FOSS is dead - long live, FOSS.

FOSS came up around the core idea of liberating software for hardware, and later on was sustained by the idea of a commodity of commons we can build on. But with LLMs we have alternative pathways/enablement for the freedoms:

Freedom 0 (Run): LLMs troubleshoot environments and guide installations, making software executable for anyone.

Freedom 1 (Study/Change): make modifications, including lowering bar of technical knowledge.

Freedom 2 (Redistribute): LLMs force redistribution by building specs and reimplementing if needed.

Freedom 3 (Improve/Distribute): Everyone gets the improvement they want.

As we can see LLM makes these freedoms more democratic, beyond pure technical capability.

For those that cared only about these 4 freedoms, LLMs enable these in spades. But those who looked additionally for business, signalling and community values of free software (I include myself in this), these were not guaranteed by FOSS, and we find ourselves figuring out how to make up for these losses.