GitHub’s CEO recently told developers that if they don’t embrace AI tools like Copilot, they should consider getting out of the profession. It’s framed as advice, but let’s be honest — it’s a veiled threat: buy our AI, or we’ll replace you with someone who does.
This is what happens when those who control the compute, the models, and the platforms also try to dictate the future of labor. The developers — the very people whose code was scraped, whose ideas trained the models, whose unpaid contributions filled GitHub — are now being told to pay up or vanish.
The New Power Structure
It used to be: if you could code, you had power. Now, the power is shifting to those who own the infrastructure — the GPUs, the training pipelines, the API access tokens. These aren’t engineers talking; they’re salespeople in suits. And they’re selling back to us what we built for free.
This is the real arrogance: the belief that owning compute means owning the future of developers. That with enough capital and GPU clusters, you can just dictate who stays relevant and who gets left behind.
Developers Built the AI. Now They’re Forced to Rent It.
Let’s not forget: Copilot was trained on public repos. Stack Overflow. Blogs. Forums. Years of unpaid, shared knowledge by developers. Now the same companies are wrapping that output in paywalls and calling it innovation.
Worse, they’re weaponizing it. Telling juniors and seniors alike: if you don’t use it, you’re inefficient. If you push back, you’re obsolete. This isn’t technological progress — it’s an economic squeeze.
Power Imbalance is Growing
Most developers don’t have millions to spin up LLM training clusters. Most don’t control cloud APIs or chip fabs. They can’t afford to fight the AI wave at that scale. And that’s the trap: the people being threatened don’t even have the resources to push back.
Without shared ownership of compute — or access to truly free and open models — we’re left in a position where your job, your code, even your autonomy, depends on whether you subscribe to someone else’s AI service.
This is not empowerment. This is extraction.
Open Source Is Not the Problem — Arrogance Is
Let’s be clear: open source isn’t the enemy. Without open licenses, public repos, and community-driven codebases, none of these AI systems would even exist.
The real problem is when companies use open source as a feeding ground, then turn around and tell the community they’re no longer needed — unless they pay. It's a bait-and-switch: "Thanks for training our models. Now here's the monthly bill to keep working."
This is the arrogance of ownership without responsibility. Taking collective knowledge and wrapping it in compute gatekeeping. That’s not the spirit of open source — it’s exploitation in open-source clothing.
What Needs to Change
We can’t stop progress. But we must demand a future where developers are not forced to license their own labor back from trillion-dollar platforms.
That means:
- Pushing for truly open-source AI — not just APIs wrapped in PR.
- Building and supporting decentralized AI tools that don’t require corporate permission to run.
- FOSS community should be stronger that can push back when tools built from our collective knowledge are turned against us.
It's not wrong to embrace AI. But when you're being forced to adopt a capital-backed AI product, maybe it's time to pause and ask: Are they doing this because they care about you? Because they want to take your money and make your life better? Or is it something else entirely?
Look closely. The answer is written all over their face.
