Software can be rebuilt, because software is a machine. But a software ecosystem is not a machine. It is a living system. When we attempt to rebuild the ecosystem, we’re making a category error. We’re confusing the software for the ecological process unfolding around it.
Forking Like a State And that’s exactly what happens when you try to rebuild an ecosystem. Fixing structural issues means breaking changes. Breaking changes mean forking, and forking has costs: When you fork an ecosystem, you kill the existing ecosystem’s momentum, and start from zero on a new ecosystem. This doesn’t stop us from trying. Software history is littered with attempts to fix past mistakes in our ecosystems:
What does this imply for ai created software - if it can be created easily, how do we look for and preserve ecosystems? Do they exist within a set of users? Do they carry the same metrics?
