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Launch HN: Onyx (YC W24) – Open-source chat UI

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Launch HN: Onyx (YC W24) – Open-source chat UI

#71

Post by bilekas »

Weves wrote: post #64
bilekas wrote: post #63

Interesting product and best of luck with it. > but I’m going to start by connecting GPT-4o, Claude Sonnet 4, and Qwen to provide my team with a secure way to use them I did get a little giggle out of that because I've never heard anyone say that hooking up 3rd party llms to anything was any way secure.

Thanks for the kind words! The key point there is that many would do it through Azure / Bedrock + locally host the open-source models. Also, all chats / indexed data lives on-prem, and there are better guarantees around retention when using the APIs directly.

Ah I see.. That makes a bit more sense and definitely adds a value multiplier for enterprises I would imagine! I'll try out the open source one and see how it works out!

Re: Launch HN: Onyx (YC W24) – Open-source chat UI

#72

Post by Weves »

crocowhile wrote: post #66

In a landscape where every week we have a different leading model, these systems are really useful for the power users because they keep the interface and models constant and allow to switch easily using API via openrouter or naga. I have been using openwebui which is under active development but I'll give this a try.

Yes, exactly! Would love to hear your feedback compared to OpenWebUI

Re: Launch HN: Onyx (YC W24) – Open-source chat UI

#73

Post by Weves »

jryio wrote: post #57

Do you know what's completely missing from all of these products like anything LLM and Onyx... a mobile application that has parity on the same features that ChatGPT and Claude does...

Hmm, yea that's a great callout. Something we definitely have in our sights longer term (focus for now is to make sure that the desktop chat experience is truly amazing).

Re: Launch HN: Onyx (YC W24) – Open-source chat UI

#75

Post by observationist »

turblety wrote: post #38

What is it with these Chat apps having strange and not-real open source licenses? OpenWebUI is the same. Is there something about these chat apps that seems to make them more prone to weird and strange licenses? Just opportunist?

If you tack on these faux-pen source VC licenses and complicate things, you're signaling dishonesty and dark patterns. It might not be the case, but it's not a good look imo. VCs don't seem to care, though - it's all about securing the future payoff, doesn't matter what principles or norms get trampled in the process, and it's only a small set of FOSS nerds that ever get bothered by it, anyway.

Thanks, lawyers, you make everything better!

Re: Launch HN: Onyx (YC W24) – Open-source chat UI

#76

Post by embedding-shape »

Weves wrote: post #62
winddude wrote: post #33

why use a name, although spelled differently onyx vs onnx, that's already used and known in the ML/AI community?

That's a fair point! We were aware of onnx, but felt it was okay since they are very different products so we felt that there wouldn't be too much confusion (people generally know which onyx/onnx they are looking for).

You're almost literally in the same ecosystem, it's not like one is a Chat UI for LLMs and the other a super market, but a ecosystem of open source machine learning software, libraries and tools. That the pronunciation is identical makes it untenable, you really need to reconsider the name, discussions in person will get confusing.

Re: Launch HN: Onyx (YC W24) – Open-source chat UI

#77

Post by embedding-shape »

fhd2 wrote: post #41
csomar wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Open source doesn’t mean free.

It really does, by any definition I've ever heard. I suppose the authoritative one would be [1]. A common "trick" for commercial open source software is to use a copyleft license, which restricts redistribution as part of commercial products, and to offer a paid license to get around that. [1]: https://opensource.org/osd

Nothing in that "authoritative" definition says you cannot charge for binaries, for example. It's talking mainly about source code itself. Something you just publish the source for but charge for anything else, would be fair game and still "open source" by that definition.

Re: Launch HN: Onyx (YC W24) – Open-source chat UI

#78

Post by CuriouslyC »

Something like this has a very limited shelf life as a product. What users need from chat is very user specific, trying to be the one chat to rule them all is not gonna end well, and as models get more capable each chat experience is going to need to be more customized.

Something like this could have a nice future as an open source chat framework for building custom UIs if it's well made and modular, but that isn't gonna work well with a SaaS model.

Re: Launch HN: Onyx (YC W24) – Open-source chat UI

#80

Post by elpakal »

Weves wrote: post #28
xenospn wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there's a million other project just like this one, many that are much more advanced and mature, including from Vercel. There's no moat.

Agree that's a lot of other projects out there, but why do you say the Vercel option is more advanced/mature? The common trend we've seen is that most of these other projects are okay for a true "just send messages to an AI and get responses" use case, but for most things beyond that they fall short / there a lot of paper cuts. For an individual, this might show up when they try more complex tasks that require multip…

Alright let's say im tasked with building a fancy AI-powered research assistant and I need onyx or Vercel's ai-chatbot sdk. Why would I reach for onyx?

I have used vercel for several projects and I'm not tied to it, but would like to understand how onyx is comparable.

Benefits for my use cases for using vercel have been ease of installation, streaming support, model agnosticity, chat persistence and blob support. I definitely don't like the vendor lock in, though.

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