What Yihui Xie thinks about open source

@yihui-xie · 11 positions · On ppll ↗

Statistician and software engineer who writes R packages for reproducible research and publishing, including knitr, bookdown and blogdown.

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1 dated position, 2026, in their own words. Our reading of what Yihui Xie has said — not written or endorsed by them.

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1. 3 May 2026

   Our readingSoftware development will shift from centralized systems to highly personalized, proliferating software abundance.

   Their wordsGoing forward, I think the future will be filled with software abundance, or, more accurately, I'd call it "software proliferation". That is, centralized development will be history. Software will be highly personalized, especially for open source software.

   ↗Reflections on AI-assisted Programmingyihui.org 2nd of 3 in this piece