A few years ago, “open source” had a clear meaning: the code was free to use, modify, and redistribute — commercially or not. Today, we’re seeing a rise in what’s being called “Fair Code” — software that looks like open source, but comes with commercial restrictions.

As more companies adopt this model, developers are asking: What exactly is Fair Code, and is it… fair?

The Basics

A Fair Code license allows you to access, use, and modify the source code — but usually prohibits certain types of commercial use, like offering the software as a paid service or selling it as part of a product. The term was popularized by companies like n8n and Sentry who wanted a middle ground between full open source and closed proprietary software.

Unlike OSI-approved open source licenses (MIT, Apache, GPL), Fair Code licenses violate the principle of non-discrimination: they restrict how and where the software can be used — usually to protect the author’s business.

Why Fair Code Exists

The Fair Code movement is largely a response to what some call the “AWS problem” — big companies taking open source software, wrapping it in a cloud service, and profiting without giving back. Tools like ElasticSearch, MongoDB, and Terraform have changed licenses in recent years to prevent this. The creators argue: we built it, we maintain it, why should others profit without contributing?

Fair Code licenses give them leverage. The Business Source License (BSL), for example, used by MariaDB, HashiCorp, and others, blocks competing services — but often includes a time delay, after which the code becomes truly open source.

Fair Code Supporters Say…

Fair Code supporters see it as a way to fund sustainable development without going fully closed. The idea is to keep software transparent and collaborative — but ask commercial users to pay their fair share.

And for most devs? These licenses don’t matter. You can still clone the repo, self-host the tool, hack on it, and use it internally — just don’t try to turn it into a business.

Some even argue it’s more fair than permissive open source: it gives startups a way to grow without being crushed by cloud giants.

Fair Code Critics Say…

Purists argue Fair Code isn’t open source — and shouldn’t be called that. They warn it creates confusion, legal grey zones, and a slippery slope away from the open ecosystem we’ve all benefited from.

Some see it as a bait: companies build communities on open principles, but gatekeep the commercial opportunities for themselves.

There’s also the trust factor. Fair Code projects are often vendor-controlled with custom licenses. Future license changes could break your usage, and you're at the mercy of the company behind it.

Should You Use Fair Code Software?

If you’re a developer building a product: Read the license. If you're not competing with the author, you’re often fine — but don’t assume it's “just like MIT.” If the tool is business-critical, ask: What if we need to fork this? What if the company disappears?

If you’re a maintainer or startup founder: Fair Code could offer sustainability without going fully closed. But it might limit adoption or scare off contributors. If you go this route, be transparent and clear about your reasons. Some devs will understand — some won’t.

Fair = Open?

Fair Code is here to stay, whether or not the open source community likes it. For some, it’s a pragmatic response to economic realities. For others, it’s a threat to the core freedoms that built the open web.

As developers, we now need to look a little closer at the licenses behind the tools we use — and decide where we draw the line between open and fair.

New & Hot Open Source Projects 🔥

Open Source DeepWiki: An AI-powered wiki generator for GitHub/Gitlab/Bitbucket repositories. GitHub

CoRT (Chain of Recursive Thoughts): CoRT makes AI models recursively think about their responses, generate alternatives, and pick the best one. It's like giving the AI the ability to doubt itself and try again... and again... and again. GitHub

No-as-a-Service: A simple API that returns a random rejection reason. Use it when you need a realistic excuse, a fun “no,” or want to simulate being turned down in style. GitHub

Open Source News 🗞️

• Pentagon declares war on 'outdated' software buying, opens fire on open source Link

• Redis is Open Source Again. Link

• NATS custody battle ends with CNCF, Synadia sharing nicely Link

• I skip open source apps when I see this on their website Link

Until next week,

Jonathan (@jonathimer)

Robotics is on the rise and likely going be the next frontier technology after AI. Now that we have access to cheap machine intelligence, we also want to deploy this intelligence to redundant physical tasks currently done by humans - assembling cars, delivering parcels, or baking pizza.

A main driver behind the upcoming robot revolution is open source.

Open Source is a Catalyst for Robotics

Not long ago, building a robot meant starting from scratch or relying on proprietary systems. Now, thanks to open source frameworks, every builder with a laptop can leverage world-class tools and building blocks. By openly sharing everything from motor drivers to perception algorithms, developers can avoid reinventing the wheel and focus on new ideas. When one lab or hobbyist improves a navigation algorithm, the whole community can benefit almost immediately.

At the core of modern robotics is the Robot Operating System (ROS), which provides the essential software “plumbing” for robot applications. With its massive library of community-contributed code and a permissive license, ROS lets companies prototype and deploy robots faster instead of developing every component from scratch.

Equally important are tools like Gazebo simulator (for realistic robot simulation) and libraries like OpenCV (giving robots vision), which integrate seamlessly with ROS. There are also countless niche projects maintained by the community – from ROS packages for drone control to middleware like Open-RMF for coordinating multi-robot systems.

Together, these openly shared platforms form a rich ecosystem; a developer encountering a new problem can often find that someone has already shared a solution.

Lowering the Entry Barriers for Building Robots

Open platforms put advanced robotics capabilities within reach of anyone with a computer and curiosity. Because the software is free and hardware designs are low-cost or DIY-friendly, you don’t need expensive proprietary tools to build and experiment. A hobbyist can download a ready-made ROS navigation stack or laser-cut a robot chassis from open plans - without hefty fees.

This broad accessibility creates a snowball effect: When more people can participate, more ideas get tested and shared. Open source also encourages customization. Developers are free to tweak the code or hardware to fit their needs, a freedom proprietary systems often don’t allow.

Open hardware is lowering costs and improving innovation in robotics - and indeed, we’re now seeing an explosion of creative projects built on affordable open platforms. From low-cost prosthetic arms to a do-it-yourself Mars rover that anyone can build, open tech is empowering more people to push the boundaries of what robots can do.

AI + Robotics: An Open Source Synergy

Modern robotics increasingly blurs into the realm of artificial intelligence, and here too open source is the glue holding things together. The rise of machine learning in robots has been fueled by open frameworks like TensorFlow and PyTorch, which allow developers to plug advanced AI models into their robots without starting from scratch. For example, TensorFlow’s compatibility with ROS makes it straightforward to deploy a neural network alongside ROS’s control code.

Open source has also become the standard for robotics simulation and AI training. Consider OpenAI’s Gym environments, which provide free simulated challenges (controlling a robot arm, balancing a bot, etc.) that researchers use to train and test reinforcement learning algorithms. Such shared environments are critical for training and testing AI models in simulated scenarios, allowing teams to develop smart robotics software virtually before trying it on real hardware.

An Open Future for Robotics

All signs point to a future where robotics is even more open and collaborative.

Developers will be able to create highly customized robotic solutions by modifying open source algorithms to fit specific needs instead of reinventing the wheel.

When the brightest minds worldwide can freely exchange ideas and code, the possibilities for robots expand tremendously.

We may soon live in a world where robots are as ubiquitous and adaptable as smartphones – each one empowered by the collective contributions of global developers. Open source will be the foundation of this unfolding future.

New & Hot Open Source Projects 🔥

Abogen: A powerful text-to-speech conversion tool that makes it easy to turn ePub, PDF, or text files into high-quality audio with matching subtitles in seconds. Use it for audiobooks, voiceovers for Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, or any project that needs natural-sounding text-to-speech. GitHub

Kimi-Audio: An open-source audio foundation model excelling in audio understanding, generation, and conversation. GitHub

Email Sleuth: A Rust application to discover and verify professional email addresses based on contact names and company websites. GitHub

Open Source Funding Rounds 💸

• Chainguard, a platform for securing open source container images and build systems, raised $356M on a $3.5B valuation. Link

• Hopper, an open source risk management platform, raised $7.6M. Link

• Recce, a code review tool for data transformation projects and AI systems, raised $4M in funding. Link

Further Reads 🔗

• Alibaba launches new Qwen LLMs in China’s latest open-source AI breakthrough. Link

• CNCF pushs back on Synadia’s attempt to pull back NATS. Link

• Why OpenSSF's Baseline Security for OSS projects is important. Link

• Vitalik Buterin proposes replacing Ethereum’s EVM with RISC-V. Link

• Pentagon seeks open-source software for 5G, 6G networks. Link

Until next week,

Jonathan (@jonathimer)

Serena VC recently published the COSS report 2025 analyzing 25 years of venture data, tracking over 800 VC-backed commercial open source software (COSS) companies globally. The lead author of the report, Matthieu Lavergne, went out to answer a critical question:

“Is Open Source a Good Financial Decision for Founders and Investors?”

The short answer is “Yes.”

Open source companies raise their rounds faster, at higher valuations, and exit at much better valuations compared to their closed-source counterparts.

In 2024, open source proved itself as an established investment category with 211 deals and $26.4 billion in funding.

Open source companies raise their rounds more quickly and at better valuations. For instance, open source companies need 20% less time between Seed and Series A rounds, and they raise at a 1.60x higher valuation compared to closed-source companies.

While some might think these results reflect the hype around open source, the report shows that 12% of all VC-backed open source companies have reached M&A or IPO stages, demonstrating that exits in the open source space are not just achievable but a relatively likely outcome.

The most striking finding, however, is that open source companies exit at far better valuations than their closed-source counterparts. On average, open source companies are valued approximately 7.6x higher at IPO and 16x higher at M&A, based on median valuations.

My takeaway: If you are a founder and open source fits your business model, you should almost certainly pursue it. The days when a successful open source project was just a hobby are long gone—open source is now serious business. Entrepreneurs and investors who embrace the open path will be rewarded.

For more insights, check out Matthieu Lavergne’s announcement blog and the full Serena COSS Report 2025.

New & Hot Open Source Projects 🔥

pad.ws: Whiteboard as an IDE, draw and code in your browser. GitHub

Codex: Lightweight coding agent by OpenAI that runs in your terminal. GitHub

FramePack: A prediction neural network structure that generates videos progressively. Video diffusion, but feels like image diffusion. GitHub

uptime-monitor: A uptime monitoring service that is easy and cheap to run at scale. GitHub

Open Source Jobs 💼

• 🔥 Senior Software Engineer (remote) at Linux Foundation - We’re looking for a database wizard for my team at the Linux Foundation! Join us and help building out the world’s best dataset for open source.

• Open Source Development Manager (remote) at OpenZeppelin, building security products for blockchain applications and smart contracts

• Sr. Developer Advocate, ML (SF) at Databricks, an open analytics platform

Open Source Funding Rounds 💸

• Supabase, an open source Firebase alternative, raised a $200M Series D on a $2B valuation. Link

• Tailscale, a zero-config VPN, raised a $160M Series C. Link

• Tessell, a cloud DBaaS platfornm , raised a $60M Series B. Link

• LiveKit, a Voice AI platform, raised $45M. Link

Until next week,

Jonathan (@jonathimer)

DeepSeek caused an “AI Sputnik moment”

A good example for the geopolitical relevance of open source is DeepSeek, which caused an “AI Sputnik moment,” showing that big AI breakthroughs aren’t restricted to Silicon Valley. Some people even speculate that China released DeepSeek strategically to push OpenAI toward open sourcing, though that’s likely not true.

China has been embracing open source for over a decade. Most major Chinese tech companies are part of the Linux Foundation and today Chinese firms rank among the top contributors to projects like Linux and Kubernetes. Companies like Huawei, Tencent, Baidu, and Alibaba have collectively open-sourced thousands of projects and contributed code to global communities.

By participating in and creating open platforms, China reduces its dependence on US technology and mitigates the risk of sanctions or export controls. In other words, open source is seen as a way to level the playing field and ensure no single foreign player can hold China’s tech progress hostage.

Open source gives China access to global innovation while also seeding homegrown alternatives (for example, Huawei’s open-source HarmonyOS was developed to lessen reliance on Android).

The DeepSeek saga fits this pattern – it’s as much about self-reliance and pride in China’s AI capabilities as it is about competing with any one Western company.

The Tactics of Open Source

Beyond collaboration, open source is a strategic tool in the high-stakes tech arena. There are two modes to this game: “attack” and “defense.” Companies - and nations - switch between these modes depending on their market position.

Playing Attack: Open-Sourcing to Catch Up

When a competitor is leading the pack, one way to close the gap is to open source your technology – effectively enlisting the world’s developers to help improve it and drive its adoption. This “attack” mode uses openness to level the playing field. Notable examples include:

• Google & Android: Apple iOS led smartphones until Google made Android free and open source, enabling manufacturers and developers worldwide. Android quickly caught up and even overtook iOS in market share.

• Google & Kubernetes: AWS was far ahead in cloud computing, so Google released Kubernetes, its internal container orchestration system. Kubernetes became an industry standard, reducing AWS’s lock-in advantage.

• Meta & Llama: In 2023, Meta was behind OpenAI and Google in AI. By releasing Llama openly, Meta gained community support and adoption, striking at rivals’ closed approaches.

In each of these cases, a player open-sourced key technology to attack the leader. Open source lowered the barrier for partners and users, accelerated innovation through community contributions, and eroded the incumbent’s proprietary lock-in. It’s a classic “if you can’t beat them, open up” maneuver.

Playing Defense: Open-Sourcing to Stay on Top

Open source can also be used defensively. When a company leads the market, it might open source (or partially open) its tech to maintain that lead and to prevent challengers from gaining momentum. The goal in defense mode is to keep the developer community loyal and set the industry standard before an upstart does. We’re likely seeing this strategy from OpenAI right now.

After ChatGPT and GPT-4 dominated AI, OpenAI was closed-source. But as rivals like DeepSeek emerged, CEO Sam Altman announced an “open-weight” language model on X. Altman admitted before that OpenAI may have been on the “wrong side of history” regarding open source, and that it’s time to rethink that stance.

Why the change? Pressure from open source competitors. By offering a partially open model, OpenAI hopes to hold developers’ attention and remain the go-to AI platform. Rumor has it that its new model could be even more open than Meta’s Llama, which would protect OpenAI’s lead while preventing developers from migrating elsewhere (especially DeepSeek).

Open Tech, Global Stakes

From China’s DeepSeek to OpenAI’s upcoming model, open source is now embedded in tech’s grand strategy. Nations and corporations treat technology like pieces on a geopolitical chessboard.

The bottom line? Open source is about much more than code; it’s about influence and power on a worldwide stage.

New & Hot Open Source Projects 🔥

Gumroad: An e-commerce platform that allows creators to sell digital and physical products directly to their audience. Now open source! GitHub

Zola: Zola is a free, open-source AI chat app with multi-model support. GitHub

Self.so: Turn your LinkedIn profile into a personal website. Powered by Together.ai. GitHub

Unbody: Modular, open-source backend for building AI-native software - think Supabase for AI apps. GitHub

Open Source Jobs 💼

My colleagues from CNCF just launched GitJobs - go check it out! 🔥

Open Source Funding Rounds 💸

• Browser Use, which makes websites accessible for AI agents, raised $17M. Link

Next week I will skip the newsletter as I am on vacation. 🏝️

Cheers,

Jonathan (@jonathimer)

AI is changing how we build software. With AI tools like GitHub Copilot or Cursor, coding has become faster, easier, and more accessible. These tools help generate boilerplate code, suggest fixes, write documentation, and even debug. According to GitHub, developers who use AI tools like Copilot are 55% faster in completing their tasks. But this is just the beginning.

If we assume that we will achieve artificial general intelligence (AGI), meaning automated systems can perform any intellectual task better than the average human being, an interesting question emerges: what happens to open source when software can be fully written by machines?

Will AI supercharge open source communities, enabling faster, more inclusive development and empowering contributors of all backgrounds? Or will open source become irrelevant, as AI generates software on demand, bypassing the need for reusable libraries and human collaboration?

I've been discussing this question a couple of times lately - with founders, developers, and investors. In this thought experiment, I describe two opposing scenarios I can imagine.

The Bear Case: AI Undermines Open Source

In the pessimistic scenario, AI - or better AGI - diminishes the role and relevance of open source communities.

As AI becomes capable of generating production-grade code on demand, developers no longer turn to shared libraries or community-maintained packages. Instead, they prompt an AI to generate a tailored solution instantly. Why contribute to a shared tool when you can generate a custom one in seconds?

Open source contributions decrease. Newcomers skip the learning process of reading and writing code, opting instead to interact with AI. Seasoned developers shift away from community work, experimenting with private AI agents instead. Community energy fades.

AI-generated code floods open source projects - poorly vetted, license-ambiguous, and insecure. Maintainers struggle to keep up. Reviewing machine-generated pull requests becomes a chore. Legal uncertainty grows. Is this AI-written code violating a license? Can we even verify where it came from?

Trust collapses. Some projects try to ban AI-generated contributions altogether, while others struggle to define policies. A handful of high-profile legal disputes or security breaches cause organizations to retreat from relying on open source.

Meanwhile, the best AI tools are locked behind proprietary APIs. AGI is controlled by a few major corporations. Open source developers no longer have access to the most powerful tools. Innovation consolidates in closed ecosystems.

The balance of power shifts. Open source no longer drives progress - it trails behind. Communities fracture or disappear. The ethos of sharing gives way to convenience and efficiency. Open source doesn’t vanish entirely, but it becomes niche - relevant in specific domains, no longer a mainstream force.

The Bull Case: AI Supercharges Open Source

In the optimistic scenario, AI becomes the biggest amplifier of the open source movement.

AI automates the tedious tasks: triaging bug reports, writing unit tests, updating dependencies, and refactoring code. Human contributors can now focus on architecture, innovation, and collaboration. Maintainers find their load lighter - AI assistants propose changes, summarize issues, and write documentation drafts. These intelligent agents don’t replace people; they enable them to do more impactful work.

Barriers to entry shrink dramatically. New developers can contribute confidently with AI guidance. Non-coders like scientists or designers can co-create with developers using natural language. Suddenly, anyone with an idea and an internet connection can meaningfully contribute to an open source project.

Open source becomes more diverse, more inclusive, and more productive. Contributor pools expand. Burnout drops. Innovation accelerates.

AGI, if open-sourced or governed collaboratively, levels the playing field. Every developer, team, or project - regardless of budget - can access top-tier development intelligence. Community-driven AGI projects become a reality. Developers build not just with AI but alongside AI, treating it as a collaborator in open ecosystems.

The nature of contribution evolves. We see new roles emerge: AI trainers, prompt engineers, and ethical reviewers. AI-generated contributions are flagged, reviewed, and curated like any other. Communities develop norms to guide quality and transparency.

Open source projects thrive as a result. Governments adopt open tools with confidence. Enterprises invest in community-driven alternatives. High-quality open source software powers health care, climate tech, education, and AI itself.

Open source enters a new golden age - one where human creativity, global collaboration, and machine intelligence push the boundaries of technology forward.

The Future Is Not Set

AI presents both a threat and an opportunity for open source.

The direction we take depends on the choices we make now: about access, governance, education, and community standards. AI could either deepen open collaboration or completely centralize software creation.

Naturally, I’m an optimist, and strongly believe in the resilience and power of open source. I think we already see indicators that the future could look more like my bull case:

• Productivity is increasing: AI tools have demonstrably increased the productivity of open source projects by 6.5%, with individual efficiency rising by 5.5% and participation by 5.4%. [arXiv]

• Barriers to entry are being lowered: According to Stack Overflow, 76% of developers are using AI tools, indicating a trend towards more accessible development processes. ​Additionally, millions of new developers are currently getting onboarded through tools like Lovable.

• AI is getting commoditized: Open source is leading the way in AI, and we can witness intelligence becoming more accessible by the day. See my post about “The State of Open Source LLMs”.

It’s important to remember that the future isn’t set.

We have to build it.

And if we get it right, open source and AI together could unlock a new era of abundance.

New & Hot Open Source Projects 🔥

WhatsApp MCP Server: A Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for WhatsApp. Search you personal Whatsapp messages, search your contacts and send messages to either individuals or groups. GitHub

No Ghibli Chrome Extension: Tired of Ghibli style posts? This simple Chrome extension helps you identify and filter out Studio Ghibli-related content from X. GitHub

II-Researcher: A powerful deep search agent that uses BAML functions to perform intelligent web searches and generate comprehensive answers to questions. GitHub

Open Source Jobs 💼

• 🔥 Senior Software Engineer (remote) at Linux Foundation - This position is in my team! Join us and help building out the world’s best dataset for open source.

• Developer Relations (Berlin/Freiburg, Germany) at Prior Labs, a startup building foundational models for data scientists - see 9 more open roles at Prior Labs

• Product Manager, IRM (Remote, Sweden) at Grafana Labs, an open observability platform - see many more open roles at Grafana

Open Source Funding Rounds 💸

• Wundergraph, an open source GraphQL federation, raised $7.5M from eBay and others. Link

Until next week,

Jonathan (@jonathimer)

It’s been a few months since my last newsletter. Life and my job at the Linux Foundation kept me busy, but I have set myself the goal of writing weekly again from now on.

I’m also using this relaunch to change a few things: Besides the fresh branding, I switched my newsletter platform from Beehiiv to Substack. I also decided to make the content more personal and do more deep dives into open source topics that I’m interested in. I will still be featuring open source alternatives, announcing funding rounds or interesting jobs in the open source sector, but more as a side note.

I've cleaned up the subscriber list and only left people on it who have opened my emails regularly, as I don't want to spam anyone.

That said, I'm very excited to kick this off again. There is so much exciting stuff happening in open source, and I'm looking forward to keep learning about it with you!

The State of Open Source LLMs

Open source large language models (LLMs) have evolved from niche academic projects into robust, community-driven platforms that challenge proprietary giants like Microsoft or Google. Today, open source LLMs not only promote transparency and collaboration, but they also enable a more cost-effective and adaptable approach to AI development.

A New Era of Commoditized AI

The open source movement in AI has grown exponentially over the past few years. Instead of relying solely on expensive, closed models from major tech companies, developers and researchers worldwide can now access, modify, and improve upon state-of-the-art LLMs. This commoditization is critical for ensuring that AI is accessible to everyone, from indie hackers over startups to academic institutions.

Recent developments have shown the potential of open source LLMs. For example, Chinese DeepSeek’s R1 model has gained world-wide attention for matching the performance of leading models like OpenAI’s o1 - while being trained at a fraction of the cost and computational power. DeepSeek’s use of reinforcement learning and a mixture-of-experts architecture enables it to activate only a subset of its 671 billion parameters per query, thereby reducing energy consumption and hardware requirements.

Benefits and Challenges for Open Source LLMs

Open source LLMs offer several compelling benefits:

1. Transparency and Trust: With publicly available training data, source code, and model weights, open source LLMs allow for thorough scrutiny, making them less of a “black box” compared to proprietary counterparts. This transparency leads to community trust and collaborative troubleshooting.

2. Low Costs: Open source models lower the barrier to entry. The cost efficiency of open source is particularly beneficial for academic institutions and start-ups with limited resources - in other words: it promotes innovation.

3. Customization and Flexibility: Open access means that developers can fine-tune models for niche applications, integrating domain-specific knowledge or even adapting models for local languages—a key consideration for initiatives like OpenEuroLLM, which seeks to serve Europe’s linguistic diversity.

However, challenges remain. Open source LLMs can be vulnerable to adversarial attacks, and the quality of available training data may vary. Moreover, while open models promote innovation, they also raise questions about responsible usage, as powerful AI tools in the wrong hands could lead to misuse. Balancing openness with safety is an ongoing conversation within the community that we need to take seriously.

Key Open Source LLMs You Should Know About

Below is a snapshot of the current open source landscape according to the Hugging Face Open LLM Leaderboard.

The following open source LLMs stand out to me, because they get mixed and matched a lot by the broader AI community:

Llama 3.1 (Meta): The Meta’s Llama 3.1 series - from smaller models up to a massive 405B-parameter version - consistently ranks high on general text generation, multilingual processing, and coding tasks.

Mistral Large 2 (Mistral AI): With a powerful 123B-parameter architecture and an impressive context window (up to 128K tokens), Mistral Large 2 excels in both language understanding and coding tasks. Its sparse mixture-of-experts design optimizes performance while reducing inference costs, making it a leader in efficiency and scalability.

DeepSeek R1 (DeepSeek): DeepSeek’s R1 model leverages reinforcement learning and a mixture-of-experts approach to deliver competitive reasoning, mathematics, and coding capabilities. Although DeepSeek allegedly uses less sophisticated hardware compared to its Western competitors (there is a US export ban on China for Nvidia GPUs), it achieves high performance at a fraction of the training cost. A fact that has led to lots of discussions - even in mainstream media.

DeepSeek v3 (DeepSeek): Building on the R1 series, DeepSeek v3 leverages a 671B-parameter Mixture-of-Experts architecture—with 37B activated parameters per token—to deliver impressive efficiency in general text generation, multilingual processing, and coding tasks.

Qwen 2.5 (Alibaba): Alibaba’s Qwen 2.5 has made waves with its strong multilingual capabilities, specialized performance in coding and mathematical reasoning, and efficient deployment strategies. Its open-source components are released under the Apache 2.0 license.

Falcon-180B (Technology Innovation Institute): The Falcon-180B model is a testament to the capabilities of large-scale open source LLMs. Trained on over 3.5 trillion tokens, it provides top-tier performance on a variety of benchmarks, making it one of the most competitive open source alternatives available.

An Outlook

As investments in open source AI continue to rise, industry players like Meta and community initiatives across Europe and beyond are doubling down on the potential of collaborative AI development. With companies releasing their models under permissive licenses and sharing extensive technical details and benchmarks, the LLM ecosystem is set for rapid disruption.

Most experts believe that the future of AI will be built on the foundation of open source, where shared knowledge accelerates innovation and leads to more equitable technological advances.

I think this future has just begun.

New & Hot Open Source Projects 🔥

Second Me: An open source prototype where you craft your own “AI self”: a new AI species that preserves you, delivers your context, and defends your interests. GitHub

Cursor Talk to Figma MCP: A Model Context Protocol (MCP) allowing Cursor to communicate with Figma for reading designs and modifying them programmatically. GitHub

Classless.css: A lightweight CSS framework for websites with impeccable taste but zero desire to add classes. GitHub

Open Source Funding Rounds 💸

• Supabase, an open source Google Firebase alternative, raised $100M at a $2B valuation. Link

• AheadComputing, a player from the RISC-V ecosystem, announced their $21.5M Seed. Link

• Rerun, creators of a framework for logging and visualizing multimodal data, raised a $17M Seed led by PointNine. Link

• Onyx, an open source enterprise search solution, raised a $10M Seed co-led by Khosla Ventures and First Round Capital. Link

• Lingo.dev, creators of an open source localization toolkit, raised $4.2M. Link

Until next week,

Jonathan (@jonathimer)

Today, we talk about:

• Hoppscotch, open source API development

• New project to format date ranges, scrape the web, and read feeds in your command line

• Open vacancies at Airbyte, Bitwarden, and ScyllaDB

Since last week, we welcomed 37 new Open Pioneers. 👋

🔍 Project spotlight

Hoppscotch, open source API development

Hoppscotch is a powerful, open-source API development tool that's rapidly gaining traction among developers worldwide. Designed to simplify the process of testing and documenting APIs, Hoppscotch offers an intuitive interface that rivals, and even surpasses, many proprietary alternatives. It stands as a compelling alternative to tools like Postman, offering similar core functionalities but with the added benefits of being open-source and lightweight.

At its core, Hoppscotch allows developers to easily create, test, and share API requests. It supports REST, WebSocket, GraphQL, and Socket.IO, making it versatile enough to handle a wide range of API architectures. Some of its standout features include real-time API testing, customizable request collections, environment variables, and the ability to visualize API responses in multiple formats, such as JSON, XML, and HTML. The platform also provides robust support for authentication mechanisms like OAuth, JWT, and basic auth, ensuring secure API interactions.

The project was initially created by Liyas Thomas in 2019 as a simple alternative to Postman, motivated by the need for a fast, web-based API request tool that didn't require heavy installation or setup. What started as a small side project quickly grew into a thriving open-source initiative, attracting contributions from developers around the globe. The community-centric nature of Hoppscotch has allowed it to evolve rapidly, with new features and improvements being added regularly based on user feedback.

The project's growth has been impressive. Since its inception, Hoppscotch has gained a large and active user base, with 60k+ stars on GitHub. By providing a free and open platform that rivals the capabilities of its proprietary counterparts, Hoppscotch is democratizing API development, making it more accessible to developers of all skill levels.

Learn more about Hoppscotch: Website | GitHub

🔥 New projects started last week

Format date ranges, scrape the web, and read feeds in your command line

little-date

A friendly formatter to make date ranges small & sweet.

github.com/vercel/little-date

CyberScraper 2077

A Powerful web scraper powered by LLMs.

github.com/itsOwen/CyberScraper-2077

cleed

Simple feed reader for the command line.

github.com/radulucut/cleed

💼 Open source jobs

Work for Airbyte, Bitwarden, and ScyllaDB

• Software Engineer, Distributed Systems (SF) at Airbyte Apply

• Senior Front-End Engineer (Remote) at Bitwarden Apply

• Core Product Manager at ScyllaDB Apply

If you’d like your job postings to be listed, fill out this form (100% free).

🔭 Open source social monitor

Switzerland is the first open source nation

Powered by Octolens, AI-powered social listening. Easily monitor keyword mentions on platforms like X, Reddit, DEV, HackerNews or LinkedIn.

Use coupon OPENPIONEERS to get your first month for free.

Switzerland is the first open source nation. Yes, really. Apparently my video is good because it's the best performer I've had all year somehow?

— Theo - t3.gg (@t3dotgg)
1:23 AM • Aug 21, 2024

📚 More open source content

What I enjoyed reading last week

• CockroachDB scuttles away from open source Core offering Link

• Linux Foundation Backs Open Source LLM Initiative Link

• Open source biz promises to slash bills with observability-as-a-service in the cloud Link

• PostgreSQL in line for DuckDB-shaped boost in analytics arena Link

• Open source tools to boost your productivity Link

• Grafana Labs raises $270M Link

Until next week,

Jonathan (@jonathimer)

In partnership with

Welcome to Open Pioneers #30 - your weekly update from the forefront of open source.

Today, we talk about:

• Supabase, an open source alternative to Firebase

• New projects including an AI scientist, a cross-device data storage, and a dynamic website CMS without database

• Open vacancies at Mend.io, Vercel, dbt Labs, and n8n

Since last week, we welcomed 19 new Open Pioneers. 👋

What best describes your professional role?

• Software developer

• Founder

• Student

• Investor

• Marketing/Sales

• Product management

• Other

Login or Subscribe to participate in polls.

🔍 Project spotlight

Supabase, the open source alternative to Firebase

Supabase is an open-source platform that offers a complete backend solution for developers, enabling them to build applications quickly and efficiently. It has been dubbed the "open-source Firebase alternative," thanks to its extensive feature set that mirrors many of Firebase's offerings while prioritizing transparency, flexibility, and community collaboration.

Core Features

At its core, Supabase provides a suite of tools that developers need to build robust applications. The platform includes a real-time database, authentication, storage, and auto-generated APIs, all integrated and ready to use with minimal setup. The backbone of Supabase is PostgreSQL, which powers the database and allows for advanced features like row-level security, full-text search, and foreign keys—features that are often missing in other backend-as-a-service (BaaS) platforms.

The real-time capabilities of Supabase are particularly noteworthy. With its built-in WebSocket support, any changes made to the database are instantly synchronized across clients, making it an excellent choice for real-time applications such as chat apps, collaborative tools, and live dashboards.

Supabase offers a wide range of login methods, including email, social logins (like Google and GitHub), and even magic links.

An Alternative to Firebase

Supabase directly competes with Firebase, Google's popular backend service, by providing similar services without locking developers into a proprietary ecosystem. Unlike Firebase, Supabase is open-source, meaning that developers have full access to the source code and can customize, extend, or even self-host the service. This open nature not only offers more control and transparency but also alleviates concerns over vendor lock-in—a significant advantage for teams that require long-term stability and independence.

The Story behind Supabase

Supabase was founded in 2020 by Paul Copplestone and Ant Wilson, who were motivated by the lack of open-source alternatives to Firebase. The duo set out to create a developer-friendly backend that could be both powerful and easy to use, all while maintaining the openness and community-driven ethos of open-source software.

Since its inception, Supabase has seen rapid growth and adoption. The project quickly gained traction in the developer community, thanks to its robust features, ease of use, and the trust that comes from being an open-source platform. The company has raised significant venture capital to accelerate development, and its active community continues to contribute to its rapid improvement and expansion. Today, Supabase is used by thousands of developers and companies around the world, solidifying its place as a leading alternative in the BaaS space.

Supabase's success is a testament to the growing demand for open-source software that doesn't compromise on features or usability. As it continues to evolve, Supabase is not just an alternative to Firebase—it's a compelling option for any developer looking to build scalable, real-time applications with the full power of open-source technology behind them.

Learn more about Supabase: Website | GitHub | X

🔥 New projects started last week

An AI scientist, a cross-device data storage, and a dynamic website CMS without database

AI-Scientist

The AI Scientist: Towards Fully Automated Open-Ended Scientific Discovery 🧑‍🔬 

github.com/SakanaAI/AI-Scientist

timelinize

Store your data from all your accounts and devices in a single cohesive timeline on your own computer.

github.com/timelinize/timelinize

GitBase

Github Based Simple Website Framework.

github.com/qiayue/GitBase

💼 Open source jobs

Work for Mend.io, Vercel, dbt Labs, and n8n

• Senior Algorithm Developer (Germany) at Mend.io Apply

• Senior Customer Success Engineer (Remote, Australia/Japan) at Vercel Apply

• Account Manager (Austin) at dbt Labs Apply

• Head of Support Engineering (Remote, Europe) at n8n Apply

If you’d like your job postings to be listed, fill out this form (100% free).

🔭 Open source social monitor

Building a simple calendar app with Claude

Powered by Octolens, AI-powered social listening. Easily monitor keyword mentions on platforms like X, Reddit, DEV, HackerNews or LinkedIn.

Use coupon OPENPIONEERS to get your first month for free.

Here's the open source version of  'artifacts' from claude i built yesterday

Super fun model to hack with

managed to get it to build a basic google calendar clone

— Sully (@SullyOmarr)
9:58 PM • Jun 23, 2024

📚 More open source content

What I enjoyed reading last week

• Open Source AI Model Accurately Predicted Olive Oil Prices Link

• Open-source projects shaping the future of EV charging Link

• Meta: DCPerf - An open source benchmark suite for hyperscale compute applications Link

Until next week,

Jonathan (@jonathimer)

Want SOC 2 compliance without the Security Theater?

• Get the all-in-one platform for SOC 2

• Build real-world security 💪

• Penetration testing, compliance software, 3rd party audit, & vCISO

Schedule a demo for pricing!

Today, we talk about:

• Docmost, open source Notion

• New projects including an open source Perplexity and an email delivery service

• Open vacancies at Neon, TikTok, or Mirantis

• The pain of maintaining an open source project

Since last week, we welcomed 26 new Open Pioneers. 👋

🔍 Project spotlight

Docmost, open source Notion

Docmost is an open source alternative to Notion and other wiki software. The platform is designed to simplify the process of documenting and sharing information within teams. It provides a user-friendly interface for creating, managing, and collaborating on various types of documents, from simple notes to complex reports.

One of the key features of Docmost is its collaborative tools, which allow multiple users to work on the same document simultaneously. This real-time collaboration ensures that everyone on the team is always up-to-date with the latest changes and additions. Additionally, Docmost supports version control, so users can track changes over time and revert to previous versions if necessary.

Docmost also places a strong emphasis on security and accessibility. It offers robust permission settings, enabling administrators to control who can view, edit, or share documents. The platform is designed to be accessible from various devices, including smartphones and tablets, allowing team members to access important documents from anywhere.

Docmost launched a couple of weeks ago but already accumulated over 3k Github stars.

Learn more about Docmost: Website | GitHub | X

🔥 New projects started last week

Open source Perplexity & Email Delivery Service

SearchGPT

SearchGPT / Perplexity clone, but personalised for you.

github.com/supermemoryai/opensearch-ai

Ferdinand

Open-source email delivery service for developers.

github.com/valyentdev/ferdinand

💼 Open source jobs

Work for Neon, TikTok, or Mirantis

• Site Reliability Engineer, Azure (Remote) at Neon Apply

• Open Source Counsel (Los Angeles, US) at TikTok Apply

• Open Source Engineering Leader (Remote) at Mirantis Apply

If you’d like your job postings to be listed, fill out this form (100% free).+

🔭 Open source social monitor

The pain of maintaining an open source project

Powered by Octolens, AI-powered social listening. Easily monitor keyword mentions on platforms like X, Reddit, DEV, HackerNews or LinkedIn.

Use coupon OPENPIONEERS to get your first month for free.

The pain of maintaining an open source project 😢

— Mario Fusco (@mariofusco)
7:18 PM • May 20, 2024

📚 More open source content

What I enjoyed reading last week

• Telegram’s Founder Plans to ‘Open Source His DNA’ Link

• Is open source a tragedy of the commons? It's complicated Link

• Open Source or Closed? The AI Dilemma Link

• NVIDIA Transitions Fully Towards Open-Source GPU Kernel Modules Link

Until next week,

Jonathan (@jonathimer)

10,000 people are reading this newsletter every week.

You don’t have to be an experienced writer to start a newsletter. I definitely wasn’t. But running a weekly newsletter is one of the fastest ways to become better at writing and build an audience.

Beehiiv is the best platform for sending newsletters.

Affiliate link: If you end up choosing Beehiiv to start your newsletter, you will support Open Pioneers with a small commission.

Today, we talk about:

• The story behind Documenso, open source document signing

• New projects including a stack to easily deploy apps on Cloudflare and a tool to chat with your photo gallery

• Open vacancies at Cal.com, Canonical, Mozilla, or Mend.io

• LLama 3.1: Open Source AI is catching up on Closed Source AI

Since last week, we welcomed 31 new Open Pioneers. 👋

🎙️ Founder interview

The story behind Documenso, open source document signing

Today we interview Timur Ercan, co-founder of Documenso.

What is Documenso, and what problem is it solving? 

Documenso is the world’s open signing framework. It’s the idea of daring to build signing once and for all for all humanity, making it just as available as all open web tech. Since signing is such a core process of every business worldwide, no one should have to decide between using a non-ideal provider or building it from scratch ever again. By building Documenso open source, we want everyone to get the perfect solution for their signing needs, whether self-hosted, hosted by us, or hybrid integration. It also means we listen to the community by design, orienting everything about Documenso on the needs of users and customers, which is sadly not the default in the space.

Documenso is signing as it should have been: Tech-first, Community-Driven, Open Infrastructure that feels amazing.

How did you come to start Documenso?

Ten years ago, when starting my first company, we had to purchase an SSL certificate. At the time, there was no Let’s Encrypt or ready-to-go providers like Vercel. We ended up paying a few hundred dollars for a two-year certificate purchased in one of the worst webshops I had ever seen. What kept bothering me was that we paid for a random number anyone could have generated. Regulation and technical moats allowed the players at the time to do this. SSL Certificates are still sold today, but with Let’s Encrypt providing free certificates to 363M websites, it’s a much more niche market. Having paid that money for what I consider the basic infrastructure of the web that should be open and free bothers me to this day.

When I looked into different spaces for my latest venture, I realized that document signing today is where SSL was ten years ago. Big player dominating the scene, with DocuSign being the biggest (70% market share) by far and producing the most frustration. For me, that's just wrong. Fundamental global tech should be open. Imagine a world where we only had proprietary web tech like Windows Server. The web, as we know it today, would not exist. Also, I have always been intrigued by encryption-powered technologies, since they tend to turn out to be highly socially relevant.

If you could travel back in time, what would you do differently in building Documenso? What are your most surprising learnings as an open source founder?

Since Documenso developed very naturally, there is little I would or could do differently. Launching 0.9, meeting my Co-Founder Lucas through an online code roasting of Documenso, and raising our first money all worked out great. What I unironically would do differently, looking back, is start Documenso even earlier and play even more on the grassroots movement aspect.

What still surprises me today is how much "launch early" holds true. I've never seen so much benefit from doing this as in Documenso. Launching/publishing never brings the downsides you might expect, but there is much more upside than you expect. So, launch early.

Who are 3 open source companies you look up to?

I'm a big fan of Cal.com and its founders, Peer and Bailey. Peer supported this idea long before I spoke the word Documenso for the first time, and was the first angel we had. His view on open-source companies significantly shaped my thinking about what Documenso could and should be.

Supabase is an incredible company. They have a unique way of making their mission "the place to be", which has always intrigued me. But while playing the cool kids online, they have been hyper-focused on building what I consider the best product possible for their domain, progress SQL. 

Not exactly a company, but I am in awe of what Let's Encrypt is doing for the Web. They provide SSL certificates for hundreds of millions of websites, which are automated and free. Many need to realize how core to the internet as we know it they are—actual public infrastructure, which is a big inspiration.

Learn more about Documenso: Website | GitHub | X | Discord

🔥 New projects started last week

Deploy full-stack apps on Cloudflare, Chat with your gallery

Cloudflare SaaS Stack

Quickly make and deploy full-stack apps on Cloudflare with database, auth, styling, storage etc. figured out for you.

github.com/Dhravya/cloudflare-saas-stack

Album AI

AI-First Album: Chat with your gallery using plain language! LLM Vision + RAG + Album/Gallery/.

github.com/gcui-art/album-ai

💼 Open source jobs

Work for Cal.com, Canonical, Mozilla, or Mend.io

• Senior Full-Stack Engineer, Platform (Remote) at Cal.com Apply 

• Linux Kernel Engineer (Remote) at Canonical Apply

• Director of UX Design, Mobile & Ecosystem (Remote, Canada) at Mozilla Apply

• Code Analysis Algorithms Developer (Kraków, Poland) at Mend.io Apply

If you’d like your job postings to be listed, fill out this form (100% free).

🔭 Open source social monitor

LLama 3.1: Open Source AI is catching up

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Use coupon OPENPIONEERS to get your first month for free.

I made the closed-source vs. open-weight models figure for this moment.

— Maxime Labonne @ ICML (@maximelabonne)
7:12 AM • Jul 24, 2024

📚 More open source content

What I enjoyed reading last week

• Mark Zuckerberg: Open Source AI Is the Path Forward Link

• Switzerland now requires all government software to be open source Link

• How to maintain code for a century: Just add Rust Link

• Netflix Open-Sources its Secret Sauce to Meet The Demands Of its Platform Link

Until next week,

Jonathan (@jonathimer)

10,000 people are reading this newsletter every week.

You don’t have to be an experienced writer to start a newsletter. I definitely wasn’t. But running a weekly newsletter is one of the fastest ways to become better at writing and build an audience.

Beehiiv is the best platform for sending newsletters.

Affiliate link: If you end up choosing Beehiiv to start your newsletter, you will support Open Pioneers with a small commission.

Today, we talk about:

• Flagsmith, open source feature flags

• New projects including an app store, an open source version of AI artifacts, and a tool to turn websites into PDFs

• Open vacancies at Wikimedia, Databricks, GitLab, and Onehouse

• OSS Pledge

Since last week, we welcomed 67 new Open Pioneers. 👋

🔍 Project spotlight

Flagsmith, open source feature flags

Flagsmith is an open source platform designed to manage feature flags and remote configurations. It helps software development teams control the deployment of new features in their applications more effectively.

Using Flagsmith, developers can turn features on or off without needing to redeploy code. This capability is especially useful for testing new features with specific user segments, performing A/B testing, and gradually rolling out new updates to avoid widespread issues. Flagsmith's flexibility allows features to be enabled or disabled for different environments, such as development, staging, and production.

Additionally, Flagsmith offers integration with various programming languages and frameworks, making it a versatile tool for diverse development environments.

I talked to Ben Rometsch, Founder & CEO of Flagsmith, about a year ago and he shared the platform's evolution from a side project within his software agency to a profitable standalone business. Flagsmith is fully bootstrapped, generating over $1M in annual recurring revenue from notable clients like Citi Bank and United Health Group. The decision to bootstrap was motivated by a desire for control and early profitability, with their software agency providing financial flexibility. Their go-to-market strategy focused on inbound leads and identifying their ideal customer profile, allowing them to align their product with customer needs.

Website | GitHub | X

🔥 New projects started last week

App stores, AI artifacts, and websites as PDFs

Asspp

The App Store for your multi-account eco system.

github.com/Lakr233/Asspp

ai-artifacts

Hackable open-source version of Anthropic's AI Artifacts chat by e2b-dev.

github.com/e2b-dev/ai-artifacts

site2pdf

Generate comprehensive PDFs of entire websites, ideal for RAG.

github.com/laiso/site2pdf

💼 Open source jobs

Open vacancies at Wikimedia, Databricks, GitLab, and Onehouse

• Software Engineer, Trust and Safety Product (Remote) at Wikimedia Foundation Apply

• Senior Staff Software Engineer, Jobs and Workflows (Berlin) at Databricks Apply

• Director, Solutions Architects - EMEA (Remote, Europe) at GitLab Apply

• Senior Software Engineer, Open Source (Sunnyvale CA, US) at Onehouse Apply

If you’d like your job postings to be listed, fill out this form (100% free).

🔭 Open source social monitor

Introducing OSS Pledge

Powered by Octolens, AI-powered social listening. Easily monitor keyword mentions on platforms like X, Reddit, DEV, HackerNews or LinkedIn.

Why yes, we do have a one-pager about osspledge.com for convenient circulation via email. Download it at osspledge.com/OSS%20Pledge.p….

— Chad Whitacre (@chadwhitacre_)
8:27 PM • Jul 16, 2024

📚 More open source content

What I read last week

• The graying open source community needs fresh blood Link

• Google backs Indian open source Uber rival Link

• Breaking down the walled garden of open source Link

• Generative AI: Fuelling the Adoption of Asset Tokenization Link

• SAP's bid to woo open source community meets muted response Link

Until next week,

Jonathan (@jonathimer)

Million dollar AI strategies packed in this free 3 hour AI Masterclass – designed for founders & professionals. Act fast because It’s free only for the first 100.

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Today, we talk about:

• 6 ways open source companies make money

• Active Pieces, an open source alternative to Zapier

• New projects including portrait animation, an API to ingest them all, a healthcare system, and Mongo on Postgres

• Open vacancies at Supabase, Mozilla, Orkes, Wundergraph, Daytona, and Grit

Since last week, we have welcomed 62 new Open Pioneers. 👋 If you like this week's post, it would make my day if you would share it with a friend or colleague.

🤔 6 ways open source companies make money

Open source software has revolutionized the tech industry by providing free, accessible tools for developers and businesses. However, you might be wondering how companies (and developers) actually make money with something that is freely available. Here are 6 ways to make money with an open source projects.

1. Donations

Many open source projects rely on the goodwill of their users for financial support. Platforms like Patreon, Open Collective, and GitHub Sponsors allow individuals and organizations to contribute financially to the development and maintenance of open source software. While donations can be a significant source of income for some projects, they are often unpredictable and may not provide a stable revenue stream.

2. Hosted Services

One popular way open source companies monetize is by offering a hosted version of their software. While the software itself remains free and open source, the company charges users for the convenience of a managed service. This model is particularly prevalent with complex software that requires significant setup and maintenance, such as databases, content management systems, and development tools. Examples include Red Hat’s OpenShift or Cal’s scheduling app.

3. Paid Support and Courses

Another revenue stream for open source companies is providing paid support and training services. Companies can offer technical support, troubleshooting, and consulting to businesses that use their software. Additionally, they can create and sell educational content, such as online courses, tutorials, and certifications, to help users better understand and utilize their software. This model ensures users have access to expert help while generating revenue for the company.

4. Open Core

The open core model involves offering a basic version of the software for free while charging for additional features, plugins, or services. This approach allows companies to maintain a strong community around the free version while monetizing the more advanced or enterprise-level functionalities. Examples of companies using the open core model include Grafana, Rancher, or Confluent (Apache Kafka).

5. Dual Licensing

Dual licensing allows companies to offer their software under two different licenses: one open source and one commercial. The open source license permits free use under certain conditions, while the commercial license is required for proprietary or commercial use. This model enables companies to benefit from community contributions and widespread adoption while generating revenue from businesses that need a commercial license. MariaDB and SugarCRM are well-known examples for using dual licensing.

6. Selling Related Products

Some open source companies create and sell complementary proprietary products or services. These can include hardware, proprietary software, or additional services that enhance the functionality of the open source project. This model allows companies to leverage their expertise in the open source space while diversifying their revenue streams. For example, Automattic (WordPress) offers premium themes, plugins, and hosting services.

🔍 Project spotlight

Active Pieces, an open source Zapier alternative

Active Pieces is an open source platform designed to make automation accessible for businesses and developers. It enables users to create workflows and integrations between various applications and services without needing extensive programming knowledge. Inspired by tools like Zapier and Integromat, Active Pieces aims to be more user-friendly and customizable due to its open source nature.

The platform offers a visual interface where users can create workflows by connecting different components through a drag-and-drop system. It supports a wide range of integrations with popular services and applications, allowing for automation across various domains. The open source aspect of Active Pieces allows users to inspect, modify, and extend the code, fostering transparency and customization.

Active Pieces was developed to address the limitations and high costs associated with proprietary automation tools. The creators wanted to democratize automation by providing an open source alternative that is accessible to smaller businesses and individual developers. This approach emphasizes flexibility and control, enabling users to build custom solutions tailored to their specific needs.

So far, over 40,000 teams are using Active Pieces and over 8,500 developers stared the project on GitHub.

Website | GitHub | Discord

🔥 New projects started last week

Portrait animation, an API to ingest them all, a healthcare system, and Mongo on Postgres

LivePortrait

Bring portraits to life! Efficient Portrait Animation with Stitching and Retargeting Control.

github.com/KwaiVGI/LivePortrait

omniparse

Ingest, parse, and optimize any data format ➡️ from documents to multimedia ➡️ for enhanced compatibility with GenAI frameworks.

github.com/adithya-s-k/omniparse

healthcare

Build a healthcare platform that streamlines patient registration, appointment scheduling, and medical records, and learn to implement complex forms and SMS notifications.

github.com/adrianhajdin/healthcare

Pongo

Mongo but on Postgres and with strong consistency benefits.

github.com/event-driven-io/Pongo

💼 Open source jobs

Open vacancies at Supabase, Mozilla, and more

As many of you have asked for it, I have decided to bring back this section. From now on, you will find a selection of open vacancies at hot open source companies in Open Pioneers.

• Auth Engineer (Remote, Worldwide) at Supabase Apply

• Senior Staff ML Engineer, Gen AI (Remote, US/Canada) at Mozilla Corporation Apply

• Sr Developer Community Manager (Remote, US) at Orkes Apply

• Senior DevOps Engineer (Remote, EMEA) at Wundergraph Apply

• Product Lead (Remote, preferably NYC or Croatia) at Daytona Apply

• Software Engineer (On-site, SF) at Grit Apply

If you’d like your job postings to be listed, fill out this form (100% free).

🔭 Open source social monitor

To all the ladies in open source

Powered by Octolens, AI-powered social listening. Easily monitor keyword mentions on platforms like X, Reddit, DEV, HackerNews or LinkedIn.

If I organized a (virtual) women in open source meetup, would anyone be interested in attending?

— BekahHW (@BekahHW)
8:55 PM • Jul 8, 2024

📚 More open source content

What I read last week

• From doubt to trust: The journey of Cameroonian software developers in open source Link

• The Python Linter Ruff Is a Win for Open Source — and Rust Link

• Ethereum Co-Founder Comments on Fisker’s Bankruptcy, Urges Open Source Shift Link

• What Counts as Open Source? Link

• The 20 best open-source alternatives to popular software on Windows Link

Until next week,

Jonathan (@jonathimer)

Today, we talk about:

• Medusa, an open source commerce platform

• New open source projects, including gptpdf, inwind, and StableFace

• $206M in new funding for open source companies

Since last week, we have welcomed 28 new Open Pioneers. 👋 If you like this week's post, it would make my day if you would share it with a friend or colleague.

📊 Feedback: What content would you like to see more?

• Spotlights on open source alternatives

• Introductions of new open source projects (<100 stars)

• Interviews with open source founders

• Background stories about open source

• Fundraising announcements

• Job opportunities in open source

Login or Subscribe to participate in polls.

🔍 Spotlight: Medusa, an open source commerce platform

Medusa is an open-source headless commerce platform designed to empower developers to build highly customized and flexible ecommerce solutions. With its headless architecture, Medusa allows developers to create unique and tailored frontends while managing all ecommerce functionalities through a powerful backend.

The platform is known for its modularity and extensibility, providing a robust foundation that can be easily customized to meet specific business needs. This includes a range of plugins for essential ecommerce features such as payments, shipping, and inventory management. Medusa prioritizes a developer-friendly approach, offering comprehensive documentation, a rich set of APIs, and a vibrant community for support.

Medusa’s founders previously worked in the ecommerce industry and experienced the limitations of existing commerce platforms. They recognized a gap in the market for a solution that offered greater flexibility and control to developers. Motivated by this challenge, they set out to create Medusa, aiming to provide an open-source alternative to platforms like Shopify that is both powerful and adaptable.

Since its inception, Medusa has grown rapidly, gaining traction among developers and businesses. With over 23k GitHub stars, it’s the biggest open source project in the commerce space.

Website | GitHub

🔥 New open source projects started last week

gptpdf

Using GPT to parse PDF.

github.com/CosmosShadow/gptpdf

inwind

A free, open-source, powerful landing page template.

github.com/huglemon/inwind-landing-page

StableFace

Build your own Face App with Stable Diffusion 2.1.

github.com/OutofAi/StableFace

💰 Open source funding - $206M

• Sentient, working on community-driven open AGI, closes $85M seed round led by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund. Link

• TIER IV, building open source software for autonomous driving, announced their $54M Series B extension. Link

• Onehouse, building a data lakehouse built on top of Apache Hudl, raised $35M. Link

• SurrealDB, a multi-model database, announced their $20M Series A. Link

• Restate, a workflows-as-code platform, announced their $7M Seed. Link

• Daytona, maker of open source developer environment management tools, raises $5M. Link

🔭 Open source social monitor

Powered by Octolens, AI-powered social listening. Easily monitor keyword mentions on platforms like X, Reddit, DEV, HackerNews or LinkedIn.

*walks into open source project*

"I need you to change your license, your code hosting, and your discussion platform."

— Andreas Kling (@awesomekling)
12:55 PM • Jul 2, 2024

📚 More open source content

• Podcast episode with database legend Michael Stonebraker Link

• Is banking going open source? Link

• SAP releases Open Source Manifesto Link

• How Does the Linux Foundation Work and What Does it Do? Link

• Some Open Source Software Licences are Only ‘Open-ish,’ Says Thoughtworks Link

Until next week,

Jonathan (@jonathimer)

Today, we talk about:

• The new Model Openness Framework (MOF) by LF AI & Data Foundation

• Chatwoot, an open source customer engagement platform

• New open source projects, including:

  • An Open, Multi-modal Catalog for Data & AI.

  • A full-stack template for building directories.

Since last week, we have welcomed 17 new Open Pioneers. 👋 If you like this week's post, it would make my day if you would share it with a friend or colleague.

🤔 Is your model really open source?

In the last year, several companies got accused to do “open washing” by claiming that there models are open source while, for example, not giving access to weights. This has triggered a lively discussion about what open source actually means in the context of AI. Simply giving free access to the source code is not enough in this case and does not correspond to the basic idea of open source.

Today, the Linux Foundation AI & Data Foundation announced the Model Openness Framework (MOF) and with it a tool called IsItOpen.AI.

IsItOpen.AI helps users determine the availability and licensing of open source AI models and datasets. It provides information about whether specific AI resources are truly open and what licenses govern their use. The platform aims to bring transparency to the open source AI ecosystem, making it easier for researchers, developers, and businesses to find and utilize AI models and datasets that meet their needs.

By using the tool, users can quickly verify the openness of AI resources, ensuring they comply with licensing requirements and are suitable for their projects. This tool is especially valuable for those in the AI community who rely on open source resources for innovation and development, as it simplifies the process of identifying truly open and usable AI assets.

You can try it out for free.

🔍 Spotlight: Chatwoot, an open source customer engagement platform

Chatwoot is an open source customer engagement platform designed to streamline communication between businesses and their customers across multiple channels. It integrates various communication platforms such as email, live chat, social media (including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram), WhatsApp, and SMS into a single interface. This allows businesses to manage all their customer interactions from one place, improving efficiency and response times.

Chatwoot also offers numerous features to enhance customer support and engagement. These include a unified inbox for handling queries, collaboration tools like private notes and conversation assignments, and automation features such as canned responses and smart replies.

Combining all these features, Chatwoot is a viable open source alternative to SaaS products like Intercom, Zendesk, or Salesforce Service Cloud. The project is open sourced under a MIT Expat license and has almost 20k stargazers on GitHub.

Website | GitHub

🔥 New open source projects started last week

Unity Catalog

Open, Multi-modal Catalog for Data & AI.

github.com/unitycatalog/unitycatalog

Cult Directory Template

A full stack Next.js, Shadcn, and Supabase directory template. Build your startup directory effortlessly with features like user authentication, product filters, and customizable themes.

github.com/nolly-studio/cult-directory-template

🔭 Open source social monitor

Powered by Octolens, AI-powered social listening. Easily monitor keyword mentions on platforms like X, Reddit, DEV, HackerNews or LinkedIn.

this is why i love open source

some random dev just added a PR to run custom models in the @supabase / @deno_land  runtime

↓

— Paul Copplestone — e/postgres (@kiwicopple)
11:17 PM • Jun 18, 2024

The amount of non-tech niches who desperately need an easy-to-use wrapper of an open-source library in order to solve their problem is countless.

— Minh-Phuc Tran (@phuctm97)
5:19 AM • Jun 17, 2024

These amendments make SB 1047 even worse. @Scott_Wiener has decided to ignore the open source, startup and academic community's feedback, and continue pushing a bill with massively harmful unintended consequences.

— Anjney Midha (@AnjneyMidha)
7:11 PM • Jun 18, 2024

📚 More open source content

• Let's take a look at Oracle's love and hate relationship with open source software Link

• Apple embraces open source AI with 20 Core ML models on Hugging Face platform Link

• Designing an open-source microscope Link

• JavaScript needs more money Link

• China to build smart automotive software industry through open source communities Link

Until next week,

Jonathan (@jonathimer)

Today, we talk about:

• Algora TV, open source Twitch for developers

• New open source projects, including:

  • A nanoGPT pipeline packed in a spreadsheet.

  • A next generation social network in the Web3.

  • An “All in One” model for offline and simultaneous speech recognition, speech translation and speech synthesis.

• Open source funding news from Mistral AI, LiveKit, Stacklet, and GaiaNet

Since last week, we have welcomed 34 new Open Pioneers. 👋 If you like this week's post, it would make my day if you would share it with a friend or colleague. I will feature the people with the most referrals in the next newsletter.

🔍 Spotlight: Algora TV, open source Twitch for developers

Algora TV is a platform for live streaming and sharing video content related to open source projects and development. It features a variety of videos including interviews with open source project founders, live coding sessions, and discussions on contributing to open source. Users can join the community, watch live streams, and access resources for learning how to live stream themselves. Algora TV aims to foster engagement within the open source community by providing a central hub for related content.

The team behind Algora TV is also working on Algora.io, a platform for open source bounties. In the last few months, over 1600 bounties totaling over $192,000 have been distributed to contributors by Algora. They fully open sourced Algora TV recently, so make sure to check it out.

Website | GitHub

🔥 New open source projects started last week

Spreadsheet is all you need

A nanoGPT pipeline packed in a spreadsheet.

github.com/dabochen/spreadsheet-is-all-you-need

Dexis

Next generation social network in the Web3.

github.com/DexisApp/Dexis

StreamSpeech

StreamSpeech is an “All in One” seamless model for offline and simultaneous speech recognition, speech translation and speech synthesis.

github.com/ictnlp/StreamSpeech

🔭 Open source social monitor

Powered by Octolens, AI-powered social listening. Easily monitor keyword mentions on platforms like X, Reddit, DEV, HackerNews or LinkedIn.

I think more open source projects should have a commercial clause. If it’s the fruit of enough labour, you’d be surprised how many people will be willing to pay for it. And you should get paid for it. You can make it cheap, focus on distribution, and make it worth your while with… x.com/i/web/status/1…

— sunil pai, etc. (@threepointone)
12:55 PM • Jun 8, 2024

Last week, I defended open-source AI in front of a room full of regulators. Video is up: youtube.com/live/oZJmBbuiY…

— Chris Albon (@chrisalbon)
5:03 PM • Jun 4, 2024

Do you really want to open source your project?

— Jonny Burger (@JNYBGR)
5:11 PM • Mar 27, 2024

💰 Open source funding

• Mistral AI, building open source foundational models, raised $640M in funding at a $6B valuation. Link

• LiveKit, building the transport layer for AI, announced a $22.5M Series A. Link

• Stacklet, the governance-as-code platform, announced a $14.5M Series B. Link

• GaiaNet, which is building a decentralized network for open source LLM and AI agents, raised $10M. Link

📚 More open source content

• Ask HN: How can we open-source a 7 year old SaaS codebase and build a community? Link

• Operating Open Source Mobile Networks at Scale Link

• Mistral AI open-sources new Codestral large language model for developers Link

• How open source A.I. Made Mark Zuckerberg Popular Again in Silicon Valley Link

• Early MySQL engineer questions whether Oracle is unintentionally killing off the open source database Link

• Hugging Face and Pollen Robotics show off first project: an open source robot that does chores Link

Until next week,

Jonathan (@jonathimer)

• Metabase, an open source business intelligence tool

• New open source projects, including:

  • Podly Pure Podcasts: Ad-block for podcasts.

  • Corinna AI: AI Chatbot that acts like a sales rep.

  • visionGPT: Analyze your image in seconds with AI.

• GitHub Accelerator 2024 cohort

Since last week, we have welcomed 70 new Open Pioneers. 🚀 If you like this week's post, it would make my day if you would share it with a friend or colleague.

🔍 Spotlight: Metabase, an open source business intelligence tool

Metabase is an open source business intelligence and data visualization platform that empowers users to easily explore and analyze data from various sources. It provides a user-friendly interface that allows non-technical users to create dashboards, visualizations, and perform ad-hoc queries without needing to write SQL code.

Metabase offers both an open source edition and paid enterprise editions with additional features such as single sign-on (SSO), data sandboxing, and audit logs. Users can connect Metabase to over 20 different data sources, including databases, data warehouses, and cloud services, without needing to extract or move data.

One of the standout features of Metabase is its visual query builder, which allows users to construct queries through a graphical interface rather than writing SQL. This makes data exploration and analysis more accessible to a broader range of users, regardless of their technical expertise. It also includes features like dashboard subscriptions, alerts, and data modeling to help teams collaborate and automate reporting processes.

The open source edition of Metabase is free to use and can be self-hosted or deployed on the Metabase Cloud Starter plan. This makes it an attractive option for organizations of all sizes, from small startups to large enterprises, looking for a powerful yet accessible business intelligence solution.

Website | GitHub

🔥 New open source projects started last week

Podly Pure Podcasts

Ad-block for podcasts.

github.com/jdrbc/podly_pure_podcasts

Corinna AI

AI Chatbot that acts like a sales rep.

github.com/webprodigies/corinna-ai

visionGPT

Analyze your image in seconds with AI.

github.com/megoxv/visionGPT

🌱 GitHub Accelerator 2024 cohort

The GitHub Accelerator is a program launched by GitHub to support and promote promising open source projects and developers. It is a 10-week program that provides financial backing, mentorship, community-building opportunities, and resources to help open source projects and developers take their projects to the next level.

The support provided by the GitHub Accelerator includes $40,000 in non-dilutive sponsorship funding via GitHub Sponsors for each selected project. Additionally, participants receive up to $350,000 in additional benefits, including Azure credits, resources from OpenAI, free GitHub products like Copilot, and potential connections to GitHub Fund and Microsoft's venture fund M12. The program also offers mentorship, training, and guidance on building sustainable open source businesses, navigating legal and ethical considerations, and scaling projects.

The 2024 cohort specifically focuses on supporting open source projects and solutions related to artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) and includes:

• Unsloth AI: Fine-tunes models faster and with less memory.

• Giskard: Library for testing and evaluating LLMs.

• A-Frame: Framework for AR/VR and 3D content in browsers.

• NAV2: Leading AMR navigation solution.

• OpenWebUI: Local LLMs with a focus on privacy and security.

• LLMware.ai: Tools for secure enterprise RAG models.

• LangDrive: Simplifies LLM training and deployment via APIs.

• HackingBuddyGPT: Autonomous agents for security teams.

• Web-Check: AI-powered security insights for websites.

• Marimo: Advanced Python notebook for AI/ML.

• Talkd.ai: Unified API for easy RAG deployment.

📚 More open source content

• Where do Terraform and OpenTofu go from here? Link

• Transparency and Community: An Open Source Vision for AI Link

• Open Source is a Good Start for India Link

• UN Report: The Climate Data Challenge - The Critical Role of Open-Source and Neutral Data Platforms Link

Until next week,

Jonathan (@jonathimer)

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• Cap, an open source alternative to Loom

• New open source projects, including:

  • CodiumAI Cover-Agent: AI-powered test generation.

  • Worklenz: All in one project management tool.

  • Shell Ask: Ask LLM directly from your terminal.

• Winamp goes open source

• How open source empowers non-profits

• Funding news from Vercel, Parseable, and TinyCMS

• And more open source content

Since last week, we have welcomed 107 new Open Pioneers. 🚀 If you like this week's post, it would make my day if you would share it with a friend or colleague.

🔍 Spotlight: Cap, an open source alternative to Loom

Cap is an open source and cross-platform screen recording and sharing tool, also known as an alternative to Loom. While the project is still in its early innings, key features already include:

• Lightweight and powerful screen recording software that allows you to record and share videos instantly.

• Cross-platform availability, working on various operating systems.

• User-friendly interface for effortless screen capture and sharing.

• Easy way to share the recordings with shareable links.

• Completely open source and free to use with no credit card required.

The team behind Cap announced public beta about a month ago: “The goal isn't to just create a Loom alternative, but to build the world's best screen recording and sharing tool. Through the power of community and open source, we'll get there.”

Website | GitHub

This newsletter is sponsored by Octolens, AI-powered social listening for B2B companies. Easily get notified when people talk about your product on platforms like X, Reddit, DEV, HackerNews or LinkedIn.

Get your first month for free by using “OPENPIONEERS“ in check-out.

🔥 New open source projects started last week

CodiumAI Cover-Agent

An AI-Powered Tool for Automated Test Generation and Code Coverage Enhancement.

github.com/Codium-ai/cover-agent

Worklenz

All in one project management tool for efficient teams.

github.com/Worklenz/worklenz

Shell Ask

Ask LLM directly from your terminal.

github.com/egoist/shell-ask

🎧 Winamp goes open source

Winamp, the iconic music player software, has announced that it will open-source its code for the Windows version on September 24, 2024. This move invites global collaboration, allowing developers worldwide to contribute their expertise, ideas, and passion to help evolve this legendary software.

Winamp recognizes that it has become more than just a music player, embodying a unique digital culture, aesthetic, and user experience. By opening the source code, Winamp aims to take the next step in its history, enabling users to contribute directly to improving the product.

While Winamp will remain the owner of the software and decide on innovations for the official version, this open source project is an opportunity for the community to shape the future of this iconic application. Developers interested in contributing can join a waitlist.

🌱 How open source empowers non-profits

Open source software and open data are increasingly vital for addressing global environmental and social challenges faced by non-profits and communities worldwide. For example, open source enables websites and apps to function, and provides a cost-effective solution for nonprofits with limited budgets. It offers transparency, security, and universal access to collaborative tools like content management systems and online office suites.

Nonprofits such as Wegweiser in Germany have adopted open source platforms like Nextcloud and Onlyoffice to manage content, documentation, and collaborative editing while ensuring data privacy and control over their infrastructure. Other nonprofits like Seawatch or Foodsharing Austria have also embraced these open source tools for their operations.

Read more about “How Open Source Software Empowers Nonprofits And The Global Communities They Serve” [Forbes].

📣 Open source social monitor

Powered by Octolens, AI-powered social listening. Easily monitor keyword mentions on platforms like X, Reddit, DEV, HackerNews or LinkedIn.

despite recent progress and endless cheerleading, open-source AI is a worsening investment for model builders, an inferior option for developers and consumers, and a national security risk. I wrote about the closed-source future of foundation models here

— John Luttig (@absoluttig)
7:32 PM • May 21, 2024

If you're building open source AI, come to a16z instead of FF. We think OS AI is a great investment space, and an increasingly important option for developers and consumers. It's also critical for national security.

We'd love to talk.

— martin_casado (@martin_casado)
9:26 PM • May 21, 2024

If I were a VC, the last thing I would do is speak against open-source.

tech industry has 3 pillars; moore's law, internet and open source.

— Gorkem Yurtseven (@gorkemyurt)
5:48 AM • May 22, 2024

💰 Open source funding

• Vercel, the company behind Next JS, announced their $250M Series E at $3.25B valuation led by Accel. Link

• Parseable, building log analytics for the cloud era, announced their $2.75M Seed. Link

• TinaCMS has been acquired. Link

📚 More open source content

• OpenSSF launch Siren for open source threat intelligence Link

• Ethereum Co-Founder Vitalik Buterin advocates for open source AI Link

• Mozilla lists open source AI benefits as we approach the peak of the hype Link

• Meta releases open source React compiler Link

• More than money, open source pros want these 2 things from their next jobs Link

• Old is new again: The primacy of open source databases Link

Until next week,

Jonathan (@jonathimer)

• Penpot, an open source alternative to Figma

• New open source projects, including:

  • OpenGlass: Turn any glasses into AI-powered smart glasses.

  • Crawl4AI: Open source LLM-friendly web crawler & scrapper.

  • Dingify: Unlock the power of seamless real-time monitoring.

• Tax credits for open source developers

• Funding news from Jack Dorsey, LanceDB, and Pythagora AI

• And more open source content

Since last week, we have welcomed 47 new Open Pioneers. 👋 If you like this week's post, it would make my day if you would share it with a friend or colleague.

🔍 Spotlight: Penpont, an open source alternative to Figma

Penpot is an open source, web-based design tool that bridges the gap between designers and developers. It aims to streamline collaboration and eliminate the traditional "hand-off" process by allowing designers to create interfaces that are natively expressed as code (CSS, SVG, HTML). This enables developers to easily understand and implement the designs without translation issues. Some key features of Penpot include:

• Powerful design capabilities with tools for creating complex layouts, animations, and prototypes.

• Designs are built using open web standards like CSS, making them easily understandable for developers.

• Seamless collaboration between designers and developers through a shared codebase.

• Integration with existing developer toolchains via APIs and webhooks.

• A vibrant community contributing libraries, templates, and driving the project's development.

Penpot is gaining popularity among organizations of all sizes, including many open source projects, as it eliminates the traditional friction between design and development teams. Its open nature and adherence to web standards make it an interesting alternative to proprietary design tools like Figma.

Website | GitHub | Twitter

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🔥 New open source projects started last week

OpenGlass

Turn any glasses into AI-powered smart glasses.

github.com/BasedHardware/OpenGlass

Crawl4AI

Open-source LLM Friendly Web Crawler & Scrapper.

github.com/unclecode/crawl4ai

Dingify

Dingify is helping you unlock the power of seamless real-time monitoring.

github.com/Codehagen/Dingify

💡Idea: Tax credits for open source developers

The idea of an open source tax credit is to provide a way for individual developers contributing to open-source projects to receive tax benefits, similar to how corporations can write off expenses related to software development.

Currently, individuals cannot claim tax deductions for their unpaid work on open source software, while corporations can deduct costs associated with developing both commercial and open-source software. An open source tax credit would allow individual developers to write off their time and expenses spent on open-source projects, incentivizing more contributions to the open-source ecosystem.

Read more about the idea in this article.

💰 Open source funding

• Jack Dorsey pledges $21M toward open source development to advance Bitcoin Link

• LanceDB raises $11M to build an open source multimodal AI database for app development Link

• Y-Combinator-backed Pythagora AI secures $4M for open source app development with AI Link

📚 More open source content

• The new fintech stack is... open source? Link

• Post-Open licensing could offer software devs funding alternatives Link

• Google launches Firebase Genkit, a new open source framework for building AI-powered apps Link

• IBM releases Granite Code AI Models to open source community Link

• Establishing a security baseline for open source projects Link

• This Seattle AI startup is entirely open source Link

Until next week,

Jonathan (@jonathimer)

• Univer: An open source alternative to Google Sheets, Slides, and Docs

• New open source projects, including:

  • Secret LLama: Fully private LLM chatbot

  • GitHub Portfolio: Portfolio Website using your GitHub username

• German public broadcasters announce open source streaming OS

• And more open source content

Since last week, we have welcomed 34 new Open Pioneers. 👋 If you like this week's post, it would make my day if you would share it with a friend or colleague.

🔍 Univer: An open source alternative to Google Sheets, Slides, and Docs

Univer is building the open source office suite that aims to break application silos and connect business data across different platforms into a single unified interface. The three products Univer Sheets, Univer Docs, and Univer Slides are an open source alternative to the respective Google workspace products.

A few highlights from their repository:

• Univer is designed to support both spreadsheets and documents. Slides will be supported as well in the future.

• Univer is easily embeddable, allowing seamless integration into your applications.

• Univer is highly extensible, thanks to its plug-in architecture and Facade API that makes it a delight for developers to implement their unique requirements on the top of Univer.

• Univer is highly customizable, allowing you to personalize its appearance using themes. It also provides support for internationalization (i18n).

The project is still being actively developed on GitHub, but I recommend to check it out nevertheless.

🔥 New open source projects started last week

Secret LLama

Fully private LLM chatbot that runs entirely with a browser with no server needed. Supports Mistral and LLama 3.

github.com/abi/secret-llama

GitHub Portfolio

Create a Portfolio Website using your GitHub username. This website template is constructed with next.js and tailwind CSS, allowing you to display your work and skills as a software developer.

github.com/said7388/github-portfolio

📺 German public broadcasters announce open source streaming OS

Germany's public broadcasters ARD and ZDF announced that they are collaborating to develop an open-source streaming operating system (OS) for smart TVs and streaming devices. This joint initiative aims to provide an alternative to proprietary platforms like Google's Android TV and reduce their reliance on big tech companies.

The open source streaming OS will enable ARD and ZDF to have more control over the user experience, data privacy, and content distribution on connected TVs and streaming devices. By leveraging open standards and technologies, they can create a more flexible and customizable platform tailored to their needs and those of their viewers. 

I believe this is a great move! All publicly funded software should be made open source - as long as they are no good reasons not to (e.g. security concerns).

Learn more about the initiative here.

📚 More open source content

• Open source cybersecurity is a ticking time bomb Link

• Red Hat outlines a vision for evolving AI models with open-source communities Link

• The Value of DevRel and Contributing to Open Source Initiatives Link

• Google lays off staff from Flutter, Dart and Python teams weeks before its developer conference Link

• Microsoft Releases New-Open Source Tool for OT Security Link

Until next week,

Jonathan (@jonathimer)

• Gitroom: Grow your open source projects

• New open source projects, including:

  • Statusnook: Effortlessly deploy a status page and start monitoring endpoints in minutes

  • Glance: A selfhosted dashboard that puts all your feeds in one place

  • Chatbot: Free and open source mobile private ChatGPT application, supporting GPT3, GPT4 & Gemini Pro models

• IBM acquires HashiCorp - What does this mean for Terraform & Vault?

• “Open-washing” of Llama 3?

Since last week, we have welcomed 23 new Open Pioneers. 👋 If you like this week's post, it would make my day if you would share it with a friend or colleague.

🔍 Gitroom: Grow your open source project

Gitroom is an open source platform created by Nevo David, the former head of growth at Novu, to help open-source founders and maintainers achieve growth for their projects.

Nevo David (@nevodavid) created Gitroom based on his experience growing Novu to over 31,000 GitHub stars. He found the process of writing articles, timing promotions, and coordinating launches to be stressful and inefficient. Gitroom aims to streamline these tasks and provide a centralized platform for open-source growth and community building.

Here are a few things you can do with Gitroom:

• Schedule social media posts and articles in advance on platforms like Reddit, DEV, or Hashnode

• Exchange or buy posts from other community members and influencers

• Add testimonials and "used by" sections with other open-source friends

• Automatically generate media for stats like GitHub stars

The project is open-source, built with technologies like NX (monorepo), Next.js, Nest.js, Prisma, Redis, and Resend. Gitroom offers a blog with growth tips, an "awesome list" for promotion, a newsletter, and a Discord community to connect founders and maintainers.

Learn more: Website | GitHub | Twitter

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* Affiliate link: If you end up purchasing the product, a share of the proceeds will go towards supporting this newsletter.

🔥 New open source projects started last week

Statusnook

Effortlessly deploy a status page and start monitoring endpoints in minutes

github.com/goksan/statusnook

Glance

A self-hosted dashboard that puts all your feeds in one place

github.com/glanceapp/glance

Chatbot

Free and open source mobile private ChatGPT application, supporting GPT3, GPT4 & Gemini Pro models

github.com/ChatBot-All/chatbot-app

💰 IBM acquires HashiCorp - What does this mean for Terraform & Vault?

IBM has acquired HashiCorp, the company behind popular open source tools like Terraform and Vault, for $6.4 billion. The acquisition triggered debates wtithin the open source community regarding the future licensing of HashiCorp's products, particularly Terraform.

Last year, HashiCorp adopted the Business Source License (BSL) 1.1 for its products, moving away from the more permissive Mozilla Public License 2.0. This decision led to backlash, with the Linux Foundation creating a Terraform fork called OpenTofu.

Some experts believe IBM's acquisition could lead to a reversal of HashiCorp's licensing decision, potentially returning Terraform to an open source license like Apache 2.0. However, given IBM's focus on enterprise customers, it can be doubted if this is going to happen.

While some folks from the open source community view the acquisition as a potential lifeline for Terraform, reuniting it with OpenTofu, others argue that the licensing controversy is a "red herring" and that IBM is unlikely to change HashiCorp's course. I personally belong to the latter group.

🦙 “Open-washing” of Llama 3?

Meta's release of Llama 3, touted as the most powerful open source language model, has sparked a debate around its true open-source nature.

While Meta claims Llama 3 is open-source, several concerns have been raised:

1) Meta has not provided full access to the training data used for Llama 3, which is important for understanding the model's limitations and potential biases.

2) Llama 3 is released under a custom license, which is incompatible with open source principles and hinders companies from using it.

These restrictions have led to accusations of "open-washing," where Llama 3 is marketed as "open" despite falling short of openness standards. Parts of the community called for Meta to adopt widely recognized open source licenses and provide full disclosure of the training data, along with documentation.

Follow some of the discussion: [GitHub 1] [GitHub 2] [Hugging Face] [Reddit]

📚 More open source content

• The hyper-clouds are open source's friends Link

• Focusing on the wrong open source issues Link

• Open Source world's Bruce Perens emits draft Post-Open Zero Cost License Link

• The end of vendor-backed open source? Link

• Arthur Mensch: Open vs Closed - Who Wins and Mistral's Position Link

Until next week,

Jonathan (@jonathimer)