Coding agents could make free software matter again

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This is a microcosm of a much larger problem. When AI writes code, reviews code, and now apparently manages its own git operations — who's actually in control of the codebase?

The "dangerously-skip-permissions" flag getting blamed here is telling. We're building tools where the safe default is friction, so users disable the safety to get work done, and then the tool does something destructive. That's not a user error — that's a design pattern that reliably produces failures at scale.

The broader data is concerning: AI-generated code has 2.74x more security vulnerabilities than human-written code, and reviewing it takes 3.6x longer. Now add autonomous git operations to that mix. The code review problem becomes a code ownership problem — if the AI is writing it, reviewing it, and managing the repository, what exactly is the human's role? We dug into this at sloppish.com/ghost-in-the-codebase

The real unlock here isn't users becoming devs, it's maintainers becoming 10x more productive. Most OSS projects die because the maintainer burned out fixing bugs nobody wants to fix. If agents can handle the boring parts (triage, repro, patch obvious stuff) the maintainer can focus on design decisions and reviewing PRs instead of drowning in issues. That changes the economics completely.

What I'm hoping for is for more competition in the tech sector. I'm tired of companies foisting Microsoft or Oracle products on everyone! WTF! The current tech sector feels like all companies are subsidiaries of Big Tech... It's likely a direct result of passive investing... Everyone who has any money and controls a small or medium sized company likely owns stock of Microsoft, Apple, Meta, Google, Amazon... So they mandate their companies to use products from those big tech companies. So all the small-fish founders feel like they are dogfooding their own investments... And that's preventing new entrants from getting a foothold in B2B space... Feels like all the small companies are working for Big Tech.

Conflict of interests is the norm. It should be illegal for a company founder or director to own stock of a supplier. It should be illegal for shareholders to own stocks of two competing companies. Index funds should be illegal.

I’m impressed by how current times make us consider so many completely opposite scenarios. I think it can indeed foster progress, but it can also have negative impacts.