Here's the one-hundred ninety-eighth 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 discussions on WordPress and Y Combinator, major updates from Plane, LiquidAI, and W4 Games, JJ speaking about Bittensor at Google Toronto (video below), and more!
Enjoy!
💰 COSS Funding
No COSS funding announcements this week.
📚 COSS Content
Alexander Lin: "after an "open source" project successfully completes a round of fundraising, in the spirit of open source, all fundraising materials used by investors for diligence should be released to the public" Link
Matt Mullenweg: "Matt Mullenweg calls WP Engine a 'cancer to WordPress' and urges community to switch providers techcrunch.com/2024/09/22/mat... via @techcrunch" Link
rustdesk: "reddit.com/r/rustdesk/com..." Link
Steven Tey: "We just hit a massive milestone @dubdotco: 10x MRR in 2024. ...and we still have ~3 more months till the end of the year. Excited to keep cooking -- LFG" Link
JJ: "The @Parallel team are doing phenomenal work with @AIWayfinder - think of this as the smartest AI agent you can interface with to do ANYTHING (arbitrarily complex) with your token holdings." Link
Manesh Timilsina - Going to #WCUS: "Happy to know that @automattic is the #1 financial contributor of PHP (source: opencollective.com/phpfoundation). I agree @photomatt regarding giving back to the community. Because of the community, @WordPress has been the market leader for 20 years & we are doing business on top of it." Link
Matt Mullenweg: "Nearly half of all internet sites run on WordPress software: sherwood.news/tech/nearly-ha..." Link
Vikas Singhal: "With all the negativity surrounding Matt and Automattic, I feel it's important to share my own experience. About 2 years ago, I reached out to Matt (and a few others) for a seed round. I was hesitant about taking on investment since I'd always been a bootstrap kind of guy, but the experience has been nothing short of amazing, especially with @Professor on our team. Matt simply trusted the idea and my vision. In fact, I've never even interacted with him personally. I hope this all settles soon. Let's not forget, we're all here to create software that champions freedom and open access for everyone. I'll leave you with this: "A house divided against itself cannot stand." --- Abraham Lincoln" Link
Steven Tey: "This might seem like a small change, but I'm really excited for what this unlocks for Dub users. Say you run a SaaS product with dynamic user pages (e.g. @calcom's booking pages). You can now use referer URL data to see which pages drove the most signups/sales. Guide & demo" Link
JJ: "Fair source is NOT open source. Open source is sacred and means something very specific. That said, fair source is a type of proprietary software license ... totally fine, nothing evil or morally wrong with this. Just a very different set of tradeoffs." Link
The New Stack: "Open Source Licenses to Proprietary? @redmonk Data Shows Minor Impact | By @DavidCasselTNS #OpenSource @rstephensme @adamhjk @_cartermp @onlydole @_cartermp thenewstack.io/open-source-li..." Link
W4 Games: "Take Your Project to the Next Level with W4 Build! Sign up today to unlock all the benefits for your custom Godot project---optimize performance, reduce size, and get full support for the engine and GDExtensions. Apply here: w4games.com/w4build #W4Games #GODOT" Link
JJ: "Bittensor-powered open source alternative to Perplexity goes fully open! Beautiful work by @0xcarro and team." Link
Robby: "I can't believe @tnachen & I have been running the Open Source Startup Podcast for ~4 years and hit 150 episodes Time flies when you're having fun Check out our episodes with founders from @huggingface @vercel @HashiCorp @supabase @getsentry & more podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/ossst..." Link
JJ: "Ohhh, very cool...." Link
JJ: "When the private equity vultures start making moves, the pace of innovation clearly matters far less than squeezing every ounce of profit from an incumbent. This is why we invest in next-generation open source platforms like @planepowers, @nocodb and @appflowy." Link
Peer Richelsen --- oss/acc: "reduced churn by another -13.2% this month" Link
Mira Murati: "I shared the following note with the OpenAI team today." Link
Dr. Parik Patel, BA, CFA, ACCA Esq.: "How to make $10 billion dollars: - Raise $50 million from Elon Musk to start a nonprofit - Tell everyone you are doing this for the sake of humanity and raise billions - Convert from non-profit to for-profit and grant yourself equity" Link
JJ: "Llama is NOT open source." Link
amit: "so let me get this straight openai decides to become a for-profit company now the cto, head of research, and vp of training research all decide to leave on the same day this is announced sam altman gets a $10.5B pay day..." Link
Matt Mullenweg: "I tried to summarize the @wpengine and WordPress issue: ma.tt/2024/09/wordpr..." Link
Plane: "𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐥-𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞 𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐧 𝐏𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐬 𝐢𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐰 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐥. Collaborate with your team in real-time, view member cursors, and see who's making which changes as they happen. #PlanePro" Link
AppFlowy: "v0.7.0 is out with loads of updates, including Drag and drop document blocks Use an attachment as a card cover" Link
Peer Richelsen --- oss/acc: "why you should buy a @calcom subscription? if we go public we will use 10% of our revenue to lobby countries to remove daylight savings pinky (non-legally-binding) promise" Link
Paolo Belcastro: "This is not how open-source works, it's how open-source dies. Of course, there is no legal obligation to contribute, it's only necessary if one wants a project to thrive. PE companies like that don't care. When the project dies, they'll move on to another one." Link
Plane: "Didn't want to wait five years for this. dropping soon." Link
JJ: "Bittensor is next. Especially with the $100B AI compute investment Larry Fink is pulling together ... perfect timing for Larry to learn about the TAO." Link
OpenBB: "Wow! 50,000 users in the OpenBB Hub From analysts and quants to developers or retail investors, students, professors, and other professionals, they all have one thing in common: They believe it's time to bring investment research to the 21st century and stop using overpriced tools. And they're ready to give AI a chance. That's what OpenBB believes in too. And we couldn't be more proud to see so many of you joining this journey. Thank you And remember: the best is yet to come!" Link
Jamie Pine: "'My search for the perfect file manager ends with Spacedrive.' 0.5.0-beta is dropping next week and it will be huge follow @spacedriveapp . news.itsfoss.com/spacedrive/" Link
Al: "The 404---GEN Blender extension is available. "At its core, 404---GEN operates on the decentralized AI network, Bittensor, in which participants are rewarded for improving upon open-source SOTA (state-of-the-art) 3D generation models. As a result, the quality of 3D assets created with 404---GEN improves at the same rate as the industry as a whole." "We offer free access to our Blender plugin, web app, and Discord bot, allowing you to easily prompt 3D models. We run on Bittensor's sn17." $TAO #Subnet17" Link
Richie - oss/acc: "A brand new direction, rebuilt from the ground up. @Cap v0.3.0 is here." Link
Dare Obasanjo: "23andMe is struggling: its stock faces delisting, it shut down its drug unit, and most of its board resigned last week. CEO Anne Wojcicki is considering selling the company, meaning the DNA of 15 million users could be up for sale. Unlike passwords, you can't change your DNA." Link
JJ: "Someone should acquire @23andMe (stock is valued at $150M today), open source the data and bootstrap a genetics subnet on Bittensor with the newly unlocked DNA database of 15 million human genotypes. The incentive mechanism would reward contributions to this open database." Link
Steve Perry: "For those considering moving to Webflow from WordPress. Consider this. You can take your WordPress website and put it anywhere, and there are plenty of people that could help you. If this happened with a hosted solution such as Webflow or Squarespace, you'd be stuck unless you created a new website." Link
JJ: "Today, 6 years ago, I decided to dedicate my life to serving and accelerating the success of commercial open source founders --- and @OSSCapital was born. Thank you to our LPs and founders for believing in our mission. Truly, we're just getting started. Onwards!" Link
Matt Mullenweg: "I don't think they're worth a fraction of that now. Customers are leaving in droves. People are waking up to their bad behavior since 2018. It's a distressed asset." Link
Bailey Pumfleet: "This is a huge threat to COSS if someone can rip off another open source company and get into YC with it" Link
swyx: "new transformers killer in town! Been excited about @LiquidAI_ since I talked to @Plinz in April. Now they've finally launched LFMs! Shots fired..." Link
Peer Richelsen --- oss/acc: "a couple takes on the "vscode continue pearAI YC drama" for context: - i did YC in W19, big fan of YC - i run a large OSS project cal.com - i have the most respect for @garrytan, who also signed my O1 petition my takes: - i agree with my cofounder @BaileyPumfleet on this, its a bad look for everyone involved - i give the benefit of the doubt to @garrytan and will wait for more context - i don't think funding forks is a winning strategy, i have yet to see a fork be more successful than the initial steward..." Link
Kevin Xu: "How to convince investors that bigger chips are better than smaller chips for AI? Bigger fonts! #CerebrasIPO sec.gov/Archives/edgar..." Link
Steven Tey: "September was a massive month for @dubdotco, with our north-star metrics going through the roof: ◆ Clicks tracked → 20.2M (+90.9%) ◆ Links created → 113K (+128%) ◆ Total active domains → 4,621 (+11.3%) ◆ MRR went up by 15% Excited to keep the momentum going in October!" Link
Godot Engine: "Time for another #ProgressReport, XR Edition From body-tracking to pass-through improvements, read what the team has been up to - text sadly only available in 2D: godotengine.org/article/godot-..." Link
Dan Primack: "VC who didn't participate in OpenAI round: "We have some stock in Nvidia, and that's who's going to get all of this money anyway."" Link
W4 Games: "New Tools at Your Fingertips for Game Development! Want to reach all your players everywhere? Or simply stop cheaters in their tracks? W4 has you covered. Stay tuned for the reveal!Comment below what you think it could be #GodotEngine #GODOT #madewithgodot #W4games" Link
Steven Tey: "Incredibly excited to be launching the new @dubdotco Link Builder -- rebuilt from the ground up. Some of my favorite parts: ◆ Easily search your domains & tags ◆ Generate meta titles & descriptions with AI ◆ Link drafts & keyboard shortcuts Try out the demo" Link
Richie - oss/acc: "devastated about this. Guess I'll just have to use @Cap, the open source Loom alternative. Local mode is completely free (including the editor, to make beautiful screen recordings). then when I want to create a shareable link, I'll just subscribe. $72/yr. oh, also heard they'll have custom S3 storage support soon, so I'll be able to maintain complete ownership over my data." Link
Godot Engine: "The theme for this #DevSnapshot is speed Experience rendering, editor startup, filesystem operations, and more becoming faster than in previous Godot versions. But that's not all! Read the #ReleaseNotes for more cards up our sleeve godotengine.org/article/dev-sn..." Link
WPBeginner: "Looking for WP Engine alternatives? wpbeginner.com/showcase/best-... WPBeginner explores top hosting providers with features & pricing options that might be a better fit for your needs. Find your perfect #WordPress home!" Link
Dwain Maralack: "I'm staying. We have lots of work to do. The legal stuff will be handled by the lawyers. "Automattic Alignment" ma.tt/2024/10/alignm... via @photomatt" Link
Richie - oss/acc: "Reintroducing @Cap: The open source Loom alternative. 100% free locally with no usage limits. Powerful video editor, with support for screenshots, hotkeys, custom backgrounds & more." Link
JJ: "Here's my talk at Google Toronto earlier this week on @OSSCapital's journey so far and why I'm excited about Bittensor." Link
Dries Buytaert: "In light of the recent discussions within the #WordPress community, I decided to share my perspective on the 'Maker-Taker challenge' in open source, drawing from my experience with #Drupal. dri.es/solving-the-ma..." Link
Vamsi Kurama: "Real-time to pages is coming to Plane Community Edition in next release. Next release is T-5 days." Link
OpenBB: "The secret is out You have been asking for access to our AI financial terminal for a long time, and we're finally making it happen! We'll launch on Product Hunt on Monday and you can be the first to know everything. Just click on "Notify me" producthunt.com/products/openbb" Link
Bramwell: "A hefty new Godot tutorial all about raycasts is out and ready to watch! youtu.be/vGpFwaLUG4U" Link
Didier Lopes: "'Open source alternative to...' was a mistake. If software had been open source by default, humanity would be far more advanced. We should be talking about "closed source alternatives to..." instead." Link
CNBC: "Why WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg has gone 'nuclear' against tech investing giant Silver Lake cnbc.com/2024/10/05/wor..." Link
angad (τ, τ): "Here's @JosephJacks_ whole talk at the Google office on @opentensor and why he believes Bittensor is the next big thing JJ's @OSSCapital manages $1B+ and he has done early investments in @calcom, @LiquidAI_, @Parallel amongst others JJ outlines that his fund rarely does crypto deals but his fund made an exception given the unique nature of Bittensor video by: @Spingle_AI" Link
💸 COSS Liquidity (M&A + IPOs)
No COSS Liquidity announcements this week.
🛠️ COSS Jobs
- 4,732 jobs and 324 companies hiring! Link
📊 $COSS - Public Markets
$COSS markets up 0.50% last week
Latest $COSS markets as of last Friday at market close, courtesy of Koyfin
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