> I'm just surprised that everyone expects free models. There's a real cost in producing those.

There's a lot of free stuff incurring "real costs" in its production, one more or less doesn't make a shred of difference.

> I agree with you that producers of these models should be able to extract value from their models.

Nobody is stopping them from extracting value but they fail despite being placed in a very advantageous position vis-a-vis others, which tells me, they should call it quits or go open like everybody sane.

Open is the way to go, nothing else works in the field of AI, that's the bitter lesson closed labs are yet to learn.