Open source development has become more and more superficial aligning with modern social network characteristics. It's more important to have an contribution, a active commit history, a few stars as a proof of pixel fame than the intrinsic value of the contributions or projects.

Before the rise of github, open source projects were heavily walled gardens. Little clubs that gave you a stare when you entered the room. Github commoditized getting in touch and lowered the barrier for how much effort you have to put in or even how much you have to care before you contribute. This is gone now and you have to build trust now before you can contribute to anything.

This isn't the death of open source. It's the death of the global village were everybody can freely roam and it's easy to interact. It's the resurrection of small, social, trusted communities. I hope this spreads to all of the internet.

> it will also make it more difficult to identify who to invite to join the priesthood

The point that this announcement is trying to make is, of course, that AI has already made that particular signal approximately worthless for that purpose.

There are great Open Source projects doing fine with the cathedral style, just look at Sqlite and its siblings (Fossil, …).

So I do not see a problem with Ladybirds decision, in contrary, IMHO it strengthens the human aspect of software development and puts the brakes on AI free riders

> it more difficult to identify who to invite to join the priesthood.

How about this. Somebody forks the project and submits their patches to the fork . If the fork is successful (there are users actively using it), upstream can selectively go fish for the patches themselves. The maintainer of the fork eventually gets recognized.

Not ideal, I know, but building a reputation is meant to take time.

If you grew up in a junkyard, getting adjusted to the social norms of a bazaar might feel like your way of life is being threatened.