This is the best of times for open source: a weekend project can top GitHub in just 60 days, open-weight models are rapidly closing the gap with proprietary flagships, and an open-source inference engine has raised the largest seed round in history.

It is also the worst of times for open source: maintainers are drowning in AI-generated junk pull requests, bounty programs are shutting down, and the most valuable engineering data is bypassing GitHub altogether.

This talk advances a central argument: agents are not here simply to write more code for open source. They are changing the foundation on which open source has operated for the past thirty years—code is becoming cheaper, while trust is becoming more expensive.

Open source must now rewrite its answers to four fundamental questions: Why is code valuable? Why do developers contribute? How do companies make money? And who defines the rules?

A new layer will be built on top of today’s collaboration platforms, with identity, memory, reputation, and settlement forming a new institutional stack.

For the first time in this transformation, China is not merely a follower. The race in open-weight models, the divergence of two technology ecosystems, the open space for agent collaboration platforms, and the window for neutral governance represent four major opportunities for China’s open-source community.

Speakers:

Tao Jiang: Founder and Chairman of CSDN

Founder and Chairman of CSDN. Currently serves as Vice Chairman of the China Open Source Alliance, Director of the Intelligent Application Branch of the China Software Industry Association, Board Member of the OpenAtom Foundation, and Chairman of the Singularity Intelligence Research Institute.