As I reflect on Anthropic pulling Fable off the market — albeit involuntarily — I keep coming back to a pattern I've noticed after more than a decade working on internet infrastructure technologies.
At scale, internet infrastructure tends to mature into a shape I'll call the open source triopoly: a duopoly with two clear commercial lanes, and an open source movement that sets the floor and empowers customers with leverage against the duopoly.
Today, the AI Operating System triopoly is taking shape:
- OpenAI — smaller revenue per customer; notably committed to Consumer AI.
- Anthropic — higher revenue per customer; notably committed to Enterprise AI.
- Nous Research (prediction) — open source and decentralized AI; notably committed to making open source usable, setting a global floor under the AI OS market.
We've seen the triopoly before, in the last operating system boom. Rewind to the rise of Linux and the enterprise operating system. The market didn't collapse into a single winner. It settled into a triangle:
- Microsoft — smaller ticket, larger volume. Windows and the broad commodity install base.
- IBM — larger ticket, smaller volume. Big iron, deep enterprise contracts, services attached.
- Linux — open source. No CEO, no price tag, but a permanent floor under the whole market.
Two corporations with complementary business models, and an open source counterweight that neither could buy, kill, or fully control. That tension is what kept the market honest and helped propel the US tech economy. Linux didn't have to win to matter — it just had to exist, and to keep improving.
The new triangle is the AI Operating System
Why bring this up now, with the Anthropic and Fable news? Because I believe the triopoly is a good thing, and we risk throwing it out of balance by undercutting the market's natural ability to invest in and adopt open source AI.
Anthropic is right to commercialize. Open source still needs a seat.
Anthropic is a private company. They should retain the ability to commercialize their products in the best interest of their mission and their shareholders. None of that is in question.
What isn't discussed enough is how the open source ecosystem fares when regulators and the duopoly have these conversations without it in the room. And how could open source even be in the room? It's not a single company. There are no CEOs to invite. But it's also the most important counterbalance we have for ensuring that intelligence is distributed broadly — and that access to its promise is more equitable.
I'm a power user of Claude and Codex, and I also build on open source. All three earn their place in my stack — and they should earn their place in the market too. A healthy AI market doesn't pick one corner of the triangle.
Just as the triopoly served the enterprise OS in the 2000s, the AI OS triopoly must survive — with open source AI being the point most at risk while we sort through what is safe, what is fair, and what is free (as in beer).
Linux didn't have to beat Microsoft or IBM to keep the enterprise OS market honest. Open source AI doesn't have to beat OpenAI or Anthropic either. It just has to keep its seat at the table.
If the third corner falls, the triangle becomes a line
Here's what worries me most right now. The conversations that will shape this market are happening between the duopoly and the US government — and open source has no seat at that table, because there's no company to send. If the rules get written for a world of two big labs, they can quietly price the third corner out: making open releases more expensive, treating open weights as a liability, or drawing safety lines only the best-capitalized incumbents can afford to clear. The first-order effect is fewer open alternatives. The second-order effect lands on everyone who buys AI — when the floor disappears, so does your leverage. A triangle gives customers somewhere else to go and a real reason to negotiate; a line between two vendors just gives you two prices. Keeping open source in the triangle isn't charity for hackers. It's how the rest of us keep our options — and our bargaining power — at the table.