Free and Open-Source Software (FOSS) is a cheat code for AI development. Thirty years of idealism couldn't get it into the mainstream, but a year of coding agents may just do it. For three decades, the open-source pitch ran like this: it's technically great, it's free forever, and you own it completely. The response from corporate IT: who do we call at 2am when payroll breaks? Nobody had a fully convincing answer. With AI, that is all changing. The Ideology Was Never the Problem The Free Softwar