Have you ever considered what the current digital world is running on? We are not referring to AI chatbots that are flashy. An entire secret ecosystem of open-source code is hidden beneath the surface: the libraries, structures and operating systems comprising almost everything. This is a silent crisis of this critical IT foundation. A giant business drain is taking place, with tech giants diverting billions of dollars and their top engineering skills off these joint projects and towards own artificial intelligence. Even the systems that operate all through our global economy are being underfunded and kept aside. So what will occur when the plumbing of the internet begins to leak and there are no one to replace?
The Golden Age of Cooperation is Dead
These were the days when the cry of open source first was heard by all large technological companies. Since more than ten years, such companies as Google, Microsoft, and Meta were not only users but also prolific contributors. Some of the projects they published such as Kubernetes and React have become the standard of how we build and deploy software. It was not altruism all right. It was a brilliant strategy. They managed to attract the best developer talent and put their core products into the commodity market. According to a report by Linux Foundation in 2022, corporate contributions to the foundation have been growing steadily by 12 percent per year. Not only has that growth not just stalled, it has declined. The driver of cooperation is stalling.
The data is startling. A recent report by The Register revealed that big tech companies have reduced their commitment to non-AI-related foundational things by a quarter within the past 18 months. The decline on projects that assist with core web infrastructure, database engines and programming languages is experiencing the steepest drop. This isn’t a gradual shift. It’s a hard pivot. The gold rush has come and the new gold is artificial intelligence. The old infrastructure? They are exploiting it like a depleted mine.
The Great AI Talent Drain
And what has become of the engineers? They have been sucked into the AI vortex. The market need of experts in machine learning and large language models is unquenchable. The wages of these positions have gone through the roof and there is a gravitational effect that cannot be ignored. Why would a top kernel developer remain and continue their work to make Linux memory management better when they can earn three times the amount of their pay to construct the next generative AI model? This drain is resulting in a huge brain drain on the maintenance of IT.
They are losing best minds who are doing work foundational. Opting to code a crucial project as a bus factor is turning into a bus crisis,” according to an anonymous maintainer of an important Apache project.
The effect is of the most personal kind. Recently I have talked with a lead maintainer of a popular open-source database. He explained how he could see his three-best contributors walk out of AI startups in one quarter. Their 2024 roadmap of their project is now a list of features that are now deferred. Innovation has been substituted with a frantic emphasis on significant security patches as it is. The rate of development has been brought down to a crawl.
Actual Cracks are already manifesting themselves
This is not some abstract issue. The aftermath is real and worrying. Consider the example of the backdoor discovery of the xz utils in the early this year. It was a nightmare scenario. One over-worked maintainer had nearly succeeded in adding a critical vulnerability to a code in virtually every Linux device on the planet. This event was not an exception. It was a stark warning. It showed just how scary a digital infrastructure is.
Security gaps are widening. A patch to one of the most popular web server libraries has just been patented and has taken four months. Why? It had replaced the customary team sponsored by corporations. It was only filled in by a night and weekend volunteer. Now we are left to the heroics of overworked people to ensure that the world IT environment is safe. It is a very unsustainable and highly risky plan on the part of every one.
The Corporate Conundrum: Take, And Give Naught?
Let’s be frank. The tech industry is becoming more hypocritical. Big cloud vendors are still selling managed services based on open-source initiatives such as Elasticsearch and Redis and rake in billions of dollars. However, their direct investments in the essence of these projects have gone down. Their strategy has evolved. They are now open-washing,i.e. releasing small, fringe benefits of AI as open source but keeping their core models and data closed source.
The report by TechTarget of 2024 has affirmed that more than 65% of IT leaders in the enterprise are worried about the sustainability of their open-source dependencies.
This poses a threat of imbalance. The commons of open-source IT are beneficial to the corporations. But now, they do not invest in its maintenance. They are constructing marvelous AI-controlled skyscrapers over a platform that is literally washing away. It is a time-honored tragedy of the commons in real-life on the central stage of our information technology networks.
A Way Forward: Past the Reflections and Prayers
So, what’s the solution? Wishful thinking is not a method in which corporations unexpectedly find their altruism again. We must have material, physical solutions. Could governments step in? The EU has already started thinking of policies that would put some digital infrastructure in the category of critical, like a public utility. This could mandate support. The other promising model is consortium funding. Suppose the creation of a so-called Digital Public Infrastructure Fund, based on a small cloud AI tariff, which pays the key maintainers of projects directly.
Individual action is also required. In case your company uses open-source software, subsidize it. It’s that simple. A tech ethicist, Dr. Ilya Markov, thinks that the move fast and break things mentality has finally come to shatter the ground on which we are resting. “Use must obligate support. It is time to have a new social contract in the age of AI and IT, where to make a profit off the commons, you must invest in that common.
Who Puts the Plumbing in the Internet?
The history of the tech world today is the race towards AI dominance. but we may not allow it to be the only one. The quiet crisis in open source is a menace to our digital future. The subsequent large-scale cyberattack might not be perpetrated by a highly advanced state. It could be because of one tired and exhausted volunteer who has simply surrendered.
We are at a crossroads. Will we let the foundational layers of IT crumble while we gaze at the AI stars? Or will we recognize that a functioning, secure, and innovative digital world needs both? The future doesn’t just belong to those who build the smartest AI. It belongs to those who are wise enough to also maintain the world it runs on. The time to act is now, before the next crisis isn’t a warning, but a catastrophe.