Comment by Philpax
3 days ago
I'll be honest; I'm pretty sure this "mistake" will be completely forgotten by the next month. Their enforcing that their subscription only works with their product should not really come as a surprise to anyone, and the alt-agent users are a small enough minority that they'll get over it.
I’m starting to think you’re right but only because software engineers don’t seem to actually value or care about open source anymore. Apparently we have collectively forgotten how bad it can be to let your tools own you instead of the other way around.
Maybe another symptom of Silicon Valley hustle culture — nobody cares about the long term consequences if you can make a quick buck.
There's nothing stopping you from using OpenCode with any other provider, including Anthropic: you just can't get the subsidised pricing while doing so. This is irritating, yes - it certainly disincentivises me from trying out OpenCode - but it's also, like, not unexpected?
In any case, the long-term solution for true openness is to be able to run open-weight models locally or through third-party inference providers.
Yes but why are they subsidizing the pricing and requiring to use their closed source client to benefit from it? It’s the same reason the witch in the story of Hansel and Gretel was giving out free candy.
4 replies →
> Apparently we have collectively forgotten how bad it can be to let your tools own you instead of the other way around.
We've collectively forgotten because a large enough number of professional developers have never experienced anything other than a thriving open source ecosystem.
As with everything else (finance and politics come to mind in particular), humans will have to learn the same lessons the hard way over and over. Unfortunately, I think we're at the beginning of that lesson and hope the experience doesn't negatively impact me too much.
> software engineers don’t seem to actually value or care about open source anymore.
Hate to break it to you, but the vast majority never did. See any thread about Linux on HN. Maybe the Open Source wave was before my time, but ever since I came into the industry around 2015 "caring about open source" has been the minority view. It's Windows/Mac/Photo Shop/etc all the way up and down.
We're going to learn that lesson again in a big hurry at this point.
Quality, UX, DX first, second openness.
If all is equal, I pick the open option. In this case it's not equal, Claude Code + Opus 4.5 is better than Opencode + Opus 4.5.