> they would never make a model better than their proprietary models open source
Not their proprietary model, but maybe other open source models, or closed source models of their competitors. That way they can first ensure they are the only player on both sides, and then can kneecap their open source models just enough to drive the revenue to their proprietary one.
Making a model better than proprietary models is in fact making a model better than their closed source models if you believe the benchmarks.
Realistically yeah but if they drunk their own kool-aid, they'd think they have the best proprietary and open source model. So capturing both sides of the ecosystem would make sense.