What Pieter Levels thinks about open source
Dutch bootstrapper who builds and runs his internet startups alone — Nomads.com, Remote OK, Hoodmaps, Photo AI and Interior AI — and has written about it at levels.io since 2013. Posts as @levelsio.
Everything they publish, on ppll ↗
Pieter Levels did not write this page.
We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.
2 dated positions, 2026, in their own words. Our reading of what Pieter Levels has said — not written or endorsed by them.
The line under a date shows how recently it was said: empty within a month, full after three years.
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Their wordsNext in regulatory capture will be banning open source and/or Chinese models, mark my words
↗With regulatory capture we will speedrun to a new feudalist timelevels.io
- 2 months earlier
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Their wordsAll you really need today to build a business is 100% free open source software that charges you $0/mo a VPS server an API to do some required AI stuff some R2/S3 file hosting
↗All you need to build a business is free open source software a VPS an AI API and R2/S3levels.io
The line under a date fills as the words age, a quarter at a time: past a month, six months, a year, and three years. Empty means said within the last month; full, more than three years ago. It says when, not whether it still holds — a change of mind is marked on the claim itself.
Dashed means we only know the words existed by that date; they may be older.