Agent-written pull requests already outclass those of the median human contributor to an open source project.

Added to korrents 30 Aug 2026 · How quotes work · Something wrong? Tell us

Where this collides

• In tension with

  A coding agent does not learn from its mistakes the way a person does -- it repeats the same error indefinitely unless a human notices and writes it down.

  Hansson says agent-written pull requests already outclass the median human contributor to an open source project. Zechner says an agent repeats the same error indefinitely unless a person notices and writes it down. A contributor who cannot learn from review is a different kind of contributor from the median human, however good the first patch is.

Shared subject first, then similar wording. They may agree or disagree.

• A business making hundreds of millions from an open source project owes it money or contribution, and can be refused its trademarks if it gives neither. MMMatt Mullenweg26 Sept 2024open source
• A company that will not accept a project’s terms is free to go and use a more permissive project instead. MMMatt Mullenweg26 Sept 2024open source
• A few hundred dollars a month is nothing to a company and transformative to a project, so engineers should be the ones asking their employers to pay it. DDDrew DeVault22 Aug 2018open source
• A licence is only the floor of open source; what keeps a project alive is an ethos of contribution that no licence can compel. MMMatt Mullenweg17 Sept 2024open source
• A proprietary language licensed from Microsoft had zero chance in the JavaScript ecosystem: TypeScript had to be open source or nobody would come. AHAnders Hejlsberg13 May 2026open source

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