**The Fork-It-and-Forget Decade**

The way we create, share, and collaborate on code is changing at an unprecedented pace. The last two decades have seen open source transform from a niche movement to a mainstream phenomenon, but the 2020s are bringing about a new era – one where generative AI is rewriting the rules of open source.

We're no longer just talking about developers shaping open source; their machines are now rewriting it at scale. This isn't just faster – it's a different kind of speed. Generative AI is starting to write, refactor, and remix code and open source projects with ease, leaving human maintainers in its wake.

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But to understand this new era of open source, we need to look back at how it evolved over the past half-century. The story of open source isn't a straight line; it's a series of turning points – each decade changing not just the technology but also the culture around it:

**The 1990s: Rebellion and Proprietary Stacks**

The late '80s and early '90s were defined by proprietary stacks – Windows, AIX, Solaris. But by the mid-90s, developers began to rebel against this closed system. Open source wasn't just an ideal; it was how the web got built. Most sites ran Apache on the frontend but relied on commercial engines like Dynamo and Oracle on the backend.

**The 2000s: Mainstream and Commercial**

The 2000s were when open source went mainstream. Companies that once sold closed systems started funding the foundations that challenged them – IBM, Sun, HP, Oracle, and even Microsoft. Open source had become a competitive weapon, and being a committer had become a form of social capital.

**The 2010s: Decentralization and Experimentation**

The 2010s decentralized everything. Git unseated Subversion and CVS, making forking normal. GitHub turned version control into a social network, and suddenly open source wasn't a handful of central projects – it was thousands of competing experiments.

**The 2020s: The Fork-It-and-Forgotten Era**

Now, as we're halfway through the 2020s, something new is happening. Generative AI has slipped quietly into the workflow, reshaping open source once again – not by killing it but by making forking even easier. This decade isn't just about speed; it's about radical personalization and collaboration giving way to "fork-it-and-forget."

Trend prediction: We'll soon have a nickname for developers who use GenAI and are unable to read the code it generated – because that's already happening. The big projects will continue, but there will be a surge of AI-generated open source contributions and projects affecting the ecosystem.

**The Future of Open Source**

Developers – and the agents they run – are moving at a new kind of velocity: forking, patching, and moving on. GitHub reports more than 420 million repositories as of early 2023, and it's on pace to hit a billion by 2030.

We tore down the "high places" that defined the 2000s and replaced them with the frictionless innovation of the 2010s. Now, the question is whether we'll even recognize open source by the end of this decade.

**Conclusion**

The future of open source looks different – and it's up to us to adapt. Maybe that's the new freedom: to fork, to forget, and let the machines remember for us. The O'Reilly learning platform is here to help you navigate this changing landscape. Try it free for up to 14 days.