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Joseph (JJ) Jacks for COSS Community

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COSS Weekly #61

Here's the sixty-first issue of COSS Weekly, the global commercial open source (COSS) company category newsletter, brought to you every Sunday afternoon (Pacific Time) 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).

Happy New Year! We are back in regular action with COSS Weekly.

While we have seen the public markets and crypto pull back substantially on multiples and stocks overall, driven largely by US Fed interest rate hike fears and inflation gyrations, COSS as a category has historically proven to be incredibly resilient and event out-performing most other assets in times of great correction / even recession. That said, we expect 2022 to be another banner year — let’s dig in! Lots of content below from our last issue before the holiday break.

This last week saw $20.7M in COSS funding announcements from Ockam, Theatre.js, and Foxglove, plus year-end and new year's conversations from across the space!

Enjoy!


💰 COSS Funding: $20.7M

  • Ockam, building tools for secure connected systems, announced their $12.5M Series A led by Craft Ventures. Link

  • Theatre.js, building tools for web interactives and motion design, announced their $4.5M Seed led by OSS Capital. Link

  • Foxglove, building developer tools for robotics, announced their $3.7M Seed led by Amplify Partners. Link

  • JJ: "Aria is one of the most talented humans I have ever had the privilege to meet. HIGH HONOR for us @OSSCapital to lead the seed round for @theatre_js. Ushering in the era of the immersive, interactive, collaborative web!" Link

  • Aria Minaei: "Feeling proud to have such an exceptional group of investors -- Ram Shriram -- founding board member of Google. Honored to have Ram's vote of confidence" Link


📚 COSS Content

  • Juan-Carlos Foust: "I think DAOs might end up having an insanely transformational impact on open source. Really exciting to think about new funding/ownership models. So many projects, especially protocols, are naturally suited for open source development." Link
  • Liyas Thomas: "Developer experience and accessibility are important to us. Navigate @hoppscotch_io without clicking your mouse. Great job by our accessibility team and community suggestions. #a11y" Link

  • Aria Minaei: "If you're new to Theatre.js, here is a short thread" Link

  • Open source Calendly alternative http://Cal.com promises greater data control by Paul Sawers (VentureBeat). Link

  • Star History: "@nocodb is #OpenSource Airtable Alternative! What a chart! #airtable #Oss #bystarhistory https://star-history.com/#nocodb/nocodb" Link

  • Chris Aniszczyk: "you will see more #backstageio next year! https://backstage.io/blog/2021/12/2 " Link

  • JJ: "IMHO, @cue_lang is on the precipice of becoming the Lingua Franca for configuration of distributed and cloud-native systems. Config-as-Data > Config-as-Code." Link

  • Erica Brescia: "For many years, I've been a huge fan of

    @redpointvc, sending many founders their way. Honored to not just be a part of such a phenomenal team, but to have the opportunity to learn and grow with them and the incredible leaders we support. Fired up for 2022" Link

  • Flagsmith: "Our CEO @benjarom3 talked to @liyasthomas who founded @hoppscotch_io, a super popular project on @github. How @hoppscotch_io reached 30k+ stars on Github. A super interesting story for all founders who make open-source products! https://flagsmith.com/podcast/hoppsc " Link

  • Business Insider Tech: "Check out the 12-slide pitch deck an ex-Google engineer used to raise $2 million for his AWS challenger M30" Link

  • Star History: "Guess you won't mind adding couple stars github.com/remix-run/remix @remix_run #bystarhistory " Link

  • jack: "You don't own "web3." The VCs and their LPs do. It will never escape their incentives. It's ultimately a centralized entity with a different label. Know what you're getting into..." Link

  • OSS Capital: "COSS is equally critical & applicable in the worlds of Web2 and Web3: Open Core startups can monetize FOSS-powered services/products. Tokens can monetize FOSS-powered consensus/protocols." Link

  • Pomp: "It takes immense humility to create a world changing product, open source it, and then walk away." Link

  • Gamestonk Terminal: "Big Update! Now with 10x faster workflow! github.com/GamestonkTerminal/GamestonkTerminal/pull/1041: -Scripting feature -Running a .gst batch job -Relative and Absolute menu jumping -reset command -Auto-completion -Auto-correct #100DaysOfMLCode #pythoncode #coders #TensorFlow #MachineLearning #stockmarkets " Link

  • Automattic: "'As more and more of our lives start to be run and dictated by the technology we use, it's a human right to be able to see how that technology works and modify it.'--- Automattic CEO @photomatt. Read more at @protocol's latest feature." Link

  • Matt Holt: "After the #log4j/#log4shell events, I read so many hot takes about problems with open source. I wrote nearly 6,000 words on the crux of open source sustainability based on the decade of experience I have in both failing and succeeding with funding OSS." Link

  • ^ JJ's response: "Probably of the best pieces I've read on the OSS sustainability "issue" by someone extremely credible" Link

  • Gamestonk Terminal: "Check out a @Reddit example of #Researchpaper workflow using our #free #OpenSource #python #Financial #research, featuring sector rotation. https://reddit.com/r/StockMarket/comments/rlvlbp/sector_rotation_for_selfdirected_portfolio #100DaysOfCloud #100DaysOfCode #100DaysOfMLCode #100daysofcodechallenge #coders #Investment #Daytrader #stonks " Link

  • Open source NLP is fueling a new wave of startups by Kyle L Wiggers (VentureBeat). Link

  • Lex Fridman: "Here's my conversation with Peter Wang (@pwang), one of the most impactful people in the Python community. Also, he is a physicist, philosopher & someone who both @EricRWeinstein & @teoliphant said I absolutely must talk to, so I did and loved it! https://youtube.com/watch?v=X0-SXS " Link

  • Plausible Analytics: "We've reached $50k MRR and 5350 subscribers! Thanks to your help, we've 5X'd our MRR since January and introduced simple, privacy-first and open source analytics to many more sites!" Link

  • Gamestonk Terminal: "See our smile in the #options menu of our @OpenSourceOrg #pythoncode #financialeducation #research, on #github now: https://bit.ly/3r0LiwU Give it a #BUMP for @StarHistoryHQ #LoveandWish y'all a #HappyHolidays #100DaysOfCode #Developers #TensorFlow #keras #OptionsTrading " Link

  • VentureBeat: "'As a company, we never treated open source as a business model --- open source is not a business model.' Elastic CEO Shay Banon reflects on the big license switch, and what it really means to be 'open source'." Link

  • JJ: "Greatly saddened today to learn about the passing of my friend Naren Gupta, co-founder of @NexusVP and former Chairman of @RedHat. Naren was a very kind, wise, intelligent and humble man. He helped so many founders build great COSS startups, even my own. RIP Naren." Link

  • Sudheendra Chilappagari: "Naren ji was a legend. I had the good fortune of meeting him during peak quarantine in his backyard over afternoon tea. Even though he was 70+, he had the energy of a 20-year-old, there were so many stories and so much wisdom. Saddened by the news, may his soul rest in peace" Link

  • Open source is never far away from controversy or acclaim. Here's a peek at some of the biggest talking points of the past year by Paul Sawers (VentureBeat). Link

  • Balaji Srinivasan: "Blockchains are the next step after open source, as they provide open data & open execution. You don't just see the source code with something like Bitcoin or Ethereum. With a full node you see all historical data, all pending writes, and can retrace every step of code execution." Link

  • ^ JJ's response: "This is very, very far from the truth. Blockchains would not exist without the pre-existence and foundation set by free software, and open source. Nothing is coming 'after' OSS. OSS is still just getting started in so many domains." Link

  • Liyas Thomas: "We love Open Source! @hoppscotch_io is becoming one of the most popular GitHub repositories in the world. 200 more to 35k GitHub stars. _600k all-time users. 170+ contributors. ~26k monthly users." Link

  • JJ: "In 2021, @OSSCapital was honored to lead the Seed rounds in these phenomenal startups, serving millions of users & OSS communities w/ 80,000+ stars.

  • FOSSA: "Q and A: Leading OSS license compliance expert Heather Meeker discusses the AGPL and the license compliance controversy surrounding Truth Social" Link

  • Umbrel: "1/ Y'all --- just wanted to say thank you. What a crazy, insanely joyful, rewarding, and humbling year 2021 has been --- from 941 to 15,000+ Umbrel users.If we had to live it all over again, we'd be right here, writing this very tweet thread. Here's our year in review (Continue Thread)" Link

  • Matt Mullenweg: "Also sometimes governance needs to evolve or shift in ways that might not be anticipated ahead of time or articulated in code. Finally, great products are seldom created by committee." Link

  • Sam Bhagwat: "Continuing the thread of how open source could eat SaaS: Modular SaaS Primitives" Link

  • Andreas Klinger: "Cal.com just launched a feature to use the content in your crypto-wallet as login. Ex Usecase: Only join the investor update call of Bored Ape Yacht Club if you have a BAYC NFT in your wallet. Or: - Decision discussions for DAOs - Buy/sell meetups for NFTs" Link

  • Gamestonk Terminal: "Pull Request #1110: New time-series feature! #cryptocurrency #wallets with non-zero balances. Try the #free, #OpenSource, #Python3 #Financial terminal for #researchers in all varieties of #assets! Get it on #github: https://bit.ly/3r0LiwU #coder #DeveloperJobs #developers " Link

  • Peer Richelsen: "cal.com was featured again in @VentureBeat with a great quote by @BaileyPumfleet" Link

  • Michael Jackson: "We open-sourced @remix_run on Nov 22, and we're closing out the year at 10k stars on GitHub! We are tremendously grateful for all the support. Here's to helping us all build better websites in 2022!" Link

  • Forem: "#Forem team member @nickytonline spent some time recapping his 2021. Who needs resolutions for the new year when you've made this kind of impact all across the board?! https://t.co/1lMjrageWl". Link

  • MergeStat: "Summarizing a year of commits with MergeStat 🎉 https://t.co/7uhWobHT32". Link

  • Job: "1/ I've been managing people remotely for 8 years. Here's how to be a better manager in a remote (distributed) team:". Link

  • JJ: "COSS in 2022 onwards 🚀 https://t.co/LHLAHE7pxV". Link

  • nocodb: "@nocodb + sqlite3 + @litestreamio = 🚀 just awesome The default db is sqlite3 & @litestreamio backsup/restores when these env variables are set: - AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID - AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY - AWS_BUCKET - AWS_BUCKET_PATH Post coming soon. https://t.co/YdsEJM3JA1". Link

  • Sergio Xalambrí: "I just published an article on how to run both, @nextjs and @remix_run, together in the same server, so you can gradually migrate your Next app to Remix 🤯 https://t.co/uzxlGQg7IH". Link

  • Matt Asay: "The things that change everything...don't. Like open source, as @benedictevans says, on his way to a larger point about crypto (and other big questions for 2022) https://t.co/hGlhNZFWuF https://t.co/DUJ47EqfDI". Link

  • A look back at some of the commercial open source companies that gained traction in 2021 by Paul Sawers (VentureBeat). Link

  • Liyas Thomas: "@hoppscotch_io got mentioned in the latest article about '30 startups that show how open source ate the world in 2021' by @VentureBeat. https://t.co/9vQDcd0Mhb". Link

  • Cal.com: "'Before [https://t.co/oBpdVL4YGC], a person that wanted an ID card had to physically go to the place in the middle of the night or dawn to be on a physical line, waiting to be attended.' https://t.co/5Mr6ALq5ma". Link

  • JJ "VERY exciting news for ⁦@OSSCapital⁩ --- we are highly honored to officially welcome the amazing Heather Meeker as a member of partnership in service of COSS founders worldwide 🌍. Heather is one-of-a-kind! 🥰🔥🚀 // ⁦@HeatherMeeker4⁩ https://t.co/D258u0CCgh". Link

  • Rishabh Kaul (hiring for devrel): "2021 has been an incredible year for @theappsmith Github ⭐️1.2K -> 10.8K Apps Built <1K -> 79000+ Users from 100+ countries 150+ feature updates 168 contributors Series A from Canaan, Accel, BVP, COSS Here's the journey of our little open-source project and what's ahead 👇". Link

  • ERPNext: "Open Source is a game changer for B2B software. Its time we gave pricing a re-think. https://t.co/oUkM03BXJc". Link

  • JJ "Open source alternatives rapidly evolve from simply commoditizing to sharply out-innovating, faster than most realize.". Link

  • JJ "Odoo is quickly becoming the next COSS decacorn ($10B+ beyond). Well done, Fabien + team. To the moon 🚀 🌝 ✨ https://t.co/2WhbsjjwAd". Link

  • peerrich.eth: "do at least one nice thing per day. if you want to help us out, head over to @ProductHunt's Golden Kitty Award 2021 🐱🏆 and nominate https://t.co/Cc8su8YPuu 🙏 https://t.co/Pubehwh88k #GoldenKittyAwards2021 https://t.co/dnpF0699bc". Link

  • The OSS Startup: "🎉2021 was a big year for the OSS Startup Podcast🎉 1. Launched! 2. Released 14 episodes 3. Created content w/ amazing guests (@mschireson, @LelandTakamine, @jthandy, @jlowin, @funcOfJoe, etc) 4. Had hit episodes like @mfateev of @temporalio 5. Grew our listener base to 4K!". Link

  • HashiCorp: "HashiCorp 2021 Year in Review --- a year of growth and milestones, from Terraform 1.0 and HCP Packer to becoming a public company. https://t.co/pWmklrtIwa". Link

  • Decibel: "How does @Vercel leverage the popularity of @NextJS, their open-source, to sell their enterprise solutions to development teams while staying authentic to their developer-first roots? @kevinvangundy shares best practices here: https://t.co/QDFFXYJEfc #plg #PLGtoSales". Link

  • Sid Sijbrandij: "To enable people to learn to code even when they only have a phone and unreliable internet, I started Offline Code Camp app https://t.co/UVRxJzkNqq It lets you complete the awesome @freeCodeCamp courses on an Android phone. The app was made by @mdp Please try it and give feedback". Link

  • Sid Sijbrandij: "In 2011, GitLab was created as an open source tool, and soon after an impressive community formed around it. Last month, I shared at SaaStr Scale my learnings as we've built the GitLab company and continue to co-create the product with the wider community. https://t.co/lVx0JF7X2X". Link

  • Gamestonk Terminal: "How #opensource #coders work is fundamentally different from their closed colleagues. Didier Lopes on the #uxdesign, #pythoncode, and discusses some of the latest revisions to the #code and #features of the Gamestonk Terminal https://t.co/9rG9VCOE4w https://t.co/IA1w3foMFi". Link

  • Sanjay Poonen: "My blog on 2022 Tech Predictions and Investment Ideas. Enjoy! Feedback welcome... https://t.co/eT4p77rmfn". Link

  • Robby: "Super excited to release our latest @OssStartup Podcast episode w/ @rauchg, CEO of @vercel⚡️ Kicking off 2022 w/ a 🔥 guest (cc @tnachen) Full ep --> https://t.co/Gs5vaY4qvA https://t.co/Jh5QgF7ZmA". Link

  • jack: "Built to last: An Open Approach to Financial Freedom https://t.co/HGBAjK0eY8". Link

  • Cal.com: "We just broke 2,000 followers on Twitter. Thank you all for being part of this journey! 🎉 If you haven't already, also make sure to join our Slack at https://t.co/E7VFDMH6Wp. Enjoy your stay in our smol community 🙏 https://t.co/AInUhobxSn". Link

  • JJ: "3 of the top 10 public Cloud/SaaS companies are COSS. By Jan 2023, I predict this may grow to 6 out of 10. https://t.co/O42MH9wAEu". Link

  • JJ: "My new years resolution is to start consistently blogging about COSS again! Here are a bunch of topics I will unpack (some already done) from a list I promised in 2018. All posts will live @COSS_Community. 🙏 https://t.co/Z4qgheB3cT". Link

  • JJ: ".@Calendso is going hyperbolic. LFG! 🚀 https://t.co/TLKLzeqh4B https://t.co/rXqFrDNhdN". Link

  • Matt Mullenweg: "People seem to be redefining Web 2.0 as Facebook, etc, that own data, but Web 2.0 at the time was platforms like WordPress, Odeo, Six Apart, Flickr, Technorati, and http://del.icio.us that had open data and interoperated. https://flickr.com/photos/ross/49" Link


💸 COSS Liquidity (M&A + IPOs)

  • Heather Meeker: "Redis Labs heading to Nasdaq at $4-5 billion valuation" Link

  • JJ: "Soon, you will be able to track the progress of the upcoming $COSS ETF even before it launches with the first and leading open source public equities analytics platform @gamestonkt 🤓✨ https://t.co/svAMSPrIgU Here's a sneak peek: https://t.co/lVcMgWlTr6". Link


🛠️ COSS Jobs

  • Aria Minaei: "Before I say more, we're assembling the core team! Join me and the talented @AndrewPrifer as a Founding Designer/Engineer/Researcher. If you like Design or dev Tools, Tools for Thought, Future of Coding, PL Design, or HCI, get in touch" Link

  • JJ: "Are you an awesome copywriter? https://t.co/1P1urI1HDD is hiring a fully-remote 🌎 copywriter to support blogs, user case studies and more creative writing projects! ✍️ --- DM @peer_rich to learn more! // @calendso". Link

  • Jeremy Stretch: "It's official! @NS1 is hiring a customer support & solutions engineer for #NetBox as we ramp up our plans for 2022. This is an ideal position for someone who enjoys working with NetBox and enabling others to unlock its full potential." Link


📊 $COSS - Public Markets

  • $COSS markets down 0.78% last week

  • Latest $COSS markets snapshot below as of market close last Friday courtesy of Koyfin.

Koyfin market data

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