alt Hacker News>perhaps we can come up with something like the "linux/postgres/git/http/etc" of the LLMs
I fear that this may not be feasible in the long term. The open-model free ride is not guaranteed to continue forever; some labs offer them for free for publicity after receiving millions in VC grants now, but that's not a sustainable business model. Models cost millions/billions in infrastructure to train. It's not like open-source software where people can just volunteer their time for free; here we are talking about spending real money upfront, for something that will get obsolete in months.
Current AI model "production" is more akin to an industrial endeavor than open-source arrangements we saw in the past. Until we see some breakthrough, I'm bearish on "open models will eventually save us from reliance on big companies".
"get obsolete in months"
If you mean obsolete in the sense of "no longer fit for purpose" I don't think that's true. They may become obsolete in terms of "can't do hottest new thing" but that's true of pretty much any technology. A capable local model that can do X will always be able to do X, it just may not be able to do Y. But if X is good enough to solve your problem, why is a newer better model needed?
I think if we were able to achieve ~Opus 4.6 level quality in a local model that would probably be "good enough" for a vast number of tasks. I think it's debatable whether newer models are always better - 4.7 seems to be somewhat of a regression for example.