Comment by mmmore

The token prices being high for Opus undermines your argument, because it shows people are willing to pay more for the model.

The thing is the new OpenAI/Anthropic models are noticeably better than open source. Open source is not unusable, but the frontier is definitely better and likely will remain so. With SWE time costing over $1/min, if a convo costs me $10 but saves me 10 minutes it's probably worth it. And with code, often the time saved by marginally better quality is significant.