[patchymcnoodles]

That is a very strange calculation for me or I missed something. This is an open-source project, so all human contributors cost zero. He does not count himself as a cost, ok fine and understandable if you don't wanna earn from this project it is kind of an ok look at cost. But if I see it in this relation, because of Copilot his "team" costs now $41.73 a month more than before.

But the real cost that would be interesting is time value: Does he really spends less time for the same feature?

[otoolep]

Post author here. Few things.

You are right that when someone (a human) submits a PR it didn't cost me anything (short of my time to review it). But those folks are not a team, not someone I could rely on or direct. Open-source projects -- successful ones -- often turn into a company, and then hire a dev team. We all know this.

I have no plans to commercialize rqlite, and I certainly couldn't afford a team of human developers. But I've got Copilot (and Gemini when I use it) now. So, in a sense, I now do have a team. And it's allowed me to fix bugs and add small features I wouldn't have bothered to in the past. It's definitely faster (20 mins to fire up my computer, write the code, push the PR vs. 5 mins to create the GitHub issue, assign to Copilot, review, and merge).

Case in point: I'm currently adding change-data-capture to rqlite. Development is going faster, but it's also more erratic because I'm reviewing more, and coding less. It reminds me of when I've been a TL of a software team.

[mjr00]

> So, in a sense, I now do have a team.

In another, more accurate sense: no, you have a tool, not a team. A very useful tool, but a tool nonetheless.

If you believe you have a team, try taking a two week vacation and see how much work your team does while you're gone.

[patchymcnoodles]

Ok, that's cool that you can develop faster now, but as the other comment: it is a tool, not the cost of a team. It still for me a very strange comparison.

But nonetheless, thanks for the explanation :).