Comment by jascha_eng
15 hours ago
I still kinda wish that the subscriptions would just allow you to use the tokens however you wish. I get that they rely on people not using all of their quota. But e.g. with open code it doesn't really matter if I use antigravity or gemini-cli the usage should be about the same.
What they are actually trying to force you to do is to pay for the tokens that you don't use in their applications to increase their revenue and/or give their in-house tools an "unfair" advantage. But this is bad for the consumer because it means that there is less competition between coding agents and unless I'm willing to pay per token I have to take one of the model labs agents.
Anticompetitive behaviour imo they could just ban reselling tokens or something like that instead of locking your subscription in like this.
>I still kinda wish that the subscriptions would just allow you to use the tokens however you wish. I get that they rely on people not using all of their quota. But e.g. with open code it doesn't really matter if I use antigravity or gemini-cli the usage should be about the same.
This is almost as realistic as "I wish netflix or youtube allowed me to use VLC to watch their content".
Haha maybe that would reduce piracy.
The easiest way to watch a movie in the player of my choice - even if i have legal access to it because it's in my netflix subscription - is to download it off piratebay.
Add to that Netflix's shitty discovery system, I'm pretty sure I watched some downloaded movies in spite of actually having legal access to them.
Oh, remember when PC games used to come on disks? For the Netflix example I can only guess, but I'm 100% sure I downloaded isos for games I had actually bought and had the physical disc... somewhere.
i don't believe this is a significant driver of piracy tbh, normal people don't care about that kinda thing :P
especially considering most modern movie/tv piracy is free streaming websites - shitty quality and awkward player controls, definitely no choice of player here
This is almost as realistic as "I wish OpenAI supports using OpenCode with ChatGPT subscription account."
Oh, except they do[0].
[0]: https://x.com/thsottiaux/status/2009742187484065881
Yea, there are the last to the party (have they even arrived?), so they are going to have to make some concessions. I wonder if they at rollout will have a third-party subscription token service in addition to their first-party one.
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> This is almost as realistic as "I wish netflix or youtube allowed me to use VLC to watch their content".
This is exactly what should be happening. There's no reason to limit the client apps for things like _paid_ Netflix or Youtube Premium.
Why is that unrealistic?
Think of it like the digital right-to-repair.
I pay for it, I get to use it with any client I want. Simple.
Except that is a false equivalent, when you clicked "agree" you did so for their ToS to get a discount or bulk deal with strings attached. It's pretty easy these days to have a LLM extract the unique parts into a summary.
I do wish that though. I have given up on streaming services, I am not paying for this bullshit experience. We used to have all the content unlimited on one service for like $10/mo. I can accept prices increasing with inflation but society should not accept such a backslide in service quality.
I would take things somewhat further: I'd be happy to pay the equivalent of $20 2015 dollars for this service if it were comprehensive. Unfortunately, that might allow for a consumer surplus to occur in the viewing experience and the motion picture industry ties with maybe nVidia for peak pathological hostility to retail consumer surplus.
Nobody is forcing you to pay for tokens you don’t use. If you only want to pay for the tokens you use, switch to api billing and pay for tokens at api rates.
If you want the discounted rates they offer in their monthly plans, then expect to follow the terms that discount is offered under.
> I get that they rely on people not using all of their quota
They have no problem with users using their quota on their own software. Because they get the signals. They do have a problem with users using the API in 3rd party software, because they don't get the signals.
Well ... the clear signal is that people want to use Google's models but not Google products
Most people have actually just been using Opus through antigravity
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I don't really understand this reasoning actually:
if OpenClaw usage go up, and a service (OpenAI it looks like) gets lots of usage data for personal assistent usage, they can optimize to make it better for people who get a $200 subscription just because of that use case.
I turned off tracking on Antigravity. Do I deserve to get my account banned from a service I pay for now? Silly.
> But e.g. with open code it doesn't really matter if I use antigravity or gemini-cli the usage should be about the same.
This is not at all true. What is prompting this behavior from Google and Anthropic is that people are using their oauth creds/API keys to run OpenClaw bots that use orders of magnitude more tokens than the IDEs. The official clients also can use a lot more prompt caching because they have expected workflows.
And like, if you want to run OpenClaw, they’re not saying you can’t do that: use the API pricing, that’s what it’s for. But people are getting mad that they’re not allowed to roll their pickup truck up to the all-you-can-eat buffet table and fill it.
I think the deal is quite clear: subscription for personal usage in their products, API token for everything else. You get a rebate for subscription because they get the data. I would be quite sad if they removed the subscription option just to not be "anticompetitive".