I understand the concern and it's fair but I am very curious about what happens when the two notions of "free" (free as in beer, and free as in freedom) start to diverge because the former gets easier to do.

The latter as always been more durable. Linux doesn't have the mindshare it does because it's "free" as in beer - it's because it's "free" as in freedom.

The price of freedom, of brewing your own beer, is sometimes higher than buying it from the store. But for many folks, the control over the supply chain is what makes it worth it. In LLM-land, it might take a little bit of time for folks to catch up -- or maybe a lot of that is already in motion as companies get paranoid (and rightfully so) to frontier labs getting a little grabby about data. If you need a ZDR environment, "free" as in freedom has a very high premium that you will pay and rightfully so.