some areas due to cryptographic signatures that are either bound to the hardware or to online services.
Apple has feasibly stopped any modifications of iOS and their apps, for all practical purposes. These kinds of ecosystems will only continue to expand and to displace more open ones. We’re already at the point where arguably the most performant non-server hardware (Macs with the latest SoCs) is bound to a proprietary OS. Efforts like Asahi can easily be shut down by Apple with newer hardware.
LLMs are no help against proper cryptographic lockdown.
That's right, but other closed systems are kind of withering away (the two major consoles - Xbox and Playstation - are dying in favour of PC gaming).
We're at an inflection point because hardware progress has slowed down and while the mobile duopoly does benefit from network effects, in the long run those are outweighed by missteps by the incumbents. See how Windows has been a monopoly on the PC market for ages, then they've dropped the ball, Linux has grown then Microsoft got their shit together somewhat in order to catch up.
I don't think open / general-purpose computing is doomed in the future or anything like that, as long as there is demand for it, someone will supply it.
And LLMs can also help you design your own hardware in the worst case:)
> the two major consoles - Xbox and Playstation - are dying in favour of PC gaming
I’m pretty sure that it’s in favor of mobile gaming. The PC market is shrinking.
> And LLMs can also help you design your own hardware in the worst case:)
But not in manufacturing it. You’ll generally be even more disadvantaged in terms of hardware performance than open-weight models are compared to the proprietary frontier models.
You have very good points but I'd say this is somewhat of a fallacy. If you look at graphs for phone shipments and PC shipments, they're both somewhat declining between 2015-2025 (I'm focusing on this time period to exclude the current temporary component shortages). However, this doesn't mean they're becoming less popular in either usage or platform spending like buying apps, games and subscriptions. How can this circle be squared you might ask? Just about everyone has a phone or a laptop today. They're typically not first-time buyers, they'll be replacing their systems. Even if the number of devices shipped are decreasing today, doesn't mean the market itself has shrunk. Even if for some reason, all laptops became e-waste from next year January 1st, you'd see several hundred million sales next year for the replacement device, because the market is there.
For those consoles, that's not the case. (src: <a href="https://www.gamesindustry.biz/analyst-game-console-shipments-expected-to-decline-195-to-339m-units-in-2026" rel="nofollow">https://www.gamesindustry.biz/analyst-game-console-shipments...)
Look at how Switch is the majority of shipments most of the time, and there are years where traditional consoles sell only a few million copies. Contrast that to the personal computer or the phone market where the numbers are in the tens of millions or hundreds each year. It's just not comparable.
>But not in manufacturing it.
LLMs won't build you a frontier fab that's for sure, but the point is that you don't necessarily need the latest'n'greatest with diminishing returns. An RTX 5090 is like ten times faster than a GTX 980 released 12 years ago. It doesn't run games which are ten times better. Similarly, something like the Galaxy S26 is ~7 times faster than an S6 around that time. Is it seven times better to use? Of course not :P
So the conclusion is that the performance the architecture you need to reach isn't an ever-racing frontier, you can make a new product (and in this hypothetical case, a product focused on openness) without having SOTA performance.
For a case of an "alternate" product like this, just see the Switch - much slower than "normal" consoles, good form factor, portable, and fairly cheap to produce. No one cares that it doesn't do 4K when undocked.
Macs are gaining on PCs in laptop/desktop market share. Only a small minority of those who didn’t already use PCs before are newly getting into PCs with Windows or Linux. This was different when Windows was still the respectable default, but the times are changing. Most of the PC market is business/office laptops/desktops, not personal home machines, and Macs are gaining both in personal and business use.
The Switch is popular despite its lowish performance, because of its ergonomics and ease of use, which is correlated with it being a walled-garden product, just like that’s the case for smartphones.
grumbel · · focus · HN ↗
Is a social contract being broken? Yeah, kind of, but the problems that that contract existed to solve are no longer a thing. Creation is now easy and commodified. We finally have computer we can interact with in natural language, something people tried to do for at least 70 years and never made any significant progress on until LLM arrived.
If you want to gatekeep or only create stuff to boost your own ego or portfolio, then AI might be an issue, if you actually want to build stuff, AI is godsend. We are essentially living in the StarTrek future with Holodecks and replicators and people still find reason to complain.
ciupicri · · focus · HN ↗
Right... I bet Microsoft wouldn't mind at all if I modify Windows or Office.
Pannoniae · · focus · HN ↗
layer8 · · focus · HN ↗
Apple has feasibly stopped any modifications of iOS and their apps, for all practical purposes. These kinds of ecosystems will only continue to expand and to displace more open ones. We’re already at the point where arguably the most performant non-server hardware (Macs with the latest SoCs) is bound to a proprietary OS. Efforts like Asahi can easily be shut down by Apple with newer hardware.
LLMs are no help against proper cryptographic lockdown.
Pannoniae · · focus · HN ↗
We're at an inflection point because hardware progress has slowed down and while the mobile duopoly does benefit from network effects, in the long run those are outweighed by missteps by the incumbents. See how Windows has been a monopoly on the PC market for ages, then they've dropped the ball, Linux has grown then Microsoft got their shit together somewhat in order to catch up.
I don't think open / general-purpose computing is doomed in the future or anything like that, as long as there is demand for it, someone will supply it.
And LLMs can also help you design your own hardware in the worst case:)
layer8 · · focus · HN ↗
I’m pretty sure that it’s in favor of mobile gaming. The PC market is shrinking.
> And LLMs can also help you design your own hardware in the worst case:)
But not in manufacturing it. You’ll generally be even more disadvantaged in terms of hardware performance than open-weight models are compared to the proprietary frontier models.
Pannoniae · · focus · HN ↗
You have very good points but I'd say this is somewhat of a fallacy. If you look at graphs for phone shipments and PC shipments, they're both somewhat declining between 2015-2025 (I'm focusing on this time period to exclude the current temporary component shortages). However, this doesn't mean they're becoming less popular in either usage or platform spending like buying apps, games and subscriptions. How can this circle be squared you might ask? Just about everyone has a phone or a laptop today. They're typically not first-time buyers, they'll be replacing their systems. Even if the number of devices shipped are decreasing today, doesn't mean the market itself has shrunk. Even if for some reason, all laptops became e-waste from next year January 1st, you'd see several hundred million sales next year for the replacement device, because the market is there.
For those consoles, that's not the case. (src: <a href="https://www.gamesindustry.biz/analyst-game-console-shipments-expected-to-decline-195-to-339m-units-in-2026" rel="nofollow">https://www.gamesindustry.biz/analyst-game-console-shipments...) Look at how Switch is the majority of shipments most of the time, and there are years where traditional consoles sell only a few million copies. Contrast that to the personal computer or the phone market where the numbers are in the tens of millions or hundreds each year. It's just not comparable.
>But not in manufacturing it.
LLMs won't build you a frontier fab that's for sure, but the point is that you don't necessarily need the latest'n'greatest with diminishing returns. An RTX 5090 is like ten times faster than a GTX 980 released 12 years ago. It doesn't run games which are ten times better. Similarly, something like the Galaxy S26 is ~7 times faster than an S6 around that time. Is it seven times better to use? Of course not :P
So the conclusion is that the performance the architecture you need to reach isn't an ever-racing frontier, you can make a new product (and in this hypothetical case, a product focused on openness) without having SOTA performance.
For a case of an "alternate" product like this, just see the Switch - much slower than "normal" consoles, good form factor, portable, and fairly cheap to produce. No one cares that it doesn't do 4K when undocked.
layer8 · · focus · HN ↗
The Switch is popular despite its lowish performance, because of its ergonomics and ease of use, which is correlated with it being a walled-garden product, just like that’s the case for smartphones.