In its early days, open-source software was seen by some as an existential threat. Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer once warned that code that is free to use and modify might become a “cancer”, making it hard for commercial software companies to make a profit from their intellectual property.
It didn’t turn out that way. Open source was certainly an astounding success: Much of the infrastructure software that sits in the guts of corporate IT systems was developed and distributed using open-source methods. But this has turned out to be complementary to other types of code, leaving plenty of room for the commercial software industry.
The same “complement or existential threat” question is suddenly looming larger in AI. Until now, Wall Street has largely brushed off the threat. The shock caused by DeepSeek’s R1 model early last year — an advanced reasoning model released as open source and developed at a small fraction of the cost of US rivals — soon faded.