Here's the one-hundred fifty-second issue of COSS Weekly, the global commercial open source (COSS) company category newsletter, brought to you every weekend by the team at OSS Capital, creators and stewards of COSS Community and Open Core Summit.
We deliver only the most fresh 😋 news from the previous week in COSS across: Funding, Content, Jobs, Liquidity and $COSS (Public Markets).
Last week saw $76M in funding announcements from ScyllaDB and Fingerprint, updates from Git Round, conversations on AI, and major news for COSS companies!
Enjoy!
💰 COSS Funding: $76M
- ScyllaDB, the scalable NoSQL database, announced their $43M Series C led by Eight Roads Ventures and AB Private Credit Investors. Link
- Fingerprint, the device intelligence API, announced their $33M Series C led by Nexus Venture Partners. Link
- oska: "Apply to @git_round! It's only been a few weeks for us at @infrhq, but the advice, community & learning are helping us build 10x faster. Great peers, great mentors & a great program!" Link
📚 COSS Content
JJ --- e/acc: "Cal is now AI powered" Link
hardmaru: "Promptbreeder: Self-Referential Self-Improvement via Prompt Evolution Get LLMs to invent their own mutation operators for evolving prompts. Outperforms Chain-of-Thought and Plan-and-Solve and gets SOTA on a bunch of stuff! @chrisantha_f et al. arxiv.org/abs/2309.16797" Link
Open Source Startup Podcast: "The latest Open Source Startup Podcast digs into the benefits & challenges of open source w/ @adamhjk from @thesysteminit & @chef We discuss: Why System Initiative is open source Why Open Core is flawed HashiCorp's license change & @OpenTofuOrg podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/ossst..." Link
JJ --- e/acc: "Or as a COSS founder you can partner with @OpenCoreVenture or @OSSCapital who will ensure permanent open source licensing at the core --- implemented vis investment docs. Foundations are optional. linuxfoundation.org/blog/how-open-..." Link
JJ --- e/acc: "Awesome to see @HeatherMeeker4 on stage at @TEDConf AI preaching the gospel of open source (weights) AI." Link
JJ --- e/acc: ""No major foundation model developer is close to providing adequate transparency, revealing a fundamental lack of transparency in the AI industry."... (LLaMa 2) only scores 54% on Stanford's foundation model transparency index: crfm.stanford.edu/fmti/" Link
AppFlowy: "Exciting Update! Our website just got a makeover. Explore the fresh look at appflowy.io. Now you can download AppFlowy for macOS, Windows, and Linux directly from our website!" Link
TechCrunch: "5 investors on the pros and cons of open source AI business models tcrn.ch/3Qnhy9R by @kyle_l_wiggers" Link
JJ --- e/acc: "Such a privilege to hang out with @BaileyPumfleet the superstar co-founder of @calcom" Link
TED AI: ".@HeatherMeeker4, partner at @OSSCapital, explained the importance of defining shared guidelines for open source #artificialintelligence that prioritize trust and transparency. #TEDAI2023" Link
JJ --- e/acc: "So I understand @alexisohanian has to bake a cake for @BaileyPumfleet and @peer_rich once @calcom crosses 100 apps in the App Store ... there's already 77 amazing apps --- you know what to do: cal.com/apps" Link
JJ --- e/acc: "Did you know @godotengine powers the @Tesla mobile apps? Well done !!!!!!!!" Link
Spacedrive: "30,000 unique users in a week" Link
oska: "Copy by simply dragging over the screenshot. A highly awaited update is coming to @infrhq You can copy links, text & so much more w/ just a right click. Infr is an open source app that records everything you see on your device. Join the waitlist ➔ infrhq.com" Link
Spacedrive: "One of our brilliant engineers just shipped a 20x performance boost to the thumbnail generator, and it's coming in version 0.1.2" Link
Tauri: "We're not saying you shouldn't nominate the cofounders of tauri "lucasfernog" or "nothingismagick" for being @github Stars. It's definitely your call who not to nominate - but you really should nominate somebodies and share your appreciation! stars.github.com" Link
Liyas Thomas: "Hoppscotch is now the most-starred API development platform on GitHub. @hoppscotch_io" Link
JJ --- e/acc: "We are only ~ 2 weeks into the founding cohort of @git_round and I am BLOWN AWAY at the execution speed of @revertdotdev (product integrations), @milliondotjs (70%+ faster React components), @InfrHQ (database for memories), and @ShelfQR (enterprise asset tracking)." Link
Percy Liang: "As capabilities of foundation models are waxing, transparency is waning. How do we quantify transparency? We introduce the Foundation Models Transparency Index (FMTI), evaluating 10 foundation model developers on 100 indicators. crfm.stanford.edu/fmti/" Link
Draw Things: "1.20231018.0 just dropped in iOS / macOS AppStore! This version fixed LoRA training issues that "overcook" the loss. It should make your training process much smoother. We also added a "small" language model (BLIP2 + OPT 2.7B) to help caption training images easier. (1/2)" Link
JJ --- e/acc: "We are 1K stars away from cracking 50,000 @rustdesk At this rate, we have 100+ users for every single GitHub star based on known registered devices... and growing very rapidly. All organic. Not a single cent of marketing / ads spent. github.com/rustdesk/rustd..." Link
clem: "Could we stop comparing raw models (llama, stable diffusion,...) with APIs (gpt4, claude,...). Most APIs probably include a lot of engineering tricks and even several models under the hood chained or MOEd together so these are not the same things at all and can't be compared." Link
Open Source Startup Podcast: "New Open Source Startup Pod all about GraphQL APIs @amanda_robs & @tnachen talk w/ @grafbase CEO @fbjork about: "Unified data layers" Simplifying backend deployment Finding early adopters in e-comm & IoT Grafbase Launch Weeks & more! podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/ossst..." Link
Formbricks: "Here we are! 3117 stars and still trending Thanks so much, hugely helpful for everything we do Go take a day off and celebrate, it is a day of joy! (@MattiNannt @ShubhamInTech @pandeymangg @DhruwangJariwa1 @neilchauhan2_ we keep shipping tho )" Link
Peer Richelsen: "i am getting really tired of using closed-source SaaS whenever i either run into a bug or a tiny feature request that we could ship ourselves but cant because the repo is private" Link
tobi lutke: "Open Source models are a must have for safety, innovation, and accountability" Link
JJ --- e/acc: "Yikes. @RewindAI (closed source) uses 62%+ of CPU vs. @InfrHQ (open source) only 3%~. I turned off everything but recording screen for both. The latter is built on @TauriApps." Link
JJ --- e/acc: "Grand total of 6 projects in the @OSSCapital on the top page @github trending charts this week. Congrats @formbricks, @spacedriveapp, @calcom, @MindsDB, @rustdesk and Burn!" Link
JJ --- e/acc: "...Later in the day, open source advocate Heather Meeker sent a zinger toward OpenAI by saying, "Let's talk about open source AI. Not OpenAI---that's just a company name." arstechnica.com/information-te..." Link
JJ --- e/acc: "Top @ElectronJS desktop apps sucking enormous CPU time that must migrate to @TauriApps asap ... --- @SlackHQ --- @WhatsApp --- @signalapp --- @discord --- @MicrosoftTeams --- @code --- @GitHubDesktop --- @1Password" Link
James Perkins: "Used @documenso for the first time today! 10/10" Link
Tejas Kumar: "Shoutout to @calcom and @peer_rich for boldly building his company in public, with salaries, investments, and various figures being fully transparent. With this level of openness, accountability is baked in from day one. Would love to see more of this! cal.com/open" Link
CrabNebula: "What do people build with @TauriApps? - Devtools - Games - Drawing tools - Apps for communication - Apps for music / musical instruments - And more In the link below, you can check #Tauri's community as well as many open-source projects. discord.com/channels/61618..." Link
JJ --- e/acc: "Microsoft is FULL steam ahead on regulatory capture: --- Co-design the laws that dictate capability thresholds of AI (aka you can only compute so much before the government goes after you) --- Co-design government license for "too powerful" AI (aka totalitarian state apparatus on math) --- Co-author "the list" of "too risky" AI systems to ban blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/..." Link
Didier Lopes: "1k signups on Hub away from 25k 400 stars away from 25k Which is going to get there first?" Link
💸 COSS Liquidity (M&A + IPOs)
- TechCrunch: "AMD acquires Nod.ai to bolsters its AI software ecosystem tcrn.ch/3tp6MGZ by @kyle_l_wiggers" Link
- JJ --- e/acc: ""My phone started ringing from every open source startup in Silicon Valley going 'I think this is the right model'." ... So, that's patently false. We (@OSSCapital) hold the largest COSS portfolio in the world. AGPL works well and Hashi could have seen a $25 Billion exit to Microsoft before their IPO (don't ask how I know this) well before switching to BSL. Mongo and Elastic's changes were also unnecessary! thestack.technology/hashicorp-ceo-..." Link
🛠️ COSS Jobs
- 3,777 jobs and 295 companies hiring! Link
- Algora PBC: "$1,000 community bounty @rustdesk funded by user 'wrjcs' to resolve a bug total bounty is now $1,300 github.com/rustdesk/rustd... bounty payouts with Stripe & Alipay create community bounties algora.io/org/rustdesk/b... algora.io/bounties/new #opensource #rust" Link
📊 $COSS - Public Markets
- $COSS markets down 1.04% last week
- Latest $COSS markets snapshot below as of market close last Friday courtesy of Koyfin.
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