Comment by refulgentis | Hacker News Reader

Comment by refulgentis | Hacker News Reader

I believe LLM providers should ultimately be utilities from a consumer perspective, like water suppliers. I own the faucet, washer, bathtub, and can switch suppliers at will. I’ve been working on a FOSS client for them for nearly three years.

I hope that why the following is purely a factual distinction, not an excuse or an attempt to empathize.

The difference between the other entities named and OpenCode is this:

OpenCode uses people’s Claude Code subscriptions. The other entities use the API.

Specifically, OpenCode reverse‑engineers Claude Code’s OAuth endpoints and API, then uses them. This is harmful from Anthropic's perspective because Claude Code is subsidized relative to the API.

Edit: I’m getting “You’re posting too fast” when replying to mr_mitm. For clarity, there is no separate API subscription. Anthropic wants you to use one of two funnels for coding with their LLMs: 1. The API (through any frontend), or 2. A subscription through an Anthropic‑owned frontend.

You're hitting an important point. I might go on a tangent here.

It's up to operating systems to offer a content consumption experience for end users which reverses the role of platforms back to their original, most basic offers. They all try to force you into their applications which are full of tracking, advertisements, upsells, and anti-consumer interface design decisions.

Ideally the operating system would untangle the content from these applications and allow the end user to consume the content in a way that they want. For example Youtube offers search, video and comments. The operating system should extract these three things and create a good UI around it, while discarding the rest. Playlists and viewing history can all be managed in the offline part of the application. Spotify offers music, search and lyrics but they want you to watch videos and use social media components in their very opinionated UIs, while actively fighting you to create local backup of your music library.

Software like adblockers, yt-dlp and streamlink are already solving parts of these issues by untangling content from providers for local consumption in a trusted environment. For me the fight by Anthropic against OpenCode fits into this picture.

These companies are acting hostile even towards paying customers, each of them trying to build their walled gardens.

I believe they want you to use the API subscription if you want to use their service with OpenCode. It's possible, just more expensive.

That is analogous to the water company charging you more if you use a faucet from another company. It's not a fair competition.

That's why we are supposed to have legislation to regulate that utilities and common carriers can't behave that way.

It wasn't just hooking up a new faucet. It was hijacking an API key intended for ClaudeCode specifically. So in this metaphor it would be hooking up a secondary water pipe from the water company intended only for sprinklers they provide to your main water supply. The water company notices abnormal usage coming from the sprinkler water pipe and shuts it off, while leaving your primary water pipe alone.

Possibly a better comparison (though a bit dated now) would be AT&T (or whatever telephone monopoly one had/has in their locality) charging an additional fee to use a telephone that isn't sold/rented to them by AT&T.

Comcast pulled this on me recently through what I can only describe as malicious bundling.

Internet + shitty "security" software that only runs on their hardware + modem rental is cheaper than internet only + bring your own equipment. You can't buy the cheaper internet+security package without their hardware (or so they claimed).

Fwiw, your main point seems scattered across your post where sentences refer to supposed context established by other sentences. It's making it hard to understand your position.

Maybe try the style where you start off with your position in a self-contained sentence, and then write a paragraph elaborating on it.

Also, they should try editing their post less frequently. Hard to have a discussion this way.

It's exactly like water. Use their API, and you pay as much water as you drink. But visit them in their pub, and you get a pretty big buffet with lots of water for a one-time price.

This is what the APIs are for. You pay for what you use, just like water.

We have a flat-rate minimum charge or a minimum tariff for water service here.

It means that even though the cost depends on usage, you are billed at least a fixed minimum amount, regardless of how little water you actually use.

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