Open source is dead in the coding-agent era: power shifts from skill to capital
MarcJSchmidt · x · 2026-10-22
In a thread about Bun's TypeScript checker beating tsc in benchmarks, the author makes a sharper point: the open-source spirit is dead.
- Everyone thinks coding agents let them compete with anyone, but individuals lack the tokens and compute to run agents compiling and testing 24/7.
- Power in open source has moved from skill to capital — ordinary developers are permanently out of the game.
- You can no longer learn from such codebases, contribute, or even fork and continue them.
- Agents also create new attack vectors that cost even more tokens to defend against.
Context: Bun 1.4.4 leads the TypeScript checker race at 2.42s / 2.0GB in Framer's monorepo.
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