But, rather that a wide Edenic expanse of communication, we seem headed toward walled gardens with gatekeepers and a need to pay money for all the usual reasons.

This seems both inevitable, and an occasion to tout the https://www.fsf.org

Eh? Where exactly is that a reality though? I just spent like 20$ last week on various Chinese frontier models using openrouter and ppq building like 10 different projects that would've cost way more than double or quadruple per token at the big 3 if I didn't have those alternative options. Hell, for small tasks I even fell back to a local 27b Qwen model.