We are in the golden age of Open Source. Surf the wave until it crashes.
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A developer argues we are in a golden age of open source, driven by affordable open-weight AI models like DeepSeek, Kimi, and Mistral. The author shares personal cost data — under $10/day using DeepSeek v4 — and contrasts this with the high cost of closed models like Opus 4.8. The post urges developers to build aggressively now while AI-assisted development remains cheap, suggesting areas like fundamental libraries, open OS projects, civic tech, and open inference infrastructure. It briefly addresses copyright concerns around AI training data but focuses on pragmatic optimism over grievance.
Table of contents
A note on copyrightThe virtuous feedback loop of Open Source code and Open Weight modelsMy advice?Questions this post answers
How much does it cost to use DeepSeek v4 Pro and DeepSeek v4 Flash per million tokens?
DeepSeek v4 Pro costs $0.435 per million input tokens, $0.87 per million output tokens, and $0.003625 per million cache-read tokens. DeepSeek v4 Flash costs $0.14 per million input tokens, $0.28 per million output tokens, and $0.0028 per million cache-read tokens. For comparison, Opus 4.8 runs at $5 per million input tokens and $25 per million output tokens. Developers choosing between AI coding models on cost track pricing shifts like these on daily.dev.