FOSS has had a funding problem forever, and AI has made it exponentially worse by increasing the review and maintenance burden on volunteer maintainers and the infrastructure burden with scraping and agentic build workflows. The projects that are surviving best are the ones that have a funding source, which is typically businesses that financially benefit from the software (there are of course exceptions).
When the AI bubble pops, companies are going to be pulling back on all spending, so I expect donations to FOSS projects/foundations to get tight. The ones that will still be spending are the ones that will still have money to spend, and I don’t expect diverse views on AI to be distributed equally across those survivors.
FOSS has had a funding problem forever, and AI has made it exponentially worse by increasing the review and maintenance burden on volunteer maintainers and the infrastructure burden with scraping and agentic build workflows. The projects that are surviving best are the ones that have a funding source, which is typically businesses that financially benefit from the software (there are of course exceptions).
When the AI bubble pops, companies are going to be pulling back on all spending, so I expect donations to FOSS projects/foundations to get tight. The ones that will still be spending are the ones that will still have money to spend, and I don’t expect diverse views on AI to be distributed equally across those survivors.