There's a grand altruistic goal in Software. That somehow we'll all be able to tinker with, fix, and extended the tools we're gifted by the OSS community. And it's a magnificent ideal - wouldn't it be incredible if you could really just write your own home-camera app in a weekend? No spies allowed in your home now that you made it from the ground up.
However, software is hard. It's a skill which takes time to develop. It's an artform which takes time to appreciate. Comprehending an entire ecosystem is daunting, and takes enormous amounts of time. It's this last point that has kept me out of the OSS community for my days as a professional. I believe myself perfectly capable as an engineer and architect to make the changes I need to my own systems (and dig myself out of the holes I've dug).
For me, the blocker is always time. I don't have enough hours or willpower read every package I've been intrigued by, every cool repo I've come across, every ridiculous idea I've wanted to explore. I don't have the brainpower at all hours of the day to grok them enough to select them, implement them, then modify them to my own needs.
And this is why the capitalist closed-source ecosystem has thrived. You bought an app to do the thing rather than make it yourself. You downloaded the risky companion-app with your new amazon-thingo because there's no way you're gonna figure out how to interface with this thing, no matter how much data it scrapes of you and your family. You tried the OSS one and by 130am on a Wednesday you decided let it go because the rest of your life needed you.
AI has turned this around for me in extraordinary ways. I did this with my own USB Camera app. I didn't like that the only available options were bloated external camera apps controlled by people I didn't trust. So I made it myself with a ralph loop and a few minutes of Claude time. Mostly debugged, partially commented, a happy-path test and even some UI flair. It had exactly what I needed at the time. And when I need more, I'll add it. And it'll take just a few minutes.
It helped me exit Windows and move happily to MintOS and I'm Microsoft-free for the first time in more than a decade. It's kinda wild how nice it feels. It navigated me through recovering a failed install, a wiped drive, a bad external USB sector, and it never once got tired. I'd have given up ages ago.
A non-technical friend of mine built her own life-tracker to get everything into one place, on device, and easily exportable. It exists solely for her and her needs. And that's fantastic.
AI is bringing down barriers to writing code all over the place. Services like Lovable are basking in the sun by letting non-coders build things they never thought they could. As an engineer, you love getting into the details, so take your AI bot-of-choice with you. Start having fun with software again.
And yes, I'm well aware I used a closed source model to do this. Soon, Claude will help me run my own models on my own hardware.
Be free-as-in-freedom.