Isn’t that no different than the millions of open source projects that have few authors, little interest and are abandoned for the next shiny thing?

The end result isn’t inherently different, but the basis is.

Someone who programs a FOSS project with their own programming skill is, by definition, more invested, and more willing to spend time making that project exist. Someone who is mostly just willing to tell the LLM to do it for them is, by definition, less invested in the project.

It is more likely that someone less invested in a project will abandon it.

At least in my mind with the current state of LLMs, if there is an open source project that you want to update for yourself, you should be able to do that pretty easily.

Sure, that’s possible, but the main concern is that most people either don’t have access to more capable models (which will otherwise require them spending money for their software to keep getting things like security patches, vs projects that have maintainers that are more invested in them that aren’t abandoned in the first place which are effectively free unless you choose to donate), and you get forks in development path. It might fit one user’s goals, but now you have, say, 100 people who all tried reviving abandonware with their own LLMs, all with different features, security, import/export mechanisms, etc.

That’s not to say it’s bad that people can use LLMs to “revive” abandonware, but I don’t think we should be encouraging people to create and publish software that’s highly likely to be abandoned in the first place.