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Anthropic takes legal action against OpenCode

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Re: Anthropic takes legal action against OpenCode

#71

Can anyone ELI5 what is open code and why Anthropic is asking them to delete something ?

OpenCode is a agent .. harnest? The CLI or UI tool you use as an AI agent, similar to ClaudeCode.

You where not allowed to use your ClaudeCode subscription with other tool then ClaudeCode. I'm not sure if this is what got removed or if there is more too it.

Re: Anthropic takes legal action against OpenCode

#72
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really, GPT 5.4 is a great alternative. There's no real loss from using that over Claude Opus. And open models are quite close behind.

I’ll try 5.4 again but when I spent a couple of hours with it, I found it much weaker than Claude code + opus 4.6 for working on large projects. Are you delegating substantial work like planning and executing refactors, or more at single-line and function-level work?

I think the gap is smaller than it has been in the past but I largely agree with you, generally larger work is done much better with Claude Code.

Re: Anthropic takes legal action against OpenCode

#73
post #45
post #8

I've said it before and I'll say it again. The people mad about this feel they are entitled to the heavily subsidized usage in any context they want, not in the context explicitly allowed by the subsidizer. It's kind of like a new restaurant started handing out coupons for "90% off", wanting to attract diners to the restaurant, customers started coming in and ordering bulk meals then immediately packaging them in tup…

I must be alone in this but I don't think its heavily subsidized. I see their models as really overpriced. No way they cost that much. Could they really?

Yes. Their API rates are breakeven to profitable, the subscription that people are arbitraging is a 90% discount or so from API rates.

There’s a reason 5% of GitHub commits are from Claude code and no other provider is above 0.1%… it’s quality, but it’s also subsidy.

Re: Anthropic takes legal action against OpenCode

#74
post #34
post #18

The OpenCode guys have really surprised me in the way they've reacted to Anthropic shutting down the side-loaded auth scheme. Very petty and bitter. It's clearly just a business decision from Anthropic and a rational one at that, usage subsidization to keep people on the first party product surface is practically the oldest business move in the book and is completely valid.

This seems like pure misinformation. The code lines that are actually changed: hint: { opencode: "recommended", -anthropic: "API key", openai: "ChatGPT Plus/Pro or API key", }[x.id], They're removing the ability to use OpenCode via Anthropic API key

Is this what the legal request demanded or is this just something that OpenCode is doing out of spite? Seems unclear. To me the meat of this change is that they're removing support for `opencode-anthropic-auth` and the prompt text that allows OpenCode to mimic Claude Code behavior. They have been skirting the intent of the original C&D for awhile now with these auth plugins and prompt text.

Re: Anthropic takes legal action against OpenCode

#75
post #18

The OpenCode guys have really surprised me in the way they've reacted to Anthropic shutting down the side-loaded auth scheme. Very petty and bitter. It's clearly just a business decision from Anthropic and a rational one at that, usage subsidization to keep people on the first party product surface is practically the oldest business move in the book and is completely valid.

This is not my impression, could you explain what you're talking about?

Anthropic provides subsidized access to Claude models through Claude Code. It is well understood to be 'a loss leader' so that they can incentivize people to use Claude Code.

OpenCode lets people take the Claude-Code-only-API-Key, and lets them use it in a different harness. Anthropic's preferred way for such interaction is getting a different, Claude API key (and not Claude Code SDK API key).

---

A rough analogy might be something like getting subsidized drinks from a cafe, provided you sit there a eat food. What if someone says, go to the cafe and get free drink and come sit over at our cafe and order food. It is a loose analogy, but you get the idea.

Re: Anthropic takes legal action against OpenCode

#76
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not my impression, could you explain what you're talking about?

Ever since the shutdown of the side-load they've been pretty vocally anti-anthropic on twitter. Paranoid that anthropic is going to torpedo them via some backdoor now that they own bun, insinuating that anthropic shut down the auth from a position of weakness since OpenCode is a superior product, etc. The thing is OpenCode IS a great product, I'm not sure it's "superior", but unfortunately the way things are evolving…

The OpenCode bun dependency is an unsettling issue I would imagine.

Re: Anthropic takes legal action against OpenCode

#78
post #65
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ever since the shutdown of the side-load they've been pretty vocally anti-anthropic on twitter. Paranoid that anthropic is going to torpedo them via some backdoor now that they own bun, insinuating that anthropic shut down the auth from a position of weakness since OpenCode is a superior product, etc. The thing is OpenCode IS a great product, I'm not sure it's "superior", but unfortunately the way things are evolving…

[flagged]

On what basis are you assuming that Anthropic committed greater copyright theft than Meta, OpenAI, and Google (not to mention many lesser-known options)?

Re: Anthropic takes legal action against OpenCode

#79
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not my impression, could you explain what you're talking about?

Anthropic provides subsidized access to Claude models through Claude Code. It is well understood to be 'a loss leader' so that they can incentivize people to use Claude Code. OpenCode lets people take the Claude-Code-only-API-Key, and lets them use it in a different harness. Anthropic's preferred way for such interaction is getting a different, Claude API key (and not Claude Code SDK API key). --- A rough analogy mig…

Thank you, I understand all of this. My question was about the reference to "petty and bitter."

Re: Anthropic takes legal action against OpenCode

#80
post #16
post #8

I've said it before and I'll say it again. The people mad about this feel they are entitled to the heavily subsidized usage in any context they want, not in the context explicitly allowed by the subsidizer. It's kind of like a new restaurant started handing out coupons for "90% off", wanting to attract diners to the restaurant, customers started coming in and ordering bulk meals then immediately packaging them in tup…

This argument has been decapitated countless times already on HN. Anthropic already enforce usage limits for everyone . If those limits are higher than what they want users to actually consume, that's Anthropic's problem. This move is anti-competitive and Anthropic knows it. They're hurriedly trying to lock the gates and lay landmines behind everyone after a massive surge of new subscribers so that they're stuck usin…

> This argument has been decapitated countless times already on HN.

No it hasn't, because the argument is completely correct, and the people mad about it are mad they can't have unlimited usage instead of paying the token API prices.

> This move is anti-competitive and Anthropic knows it.

No it isn't, that's not what "anti-competitive" means, and no court in the world would label it as such. You can't go flailing around looking for legal jargon to attach to behavior just because you don't like it.

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