• kibiz0r@midwest.social
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    4 hours ago

    People who are discounting this because the project maintainer used sensational phrasing (75%) or because he was monetizing open source are ignoring the important part:

    Traffic is down 40%

    This is really bad news. All open source projects need attention in order to succeed.

    “Wait, not like that”: Free and open access in the age of generative AI

    The real threat isn’t AI using open knowledge — it’s AI companies killing the projects that make knowledge free

    https://www.citationneeded.news/free-and-open-access-in-the-age-of-generative-ai/

  • FishFace@piefed.social
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    5 hours ago

    One extremely loud developer has claimed repeatedly that their project’s recent difficulties are due to AI

    OK

    • sgnl@midwest.social
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      4 hours ago

      I’m seeing it quite a lot on mastodon where maintainers from big projects, like even curl, are expressing their grief and annoyance with ai generated bug reports wasting their time and overwhelming them. I don’t think it’s an isolated incident.

      • FishFace@piefed.social
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        4 hours ago

        That’s completely different though. I’ve seen (legitimate) complaints that AI-generated reports are popping up and swamping projects while adding little to no value, but that’s not killing the projects. This article is solely about Tailwind, where the developer asserts that LLMs are responsible for people no longer reading the project’s documentation, which then is where the project directs users to its paid tiers and so (they allege) the project is suffering an unsustainable drop in subscriptions.

        A project’s premium subscriptions drying up is different from a project’s developers being hit with time-wasting bug reports.

  • raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world
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    11 hours ago

    Yeah, I’mma call bullshit on this. No sane boss refers to 3 out of a team of 4 as “75%”. Also, everything in the article sounds like a marketing person looking for excuses for his business not working out.

    • toebert@piefed.social
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      9 hours ago

      I think 75% is apt here, tailwind is incredibly popular and most people wouldn’t know how many engineers they have. If it said “tailwind let 3 people go” I bet most (including me) would assume alright… tailwinds big they may have 30-50 people around… 3 is not too bad right?

      I also disagree with this being entirely bullshit, I think he is right that the impact of AI has made the situation worse for him by impacting his most valuable sales funnel (their own documentation pages). But separately, it is a very populated space (UI libraries) with multiple options to compete with, some of which are rather well established and free - so it was an uphill battle to begin with.

  • BananaTrifleViolin@lemmy.world
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    10 hours ago

    This is a wierd article. It was originally Googles fault, then it was AI and google is now sponsering the project?

  • Lemmchen@feddit.org
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    9 hours ago

    Why would the revenue be down because AI when “it’s more popular than ever”?

    • toebert@piefed.social
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      9 hours ago

      “Traffic to our docs is down about 40% from early 2023 despite Tailwind being more popular than ever,” he added. He then goes on to explain that “The docs are the only way people find out about our commercial products, and without customers we can’t afford to maintain the framework.”

      People no longer need to look at their docs or their website because they ask AI how to do something with tailwind instead, so they no longer get to expose and advertise their product (tailwind plus).

      Tailwind plus is a one time payment, not a subscription. If there are no new customers to buy it, their income is gone.

    • jsnfwlr@lemmy.ml
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      9 hours ago

      The claim is the as revenue they generate from their documentation site has been cut because LLM programming tools and AI-summaries on search engines reduce the number if people visiting the doc site

      • kibiz0r@midwest.social
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        4 hours ago

        Clarification: revenue from advertising their own paid services, not revenue from selling ad space to third parties

  • hobata@lemmy.ml
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    10 hours ago

    One can only be happy for those three lucky ones who no longer have to do those stupid monkey jobs at tailwind.