Dries Buytaert Warns AI Could Become a New Open Source Privilege

Artificial intelligence could reduce the role of free time as a privilege in open-source contribution, but only if communities make AI access and skills more widely available, according to a 30 June 2026 essay by Dries Buytaert. In The privilege of AI in Open Source, Dries revisits his earlier argument that open source is not a pure meritocracy because contributors also need time, income, and schedule flexibility. He writes that AI can help contributors understand unfamiliar codebases faster, but warns that the most capable models and coding agents still require money, experience, and judgement that many contributors may not have.

Dries argues that open-source projects should treat AI capability as shared infrastructure rather than a private advantage. He identifies two gaps for communities to address: the cost of capable tools and the skill required to use them well. Public best practices are useful, he writes, but they should be embedded in the contributor experience so people do not have to search separately for prompts, tools, skill files, and project-specific guidance. The essay also cautions that AI can make contribution cheaper without making review cheaper, placing more pressure on maintainers unless AI-assisted work produces tested patches that are easier to trust and merge. Dries concludes that Drupal should help explore this balance in practice because the issue fits the kind of access and participation problem open source is meant to solve.