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Astral to Join OpenAI

astral.sh

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Re: Astral to Join OpenAI

#381

Post by wiseowise »

applfanboysbgon wrote: post #287
siva7 wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not buying developers, they are buying the whole ecosystem to produce software. Still aligned with their original message.

If the product did what it was advertised to do, they could simply build their own ecosystem for producing software and train the model to use it.

And then what? History is laden with technically superior software that lost to popular one. They can create uw tomorrow, but who will use it when everyone uses uv and its good enough for them?

Re: Astral to Join OpenAI

#382

Post by fortuitous-frog »

walthamstow wrote: post #343
fortuitous-frog wrote: post #299

While I -- like most other commenters -- am dubious of both OpenAI and this acquisition, I think it's pretty reasonable to wait to see how this turns out before rushing to final judgment. Everything I've seen from Astral and Charlie indicates they're brilliant, caring, and overall reasonable folks. I think it's unfair to jump to call them sell-outs and cast uv and the rest as doomed projects.

Charlie's fine. OpenAI are the problem here. Similar situation to steipete. Happy for the person, sad for the tool/ecosystem/everyone else.

I suppose my point is: I would expect that Charlie and co. carried their negotiations with OpenAI with the same laser-focused, careful judgment that catapulted Astral to success in the first place. I don't mean to fanboy, but I generally trust that they made the best decision for not only them, but the Python community as a whole.

Re: Astral to Join OpenAI

#383

Post by bargainbin »

NiloCK wrote: post #67

A concern: More and more plainly, OpenAI and Anthropic are making plays to own (and lease) the "means of production" in software. OK - I'm a pretty happy renter right now. As they gobble up previously open software stacks, how viable is it that these stacks remain open? It seems perfectly sensible to me that these providers and their users alike have an interest in further centralizing the dev lifecycle - eg, if Clau…

This is a logical conclusion of most open source tools in a capitalist economy, it's been this way for decades.

Equivalent or better tools will pop up eventually, heck if AI is so fantastic then you could just make one of your own, be the change you want to see in the world, right?

Re: Astral to Join OpenAI

#384

Post by woodruffw »

benterix wrote: post #353
woodruffw wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a point of information: Astral did not, in fact, burn through its VC money. I agree that dev tools are difficult to monetize, though. (Source: I'm an Astral employee.)

Finally someone competent to answer the crucial question. Taken into account the enormous amount of excellent work you did, and the fact that dev tools are hard to monetize, what was your strategy?

You can find some resources on our strategy in previous blog posts, like this one on pyx[1].

[1]: https://astral.sh/blog/introducing-pyx

Re: Astral to Join OpenAI

#385

Post by sschueller »

japhyr wrote: post #105

This has me thinking about VS Code and VS Codium. I've used VS Code for a while now, but recently grew annoyed at the increasingly prevalent prompts to subscribe to various Microsoft AI tools. I know you can make them go away, but if you bounce between different systems, and particularly deal with installing VS Code on a regular basis, it becomes annoying. I started using VS Codium, and it feels like using VS Code be…

MS is actively making your life using VS Codium a pain. They removed the download button the extension marketrplace making it very difficult to download extensions and installing them in VS Codium since VS Codium does not have access to the official MS extension marketplace. Many don't publish outside the marketplace for example Platformio. [1]

[1] https://github.com/platformio/platformio-vscode-ide/issues/1...

Re: Astral to Join OpenAI

#386

Post by Fervicus »

krick wrote: post #302
ragebol wrote: post #112

Not often that I audibly groan at a HN headline :-(

I think, it may be the first time I am actually upset by acquire announcement. I am usually like "well, it is what it is", but this time it just feels like betrayal.

> it just feels like betrayal

It was a VC backed tool. What did you expect?

Re: Astral to Join OpenAI

#387

Post by dirkc »

bikelang wrote: post #155
lucrbvi wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't be surprised if Vercel were bought by Anthropic/OAI (but maybe it would be too expensive?)

No no - SpaceX/xAi must now buy Vercel so that we can deploy our bloated Next apps to space.

At least in space there is lots of space and no heat /s - I'd love for Next to exist in a vacuum

Re: Astral to Join OpenAI

#389

Post by nullhole »

woodruffw wrote: post #331
throwaway63467 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a small tool shop building a tiny part of the Python ecosystem, let’s not overstate their importance. They burned through their VC money and needed an exit and CLI tool chains are hyped now for LLMs, but this mostly sounds like an acquihire to me. Dev tools are among the hardest things to monetize with very few real winners, so good for them to get a good exit.

As a point of information: Astral did not, in fact, burn through its VC money. I agree that dev tools are difficult to monetize, though. (Source: I'm an Astral employee.)

> As a point of order: Astral did not, in fact, burn through its VC money.

That's a point of information, not a point of order.

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