# Gaslighting Openness

I have been a staunch supporter of Open Source for a long time, including
[experiments](/2023/11/19/cathedral-and-bazaaar-licensing/)
[in](/2024/9/23/fsl-agpl-open-source-businesses/)
[funding](/2024/9/19/open-source-tax/) [it](/2024/10/14/mixing-oss-and-money/).
I'm a true believer in the idea that Open Source always wins in the long run,
but not automatically and not quickly.  Right now it is being stressed by AI
slop, shifting contributor dynamics, the falling cost of producing code, and
large companies learning to close doors behind them.

A lot of that battle today is manipulation of the narrative.  Opinion makers on
social media and in business circles increasingly frame access as
irresponsibility.  That is why the EU's DMA matters, even if many people
(including myself) reflexively hate EU regulation.  Apple's fight over [delayed
AI features in
Europe](https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/06/due-to-dma-siri-ai-delayed-in-eu-for-ios-27-and-ipados-27/)
is not about Brussels being annoying: it is about whether users can access their
own devices and data.  The phone is yours, the data is yours, yet Apple decides
who may reach it and takes the agency away from you and then tries to make that
sound like it is in your interest (supposedly it's for your safety and security).

The closer you get to the core of AI, the more this shows up.  Anthropic has
every financial incentive to restrict what people can do with [Mythos and
Fable](https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-fable-5-mythos-5), and they wrap
those restrictions in safety and (national) security language.  Some
restrictions may be defensible, but not all of them are.  They trained their
models on public works, then block Open Source attempts to learn from and
distill these systems.

Disliking the EU, China, or any other large government should not make us forget
that true democratized access to technology including AI is in all our interest.
Some temporary product pain, including delayed Apple AI features, will be worth
paying if it keeps gates open.  We should not let companies own the narrative
that preventing access is in our interest, particularly not as Europeans where
the odds are already stacked against us by our underdeveloped capital markets,
brain drain and internal fighting.