Four economists across Central European University, Bielefeld University and the Kiel Institute have built a general equilibrium model of the open-source software ecosystem and concluded that vibe coding – the increasingly common practice of letting AI agents select, assemble and modify packages on a developer’s behalf – erodes the very funding mechanism that keeps open-source projects alive.

The core problem is a decoupling of usage from engagement. Tailwind CSS’s npm downloads have climbed steadily, but its creator says documentation traffic is down about 40% since early 2023 and revenue has dropped close to 80%. Stack Overflow activity fell roughly 25% within six months of ChatGPT’s launch. Open-source maintainers monetize through documentation visits, bug reports, and community interaction. AI agents skip all of that.

The model finds that feedback loops once responsible for open source’s explosive growth now run in reverse. Fewer maintainers can justify sharing code, variety shrinks, and average quality falls – even as total usage rises. One proposed fix is a "Spotify for open source" model where AI platforms redistribute subscription revenue to maintainers based on package usage. Vibe-coded users need to contribute at least 84% of what direct users generate, or roughly 84% of all revenue must come from sources independent of how users access the software.