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OpenAI tries to build its coding cred, acquires Python toolmaker Astral (www.theregister.com)
submitted 5 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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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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[–] 40 points 5 months ago

Better title:

Astral products now defunct, SlopMachines make another victim.

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    [–] 27 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    Goddamit.

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  • [–] [S] 5 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    sigh, now I need to find an alternative to uv

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  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    Poetry is good.

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  • [–] -1 points 5 months ago (2 children)

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

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  • [–] 4 points 5 months ago

    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.

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    • [–] 18 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    Monopoly phase of extinguishing competition

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  • [–] 4 points 5 months ago (1 child)

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

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  • [–] -1 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    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

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  • [–] 4 points 5 months ago (1 child)

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

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  • [–] -1 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    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

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  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago

    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.

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    • [–] 12 points 5 months ago

    Well that's a fucking disaster. BIG hate for this sellout.

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    [–] 5 points 5 months ago

    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.

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    [–] 4 points 5 months ago

    NO

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    [–] 4 points 5 months ago

    Godamnit I just switched to astral

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    [+] 4 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)
    [deleted]
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