Eternal November - the new influx of users, and why it's way better than the last one

Drawing a parallel to 'Eternal September' (1993's Usenet influx), the Software Freedom Conservancy coins 'Eternal November' to describe the wave of new developers entering FOSS communities via LLM-backed AI coding tools since late 2025. Rather than dismissing AI-assisted contributors as producers of 'slop', the post urges FOSS maintainers to engage with newcomers, understand their motivations, and help them build maintainable software where appropriate. It acknowledges that AI tools reduce the natural pressure to contribute upstream, and that solo forks are sometimes fine. The call to action is for FOSS project leaders to join SFC-hosted video chats to discuss adapting communities to this new wave of developers.