A new form of vendor lock-in is here. And it’s not proprietary languages or rigid enterprise software suites — it’s something more fundamental. It’s the very thing that writes the code.
JetBrains Research found that 74% of developers worldwide use AI tools. Claude Code, available only since May 2025, is now the most popular AI coding tool, followed by Gemini Code Assist and GitHub Copilot, according to Jellyfish’s 2026 State of Engineering Management Report.
The latter study also found that 91% of developers say their productivity has increased in the past 12 months. As coding output expectations are rewritten daily, the engineering world is becoming heavily reliant on paid external AI services.
Gartner predicts that by 2028 spending on AI coding tokens could exceed developer salaries. Yet, tokenmaxxing while vibe coding through a vendor’s cloud-based API feels like a far cry from the open foundations of free programming languages and open models, which many of today’s AI platforms now abstract.
“Open infrastructure will be the backbone of the AI era,” says Peter Farkas, CEO of Percona, a provider of open-source database solutions. “Right now, too many companies are building their entire AI strategy on top of proprietary platforms because the convenience is seductive.”
