- cross-posted to:
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- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
Today we’re announcing that OpenAI will acquire Astral, bringing powerful open source developer tools into our Codex ecosystem.
Astral has built some of the most widely used open source Python tools, helping developers move faster with modern tooling like uv, Ruff, and ty. These tools power millions of developer workflows and have become part of the foundation of modern Python development. As part of our developer-first philosophy, after closing OpenAI plans to support Astral’s open source products. By bringing Astral’s tooling and engineering expertise to OpenAI, we will accelerate our work on Codex and expand what AI can do across the software development lifecycle.
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oh well, it was good while it lasted
Not a fan of this news. At all.
Damn… these were some of the OSS projects I was the most excited about. uv in particular is brilliant. Hope it breaks out again once OpenAI collapses.
oh no
OH YEAH!
The tools are open source. Someone needs to fork them before it’s too late.
the current versions will still be open source, you will always be able to fork them
But with slop in them
It’s version controlled.
They’ve already been using Claude for at least the last few months; you’ll find a
CLAUDE.mdfile and related settings in the uv repo if you look
Too late for what exactly? Describe in actual detail.
You said it yourself, it’s open source so why are you running from it? The code is and will continue to be there in the open.
OpenAI can change the license at any time. Who’s going to stop them?
It can also be forked at any time from the commit prior.
Nope, they can retroactively change it
Commit history literally exists, you can go back to the commit prior to changing the license and fork it. Do you understand git in the slightest?
Well fuck. I was eyeing uv, but I guess um sticking with pip.
Could always fork it
I am nowhere near good enough to fork and maintain uv.
Don’t gaslight yourself. uv is open source and will not kill your grandmother. They just happon to be funded via Openai for now under their umbrella.
It’s not gaslighting yourself to be concerned when a company as morally bankrupt as OpenAI becomes the steward of these tools.
Yeah it is gaslighting yourself. I get Openai isn’t great, but uv is open source.
Explain to me in great detail what exactly you think is going to happen here.
Also Bun, which was acquired by anthropic, is doing just fine as an open source project.
OpenAI could direct anyone working at Astral to insert whatever they want into uv, ruff or ty, without any regard to the needs or desires of the wider community. Or just drop working on it entirely.
Sure, these tools are open source and can be forked. But to do that successfully you’ll need to replace everything that Astral currently provides these projects: expertise of core contributors, the time they have to actually work on it, and organisational skills to manage these projects.
This isn’t something you can do overnight.
OpenAI could direct anyone working at Astral to insert whatever they want
This would be suicidal for the project if it ignores the community. the project would instantly risk forking and OpenAI losing the ability to influence the ecosystem direction.
to your second point on needing contributors and infrastructor after a fork, while this is true, uv specifically has seen MASSIVE adoption both for hobbyists AND corporate interests. it has greatly simplified the overall python packaging experience. I would not be shocked if other corps began supporting a community fork if the main project went off the rails.
Bun, another open source project, has been doing just fine under Anthropic nearly a year later. Until there is more concrete info on the direction this will take, the fear is MASSIVELY overblown. uv is quickly starting to hit critical mass adoption and may be too important for it to end up in a dumpster.
This does suck, but there’s time. I doubt the actual legal hand over has happened yet, and OpenAI is (likely, I don’t actually know) an absolute mess, HR/structure-wise, internally. If the aquisitions I’ve been a part of in the past are any indication, there’s a 1-2 year ramp before things really start to go to shit within Astral (assuming there isn’t an immediate massive exodous of talent). Or I’m totally wrong!
Is there any example of such move that does not ends with enshittyfication?
Off the top of my head, no. I’m just pointing out that there’s time to respond before things get shitty. This isn’t Redis rug-pulling their license. The community can be considered. Thoughtful.
uv ---- fork —> wx
(although zx is easier to type)
Oh look at the fancy qwerty user over here …
but why would the vibe-coding future that Sam wants to shove up our arses need these tools?
Maybe it’s more about access to Rust coders than the Astral existing toolchain.
Bit early for April fools :(
the day was OK before I read this. sooooqa.
Fuck shit asshole what thr fuck motherfucker why??? I was starting to like uv :'(
Im not suprised (still using using pip) 🤣
I am sceptical, but hopeful. The Codex CLI is open source, so I’m somewhat hopeful it’ll stay open source. My only worry is that they’ll take too many people off the tools, stalling the development of uv, ruff and ty.
PS: Can we get a pytest alternative? It’s so slow :(
I’m not a huge fan of AI companies buying up all the tool chains and trying to insert themselves as the only middleman to coding.
Which feels like what these moves are.
RIP
