this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2026
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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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[–] Solumbran@lemmy.world 21 points 2 months ago

Better title:

Astral products now defunct, SlopMachines make another victim.

[–] xep@discuss.online 15 points 2 months ago (2 children)
[–] throws_lemy@lemmy.nz 3 points 2 months ago (2 children)

sigh, now I need to find an alternative to uv

[–] BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago (2 children)
[–] throws_lemy@lemmy.nz 1 points 2 months ago

yeah, I guess I’ll have to switch to poetry unless someone fork it

[–] Everyday0764@lemmy.zip 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago

I know. But not for long. 😞

[–] axum@lemmy.blahaj.zone -2 points 2 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.

[–] morrowind@lemmy.ml 6 points 2 months ago

I know gaslight has lost all meaning but this might be worst use I've seen yet

[–] rhymepurple@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 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.

[–] errer@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

Back to conda for me!

…wait no that’s a fate worse than death

[–] wingswithbones@lemmus.org 12 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Monopoly phase of extinguishing competition

[–] TheBlackLounge@lemmy.zip 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] wingswithbones@lemmus.org -2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] TheBlackLounge@lemmy.zip 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] wingswithbones@lemmus.org 0 points 2 months ago

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

[–] PolarKraken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 2 months ago

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

[–] buffalobuffalo@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 2 months ago
[–] parzival@lemmy.org 2 points 2 months ago

Godamnit I just switched to astral

[–] melfie@lemy.lol 2 points 2 months ago

I was recently eyeing uv, but guess I’ll stick with Poetry.

[–] awake@lemmy.wtf 2 points 2 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.