← Home
The Changelog · September 3, 2026 · 1h 54m 32s

Forking Cal.com to closed source (Interview)

Adam Stacoviak talks with Peer Richelsen, co-founder of Cal.com, about a provocative theory: that the majority of open source repositories may already be compromised without our knowledge. They explore how AI has flattened the knowledge graph, enabling even a 16-year-old to “vibe hack” a power station or a mom to “vibe code” an iOS app, and how the resulting AI-generated noise is breaking the reporting culture that has kept open source safe. The conversation covers Cal.com’s decision to fork its own codebase and take the sensitive parts private, the technical and philosophical fallout of that move, and the rise of a startup business model built around selling AI tokens at a steep discount.

This summary was generated from show notes and public descriptions, not from a full transcript review. Details may contain inaccuracies.

Curious

•
Selling AI tokens at a discount is a new startup business model
A growing number of startups are built on the simple premise of buying AI tokens in bulk and reselling them cheaply.

Novel

•
Open source may already be widely compromised
Peer Richelsen theorizes that the majority of open source repositories could already be infiltrated, but we lack the tools and attention to detect it.
•
AI noise is breaking open source reporting culture
The culture of responsible reporting and careful vulnerability disclosure in open source is being overwhelmed by AI-generated noise.

Highlights

•
AI flattens the knowledge graph, enabling vibe hacking and vibe coding
Richelsen describes how AI has made extremely complex tasks accessible to anyone with a prompt, lowering the barrier to both creation and destruction.
•
Cal.com forking its own codebase to go partially closed-source
Cal.com is moving its sensitive code from open source to a closed-source fork, a drastic step to protect its business and users.
Was this useful?