Open Source is For Losers

Inflammatory header aside, it's pretty clear that, at least in terms of LLMs at the frontier, you only open source the model weights if you are behind the frontier as a mechanism of catching up and eating some of the margin. If you are actually at the bleeding edge, then the weights are your edge, and giving that away is, well, clearly bad game theory.

Don't get me wrong, I love open source, but it just seems generally true that if your code isn't winning out in terms of private capex then you can gain margin by making your software available to a market that won't want to otherwise use proprietary software for reasons the proprietary software cannot or will not support.

Nobody uses open source discord alternatives, comparitively speaking. Nobody uses claude code alternatives, comparitively speaking. If your product is good, your competition simply has to take up the market share you aren't willing to take. They lost, hence OSS.