Technology@lemmy.worldbyLee Duna@lemmy.nz
23 hours

OpenAI tries to build its coding cred, acquires Python toolmaker Astral

www.theregister.com English

In a move clearly designed to strengthen its position among developers, OpenAI has acquired Python tool maker Astral. The house of Altman expects the deal to strengthen the ecosystem for its Codex programming agent.

Since its founding in 2022 by Charlie Marsh, Astral has won over a substantial portion of the Python community with Rust-based tools like uv (package and project manager), Ruff (linting and formatting), and ty (type checker) that outperform Python-based tools like pip.

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    OpenAI tries to build its coding cred by acquiring Astral
    www.theregister.com
    : Deal helps company build out its Codex team
    • melfie@lemy.lolEnglish
      2 hours

      I was recently eyeing uv, but guess I’ll stick with Poetry.

    • awake@lemmy.wtfEnglish
      2 hours

      I’ve tried uv a week ago for the first time and liked the workflow. I hope there will be a fork that’s not under OpenAI.

        • Axum@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
          12 hours

          No you don’t, don’t be stupid. uv is open source, and this just funds that project. Don’t gaslight yourself.

          • morrowind@lemmy.mlEnglish
            5 hours

            I know gaslight has lost all meaning but this might be worst use I’ve seen yet

          • rhymepurple@lemmy.mlEnglish
            5 hours

            I generally agree with this. Unless OpenAI has a track record of being poor stewards of open source projects, then right now the concern is mostly FUD.

            However, this is a bit aggressive. It is appropriate to be skeptical about the intent of a controversial company acquiring another company that made a few popular open source projects or of the future state of those open source projects.

            Just because a popular open source project is well liked today doesn’t mean the community will be happy with the project in the future or even that the project will forever remain open source. Some notable recent examples include Redis, Terraform, and CentOS.

      • errer@lemmy.worldEnglish
        20 hours

        Back to conda for me!

        …wait no that’s a fate worse than death

    • Solumbran@lemmy.worldEnglish
      23 hours

      Better title:

      Astral products now defunct, SlopMachines make another victim.

      • TheBlackLounge@lemmy.zipEnglish
        10 hours

        How are they competition? Astral’s tools solve the same problems for humans and AI.

        • wingswithbones@lemmus.orgEnglish
          10 hours

          I’m not sure if you’re serious but now this company is no longer competing in the market against companies like OpenAI and is instead owned by OpenAI

          I honestly cannot help you if that is not enough for you to understand the basic issue

          • TheBlackLounge@lemmy.zipEnglish
            10 hours

            They were not competing before? Astral’s product is private package repo’s. Maybe that will get abandoned but the FOSS projects are safe.

            • wingswithbones@lemmus.orgEnglish
              8 hours

              the team that used to work on Astral now works for OpenAI and will now only operate under its direction and for its interests. Whatever you’re talking about is a separate issue

              • partofthevoice@lemmy.zipEnglish
                7 hours

                That’s not how competition works. Astral made a different product, served different audiences, and the markets were not competitive. Astral made tools that help a human developer organize and maintain their code. Nothing to do with chatbots. The team now being at OpenAI means jack shit about anticompetitive practices.

                This is sad because Astral made good open source tools and I don’t trust OpenAI to keep that up.