Anthropic takes legal action against OpenCode

mellosouls

This and threatening OpenClaw (now at OpenAI), Anthropic really on a roll making friends in Open Source. Previously discussed I think: Anthropic Explicitly Blocking OpenCode (173 points, 157 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46625918

hokkos

It's ok when Anthropic do it, like when they make deal with the army.

adampunk

Anthropic has determined that they do not want to be a provider. This has clearly paid off for them, given that owning the harness allows them to do things like sign commits, which is an extraordinarily well placed advertising scheme. Whether Claude Code can keep pace with the variety of demand remains to be seen. My guess is no and that unlike OpenAI, they are interested in suing and not buying competing harnesses. Good luck!

akmarinov

It’s like they want people to not like them …

jitl

Same thing happened with Google, but Google started actually banning user's accounts. Hopefully it doesn't come to that with Anthropic.

cedws

Under what law can Anthropic force OpenCode to do this? Surely it's not illegal to publish code that interacts with an API that's open for everyone to see?

anonym29

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 tupperware containers and taking it home (violating the spirit of the arrangement, even if not the letter of the arrangement), so the restaurant changed the terms on the discount to say "limited to in-store consumption only, not eligible for take-home meals", and instead of still being grateful that they're getting food for 90% off, the cheapskate customers are getting angry that they're no longer allowed to exploit the massive subsidy however they want. Anthropic has every right to place rules around their generous subsidization of the Claude subscription plans, which give limits of ~8-12x as many tokens as you'd get for the same expenditure in the PAYG API. That said, demanding an open source repo remove information that Anthropic openly publishes and distributes for free (the prompt) is a bit odd...

carlos-menezes

I'm sure absolutely nothing will come of Anthropic's open-source acquisitions. Totally harmless, I'm sure.

p5v

What’s next - coming after all the projects that have been coded using Claude Code, claiming they are their property?

Handy-Man

Seems fine to me. Why do people think they are entitled to use heavily subsidized services outside of the tools it's intended to work with per terms.

FloatArtifact

Maybe go third party for plugins?

extr

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.

valunord

This wouldn't be so bad if they didn't have such a sucky tui or ecosystem. AI is chef's kiss, tooling is bottom barrel.

strideashort

Can anyone explain what’s going on here? Using API is illegal? that can’t possibly be since we now know API is not even copyrighted (which personally I disagree with bit whatever)… so what is going on here?

jryio

Businesses exercise power and control in the market. The purpose of this is to set a precedent (perceived or actual) — the auth system was a product, not an API. Anthropic is drawing the line between 'built on us' and 'built around us.' I don't necessarily see this as an evil action. It doesn't inhibit open source, it sets terms of service and practice boundaries. Granted this is a wildly unpopular approach, worse has happened in the OSS world...

MyHonestOpinon

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

droidjj

It's not clear what exactly the "legal action" is based on this github link. My pure speculation is Anthropic's lawyers have come up with a liability story boiling down to OpenCode helping end users violate the Anthropic ToS (i.e. tortious interference with contract).

gwd

"Legal action" means you filed a lawsuit. This looks more like someone sent a list of requested changes, backed up by an implicit or explicit threat of legal action.

karmasimida

Just use GPT5.4, avoid the drama and it is a better model anyway

taf2

avoid bun is my take away... if anthropic decides you're a competitor and with the way AI is evolving you will be a competitor soon - don't rely on any anthropic tools or models.