I think people will always disagree on what qualifies as a "usable rate". But keep in mind that practically no one sensible is running the latest Opus or GPT around the clock, especially not at sustainable, unsubsidized prices. With open-weights models it's easy to do that.
Also for people doing something medical, privacy or sensitive data related, there's an almost incalculable value (depending on industry niche) in having absolutely no external network traffic to any servers/systems you don't fully control.
I think people will always disagree on what qualifies as a "usable rate". But keep in mind that practically no one sensible is running the latest Opus or GPT around the clock, especially not at sustainable, unsubsidized prices. With open-weights models it's easy to do that.
Also for people doing something medical, privacy or sensitive data related, there's an almost incalculable value (depending on industry niche) in having absolutely no external network traffic to any servers/systems you don't fully control.