> This is misguided. Maintenance of LLM code has a far greater cost than generating it.

I agree. I'm just observing what they're doing.

> I don't think that's even a thought. The thought is that "no one can tell me no".

I doubt there's any one thought driving things. I didn't mean to imply the existence of some grand strategy or scheme. The preference I speak of isn't of any person, it's the direction pointed at by incentives and circumstance. Companies will make decisions to steer clear of helping competitors. Separately, they signal great interest in replacing costs spent on labor with costs spent on services. See the transition to cloud. The result is the preference of a world where code is like gasoline, purchased from a handful of suppliers for metered cost.