--- title: We are in the golden age of Open Source. Surf the wave... description: 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... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/we-are-in-the-golden-age-of-open-source-surf-the-wave-until-it-crashes--jru5z3wbx twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: We are in the golden age of Open Source. Surf the wave until it crashes. | daily.dev og:description: 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... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/we-are-in-the-golden-age-of-open-source-surf-the-wave-until-it-crashes--jru5z3wbx og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/jru5Z3WbX.png og:image:alt: We are in the golden age of Open Source. Surf the wave until it crashes. og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # We are in the golden age of Open Source. Surf the wave until it crashes. **[Sylvain Kerkour](https://daily.dev/sources/kerkour)** · 5 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary 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. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## 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._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [The State of Open Source AI — V1.0 · July 2026](https://daily.dev/posts/the-state-of-open-source-ai-v1-0-july-2026-gjzwgazbw) · Hacker News · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [Enterprise use of open source AI coding is changing the ROI calculation](https://daily.dev/posts/enterprise-use-of-open-source-ai-coding-is-changing-the-roi-calculation-ixa8rnxuv) · InfoWorld · 3 upvotes · 0 comments - [Mistral Says 99% of Enterprise AI Can Be Open. That Should Terrify the Closed-Model Business](https://daily.dev/posts/mistral-says-99-of-enterprise-ai-can-be-open-that-should-terrify-the-closed-model-business-eq4tuzn9x) · Medium · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [Revealing the Hidden Economics of Open Models in the AI Era](https://daily.dev/posts/revealing-the-hidden-economics-of-open-models-in-the-ai-era-oio31ty60) · Linux Foundation · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#ai](https://daily.dev/tags/ai), [#open-source](https://daily.dev/tags/open-source), [#rust](https://daily.dev/tags/rust), [#deepseek](https://daily.dev/tags/deepseek) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/we-are-in-the-golden-age-of-open-source-surf-the-wave-until-it-crashes--jru5z3wbx) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"We are in the golden age of Open Source. 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