(sure, it's a bit different than contributing to CPython, but I'd argue not that different)
In the worst case, Astral will stop developing their tools, someone else will pick them up and will continue polishing them. In the best case, they will just continue as they did until now, and nothing will really change on that front.
Astral is doing good work, but their greatest benefit for the ecosystem so far was showing what's possible and how it's down. Now everyone can take up the quest from here and continue. So any possible harm from here out will be not that deep, at worst we will be missing out on many more cool things they could have built.
It was because Astral was VC funded.
https://astral.sh/blog/announcing-astral-the-company-behind-...
Either pay for the product, or use stuff that isn't dependent on VC money, this is always how it ends.
Maybe you use non-transitive pure Python dependencies, but it's likely that your tools and dependencies still rely on stuff in Rust or C (e.g.: py-cryptography and Python itself respectively).
Good for Astral though I guess, they do great work. Just not optimistic this is gonna be good for python devs long term.
From Astral's front page:
"Why is Ruff a gamechanger? Primarily because it’s nearly 1000x faster. Literally. Not a typo."
I'm glad to confirm I was correct.
2. In any case, the announcement strongly suggests that customer acquisition had little to do with this. The stated purpose of the acquisition, as I read it, is an acquisition (plus acquihire?) to bolster their Codex product.
3. But if they were hoping for some developer goodwill as a secondary effect... well, see my note above.
Although Astral being VC funded was already headed this way anyway.
Deno, Pydantic (Both Sequoia) will go the same way as with many other VC backed "open source" dev tools.
It will go towards AI companies buying up the very same tools, putting it in their next model update and used against you.
Rented back to you for $20/mo.
But the pressure because they raised VC funding, I would imagine Astral needed an actual exit and OpenAI saw Astral's tools as an asset.
Take ruff, I have used it, but I had no idea it even had a company behind it... And I must not be only one and it must not be only tool like it...
Ant is building their app distribution platform, so no wonder OpenAI thinking the same, it will only surprise me if they move so slow.
Astral has demonstrated that there is desire for this sort of "just works" thing, which I struggled with, and led me to abandoning it. (I.e.: "pip/venv/conda are fine, why do I want this?", despite my personal experience with those as high-friction)
fnands•1h ago
Seems like the big AI players love buying up the good dev tooling companies.
I hope this means the Astral folks can keep doing what they are doing, because I absolutely love uv (ruff is pretty nice too).
dcreager•1h ago
That is definitely the plan!
piva00•1h ago
Only time will tell if it will not affect the ecosystem negatively, best of luck though, I really hope this time is different™.
dcreager•37m ago
bbkane•30m ago
a-french-anon•1h ago
Would be a good mustache-twirling cartoon villain tactics, you know, try to prevent advances in developer experience to make vibecoding more attractive =)
delfinom•1h ago
bonesss•57m ago
Ekaros•53m ago