There is absolutely nothing preventing them from hiring a firm to develop a feature in FOSS. Hell, they can even keep it proprietary if they wanted to.

Going bowling.

The crux of that article is buying into Heidegger‘a definition of a tool, specifically, “thing that lets you do something you wouldn’t otherwise have been able to.” If you disagree with that premise, the article doesn’t hold up.

Tools aren’t about letting you do something you would otherwise not have been able to do, they are simply a force multiplier for capability or efficiency. You still need knowledge and skills to do the thing.

I am not a carpenter. My knowledge and skills are near zero. This multiplied by any number is still damn near zero, and I have no idea about the culture, safety, or history of carpentry. I’m not stupid enough to jump right into using an lathe without a lot of research or someone to guide me, because I’m not a fucking moron.

People with programming knowledge and skills using AI will eventually figure out a workflow that works. Laypeople using AI to vibe code? They’re probably fucking morons. Sure, maybe even most of the time, it will be fine. But eventually, someone is going to be degloved.