5 ms·

On the flip side, I'm not sure I ever saw a revenue plan or exit strategy for Astral other than acquihire. And most plausible bidders are unfortunate in one wa

by rst 6mo ago

On the flip side, I'm not sure I ever saw a revenue plan or exit strategy for Astral other than acquihire. And most plausible bidders are unfortunate in one way or another.

hijodelsol 6mo ago
They could have joined projects like the Linux Foundation which try to not depend on any single donor, even though complete independence from big tech is not possible. I don't know the motivation behind Astral's approach, but this acquisition does leave a weird taste behind about how serious they were about truly open source software. Time will tell, I guess. (Edit: typo)
- colesantiago 6mo ago
  > I don't know the motivation behind Astral's approach, but this acquisition does leave a weird taste behind about how serious they were about truly open source software. It was because Astral was VC funded. https://astral.sh/blog/announcing-astral-the-company-behind-ruff https://astral.sh/blog/announcing-astral-the-company-behind-...
japhyr 6mo ago
Astral was building a private package hosting system for enterprise customers. That was their stated approach to becoming profitable, while continuing to fund their open source work.
- organsnyder 6mo ago
  Private package hosting sounds like a commodity that would be hard to differentiate.
  - IshKebab 6mo ago
    Yeah you'd think so but somehow JFrog (makers of Artifactory) made half a billion dollars last year. I don't really understand that. Conda also makes an implausible amount of money.
    - japhyr 6mo ago
      From my understanding there are a lot of companies that need their own package repositories, for a variety of reasons. I listened to a couple podcasts where Charlie Marsh outlined their plans for pyx, and why they felt their entry into that market would be profitable. My guess is that OpenAI just dangled way more money in their faces than what they were likely to get from pyx. Having a private package index gives you a central place where all employees can install from, without having to screen what each person is installing. Also, if I remember right, there are some large AI and ML focused packages that benefit from an index that's tuned to your specific hardware and workflows.
      - kickopotomus 6mo ago
        Private artifact repositories also help to mitigate supply chain risk since you can host all of your screened packages and don't have to worry about something getting removed from mvn-central, PyPI, NPM, etc. Plus the obvious need for a place to host proprietary internal libraries.
      - y1n0 6mo ago
        We have some kind of simple pip repo that is private where I work. What would astral bring to the table?
        quadrifoliate 6mo ago
        How many people use that simple pip repo daily? If the number is not in the high hundreds, or a few thousands; maybe nothing. But once you get up there, any kind of better coordination layer is useful enough to pay money to a third party for, unless maintaining a layer over pip is your core competency.
        y1n0 6mo ago
        Close to a thousand I’m sure.
      - tempest_ 6mo ago
  - atomicnumber3 6mo ago
    A commodity yes, but could be wrapped in to work very nicely with the latest and greatest in python tooling. Remember, the only 2 ways to make money are by bundling and unbundling. This seems like a pretty easy bundling story.
  - nunez 6mo ago
    It's also a crowded and super mature space space between JFrog (Artifactory) and Sonatype (Nexus). They already support private PyPI repositories and are super locked in at pretty much every enterprise-level company out there.
    - ttul 6mo ago
      There’s always room for improvement…
    - EatFlamingDeath 6mo ago
      I've used JFrog Artifactory before and I wish I didn't.
      - donaldihunter 6mo ago
        Ditto for nexus
  - chanux 6mo ago
    With the goodwill and mindshare they earned, it does not feel impossible. Perhaps OpenAI is aiming for a more compelling suit of things for penetrating enterprise (I'm just speculating as I go here).
- r_lee 6mo ago
  that was never going to work, let's be honest
- pjmlp 6mo ago
  What would be the added value against JFrog or Nexus, for example?
- justcool393 6mo ago
  i mean ofc but like you can self-host pypi and the "Docker Hub" model isn't like VC-expected level returns especially as ECR and GHCR and the other repos exist

by rst 6mo ago

On the flip side, I'm not sure I ever saw a revenue plan or exit strategy for Astral other than acquihire. And most plausible bidders are unfortunate in one way or another.

hijodelsol 6mo ago

They could have joined projects like the Linux Foundation which try to not depend on any single donor, even though complete independence from big tech is not possible. I don't know the motivation behind Astral's approach, but this acquisition does leave a weird taste behind about how serious they were about truly open source software. Time will tell, I guess. (Edit: typo)

colesantiago 6mo ago
> I don't know the motivation behind Astral's approach, but this acquisition does leave a weird taste behind about how serious they were about truly open source software. It was because Astral was VC funded. https://astral.sh/blog/announcing-astral-the-company-behind-ruff https://astral.sh/blog/announcing-astral-the-company-behind-...

japhyr 6mo ago

Astral was building a private package hosting system for enterprise customers. That was their stated approach to becoming profitable, while continuing to fund their open source work.

organsnyder 6mo ago
Private package hosting sounds like a commodity that would be hard to differentiate.
- IshKebab 6mo ago
  Yeah you'd think so but somehow JFrog (makers of Artifactory) made half a billion dollars last year. I don't really understand that. Conda also makes an implausible amount of money.
  - japhyr 6mo ago
    From my understanding there are a lot of companies that need their own package repositories, for a variety of reasons. I listened to a couple podcasts where Charlie Marsh outlined their plans for pyx, and why they felt their entry into that market would be profitable. My guess is that OpenAI just dangled way more money in their faces than what they were likely to get from pyx. Having a private package index gives you a central place where all employees can install from, without having to screen what each person is installing. Also, if I remember right, there are some large AI and ML focused packages that benefit from an index that's tuned to your specific hardware and workflows.
    - kickopotomus 6mo ago
      Private artifact repositories also help to mitigate supply chain risk since you can host all of your screened packages and don't have to worry about something getting removed from mvn-central, PyPI, NPM, etc. Plus the obvious need for a place to host proprietary internal libraries.
    - y1n0 6mo ago
      We have some kind of simple pip repo that is private where I work. What would astral bring to the table?
      - quadrifoliate 6mo ago
        How many people use that simple pip repo daily? If the number is not in the high hundreds, or a few thousands; maybe nothing. But once you get up there, any kind of better coordination layer is useful enough to pay money to a third party for, unless maintaining a layer over pip is your core competency.
        y1n0 6mo ago
        Close to a thousand I’m sure.
    - tempest_ 6mo ago
- atomicnumber3 6mo ago
  A commodity yes, but could be wrapped in to work very nicely with the latest and greatest in python tooling. Remember, the only 2 ways to make money are by bundling and unbundling. This seems like a pretty easy bundling story.
- nunez 6mo ago
  It's also a crowded and super mature space space between JFrog (Artifactory) and Sonatype (Nexus). They already support private PyPI repositories and are super locked in at pretty much every enterprise-level company out there.
  - ttul 6mo ago
    There’s always room for improvement…
  - EatFlamingDeath 6mo ago
    I've used JFrog Artifactory before and I wish I didn't.
    - donaldihunter 6mo ago
      Ditto for nexus
- chanux 6mo ago
  With the goodwill and mindshare they earned, it does not feel impossible. Perhaps OpenAI is aiming for a more compelling suit of things for penetrating enterprise (I'm just speculating as I go here).
r_lee 6mo ago
that was never going to work, let's be honest
pjmlp 6mo ago
What would be the added value against JFrog or Nexus, for example?
justcool393 6mo ago
i mean ofc but like you can self-host pypi and the "Docker Hub" model isn't like VC-expected level returns especially as ECR and GHCR and the other repos exist