WBSP: Why We're Sponsoring the World's Biggest Software Project

Today I want to tell you about something ToolTwist is sponsoring that is bigger than ToolTwist: WBSP — the World's Biggest Software Project.

It is an open collaboration, not a product we are selling you. There are currently 501+ AI-native software projects across 32 categories sitting in the catalog, and the whole point is that anyone can take one, run it, change it, brand it, host it, or contribute back to it. As the site says plainly: this is a place to collaborate, not a vendor catalog.

Here is why we think it matters, and why we put our name behind it.

Why now

Two things happened at roughly the same time, and the combination is the whole story.

The first is that hundreds of genuine enterprise applications have now been generated with AI, and they are not toys. They land somewhere between 90, 95, and even 100 percent production ready. Not "a prototype you could show a stakeholder" — a system with the data model, the workflows, the permissions, and the screens already in place.

The second is that the foundational AI companies are, right now, subsidising the cost of that generation while they fight for market share. Compute that will eventually be priced at what it costs is currently priced at what it takes to win you.

Add those together and you get an arbitrage that will not last forever: you can obtain serious, custom enterprise software today for ten percent or less of what a traditional vendor would charge for it, and you can do it at something close to 10x the old delivery speed.

That is the window WBSP exists to open up while it is open.

What it actually is

WBSP is a catalog and a community around it.

• The catalog — 501+ projects, 32 categories. Take one as-is, or take it as a starting point.
• The store — for projects and components ready to deploy.
• Help wanted — where projects surface the work they need done.
• Providers — a directory of the people who build, test, host, and support. If you do not want to touch any of it yourself, you hire someone from here.
• The wiki and leaderboard — the shared knowledge, and the record of who did what.

You can run a project in the cloud, self-host it, or hand it to a managed provider. You can take a support contract or not. You can modify it yourself, hire someone, or leave it exactly as it is. Those are genuinely your choices to make, and none of them are locked behind a licence negotiation.

The Linux comparison, and why it holds

The framing WBSP uses is that AI is now doing to enterprise software what Linux did to operating systems. I think that is right, but it is worth being precise about which part of the Linux story is repeating.

It is not mainly the "free" part. It is the part where the barrier to producing something serious collapsed, and it turned out that the people best placed to build the software were not the incumbent vendors — they were the practitioners who actually understood the problem.

That is what is happening again. Anyone with real domain knowledge and the ability to direct AI well can now produce enterprise-grade software. The scarce resource has moved. It used to be engineering capacity. It is now domain understanding and judgment about what "correct" means — which is exactly what the people running warehouses, clinics, brokerages, and councils have had all along, and have never been able to convert into software they could afford.

Last mile capitalism

This is the part I care about most, and it is the reason we are sponsoring rather than simply using.

The enterprise software market has spent thirty years consolidating into a handful of very large vendors pushing one-size-fits-all products onto every customer, and then charging change-request rates for the privilege of making the product fit. Everyone in the chain knows the fit is poor. Nobody has had a cheaper alternative.

WBSP's bet — and ours — is different: thousands of small vendors, working together, shaping solutions that fit each customer exactly. We are firm believers in last mile capitalism. The last mile, the part where software meets one particular organisation's real process, is where nearly all of the value is and where nearly all of the disappointment has been. It has been uneconomic to serve properly. It is not uneconomic anymore.

That only works if the foundations are shared and the last mile is competitive. Which is precisely the structure WBSP is trying to create.

Who this is for

Three groups, concretely.

You need serious software and you do not have an enterprise budget. Councils, clinics, mid-market operators, not-for-profits, growing businesses. You have been told for years that the system you need starts in the high six figures. Start from a project that is already 90 percent there instead.

You need customisation and you are tired of paying for it. You already have a vendor. The product nearly fits. Every change is a quote. Take a foundation you control and shape it to your process rather than the other way around.

You want to build a product, not a codebase. Take a proven foundation, rebrand it, extend it into something distinctly yours, and sell it. You skip the two years of undifferentiated groundwork and start at the part that is actually your idea.

Build for gain, or build for credit

Contributors choose their model, and WBSP treats both as equally legitimate.

Build for gain — you contribute and you are paid. Build a project, take modification work, provide hosting, sell support.

Build for credit — you contribute and you are recognised. Attribution, reputation, and a public record of work that stands up on its own.

Neither is the junior version of the other. Some of the best contributors to anything ever built were never on a payroll for it.

Support, if you want it

The objection I expect, and the fair one, is: this is fine until something breaks in production at 2am.

That is what the provider directory is for. Independent software houses, hosting providers, and support organisations register there, and you contract with them directly. It is the same arrangement enterprises already have with their systems integrators — it is just no longer bundled with, and priced by, the company that owns the software.

You do not have to do it alone. You just do not have to be locked in either.

Why ToolTwist is behind it

We have spent this year publishing what we have learned about shipping AI-generated code that survives production — the test architecture, the workflow discipline, the review practices. That work only compounds if the foundations are shared. A hundred organisations each independently generating their own version of the same warehouse system is an enormous amount of wasted capability.

Sponsoring WBSP is our answer to that. We contribute what we know about making AI-built software durable, and the collaboration gets the benefit. Our customers get to start from something real. And the last mile — the part we are actually good at — stays competitive and open.

Ready when you are

Have a look at the catalog and find the software that fits: wbsp.ai.

If you build software, provide hosting, or provide support, there is a door for each of you on the front page. If you are an organisation weighing up a vendor renewal against a foundation you would own, talk to us — we are happy to walk you through what the alternative actually looks like in practice.

Is it really the world's biggest software project? Thousands of developers reproducing the world's enterprise software as AI-native versions, in the open, at the same time. I struggle to name a bigger one.