The analog you're trying to describe doesn't exist, which is Anthropic saying nobody else can make and sell an offensive model to "the guild."
Against their will.
Historically that is a major reason why guilds existed, actually.
It’s an extremely modern invention that corps have these type of power over their customers.
Here's your original claim: "no guild ever let a vendor pick and choose what their capabilities were"
A carpenter's guild can prevent other people from doing carpentry. That is not what's being discussed here.
A carpenter's guild cannot force a horseshoe maker to begin making hammers. That is what's being discussed.
Your initial claim was analogous to "never before has a horseshoe maker been able to decline making hammers when the carpenter's guild needed hammers"
Obviously they have and any other state of affairs would be flatly insane.
That would imply that guilds have always had the ability to force vendors to create and sell the tools the guilds wanted.
That would imply that carpenters' guilds could force horseshoe manufacturers to make hammers.
That is obviously not true, therefore your original claim is false.
It's not true for carpenters and hammers nor for cybersecurity researchers and LLMs.
A vendor can still do something, even if the guild wouldn’t allow them to do it, if the guild didn’t have the power to stop them.
It used to be a guild vs a blacksmith (or the blacksmiths guild). Now it’s trillion dollar corps against smaller islands of un-organized individuals.
That’s new regardless of how you try to argue it.
> "Bwahaha. You’re really reaching there."
No. Customers have never been able to compel their suppliers to make or sell certain products against their will (except in collectivist regimes or like 0.00001% of natsec related instances)