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Outbyte PC Repair FREEClear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsFree Scan →Outbyte Driver Updater FREEFix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesFind Drivers →No—the evidence does not show that open source has stopped being exciting. Project activity and adoption remain vigorous, but activity counts do not measure how much contributors enjoy the work. Growth is also uneven: AI projects are drawing substantial attention, while maintainers still face time, funding, governance, and security pressures that can make sustaining a project difficult.
What the latest activity figures do—and do not—show
GitHub reported that about 36 million new developers joined its platform in 2025, including 5.2 million in India. These are GitHub platform figures, not a count of new open source contributors worldwide. GitHub also said about 60% of its top-growing projects were AI-focused, while naming Home Assistant, VS Code, and Godot as examples of thriving non-AI projects. GitHub’s 2026 outlook, published February 18, 2026, characterizes AI as a major factor in participation growth over 2025.
Earlier GitHub figures point in the same direction for activity on that platform: in 2024 it reported 518 million total projects, up 25% year over year, and nearly one billion contributions to public and open source projects. It also counted 137,000 public generative AI projects, a 98% year-over-year increase. These figures describe GitHub’s platform and its own reporting; they do not establish that every open source community is growing or that contributors feel more enthusiastic. GitHub’s 2024 Octoverse report provides that platform-level context.
Why growth is not the same as excitement
More repositories, contributions, and users show participation and adoption—not joy, satisfaction, or a sense of community. The available figures do not provide a historical measure of contributors’ subjective excitement, so they cannot establish whether open source feels more or less rewarding than it did years ago.
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That distinction matters because open source includes very different experiences. A new contributor may find a project energizing; a maintainer reviewing a large volume of issues and pull requests may find the work exhausting. A popular project can therefore attract growing interest while its core team struggles to keep up. A community question phrased as “What happened to the joy of contributing to open-source?” captures a concern some people express, but it is anecdotal wording, not evidence of a broad measured decline.
Open source has business value, but sustaining it takes resources
Adoption is not just a matter of developer enthusiasm. The Linux Foundation’s 2024 Global Spotlight Insights Report says respondents perceived greater benefits and business value from open source year over year, while identifying time and funding as major challenges to contributing. In the 2025 State of Global Open Source report, the Linux Foundation describes continued dependence on open source alongside gaps in governance and security frameworks.
Those conditions help explain how open source can remain valuable and widely used without every project being healthy or every maintainer feeling supported. Open Source Survey 2024 respondents also reported that financial or in-kind support was infrequent; about half selected “never” in most support categories. That describes reported support conditions among survey respondents, not a measure of lost interest. The survey’s published results also cover security and AI practices.
AI is prominent, but it is not the whole story
AI is a significant source of current project growth on GitHub, but it does not account for all open source activity. GitHub’s examples of active non-AI projects—Home Assistant, VS Code, and Godot—show that established interests in home automation, developer tools, and game development continue to draw participation. The 2024 Open Source Survey found that 72% of its respondents used AI tools for coding or documentation. That is a survey result, not an estimate for all developers. In the same survey, 82% said security was important when deciding whether to use an open source project.
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These figures describe different things: the mix of projects growing on a platform, respondents’ tool use, and their priorities when choosing software. They should not be combined into a single measure of whether open source is exciting.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.So, is open source still worth joining?
For someone deciding whether to contribute, the answer is yes—if the project and the work fit what they want to do. Look beyond a repository’s popularity and consider how it handles contributions and whether its expectations are clear.
- Check the contribution path: look for current contribution guidance, clear issue descriptions, and signs that maintainers respond to proposed changes.
- Read the project’s policies: a code of conduct, governance information, and security reporting instructions can indicate how a community handles responsibilities beyond writing code.
- Choose a sustainable commitment: a small documentation fix, bug report, translation, or focused code change can be a useful start; contribution does not have to mean taking on ongoing maintenance.
- Match the project to your motivation: AI is drawing attention, but it is only one area. Choose a project whose purpose and community interest you.
GitHub’s senior content writer Dylan Birtolo framed the challenge this way: “The important question going forward isn’t how much it will grow—it’s how can you make that growth sustainable.” That is a useful distinction: the ecosystem’s activity is plainly substantial, while the quality and sustainability of participation vary between projects.
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