I've been burned too many times by embracing open source products like this.
We've been fed promises like these before. They will inevitably get acquired. Years of documentation, issues, and pull requests will be deleted with little-to-no notice. An exclusively commercial replacement will materialize from the new company that is inexplicably missing the features you relied on in the first place.
woodruffw · 12m ago
For what it's worth, I understand this concern. However, I want to emphasize that pyx is intentionally distinct from Astral's tools. From the announcement post:
> Beyond the product itself, pyx is also an instantiation of our strategy: our tools remain free, open source, and permissively licensed — forever. Nothing changes there. Instead, we'll offer paid, hosted services that represent the "natural next thing you need" when you're already using our tools: the Astral platform.
Basically, we're hoping to address this concern by building a separate sustainable commercial product rather than monetizing our open source tools.
ctoth · 38m ago
As I said a couple weeks ago, they're gonna have to cash out at some point. The move won't be around Uv -- it'll be a protected private PyPi or something.
I haven't adopted uv yet watching to see what will be their move. We recently had to review our use of Anaconda tools due to their changes, then review Qt changes in license. Not looking forward to another license ordeal.
zanie · 4m ago
We're hoping that building a commercial service makes it clear that we have a sustainable business model and that our tools (like uv) will remain free and permissively licensed.
(I work at Astral)
Myrmornis · 36m ago
I wonder whether it will have a flat namespace that everyone competes over or whether the top-level keys will be user/project identifiers of some sort. I hope the latter.
cr125rider · 9m ago
Once we learn to namespace things it’s gonna be so nice. Seems we keep re-learning that lesson…
tmvphil · 33m ago
Fundamentally we still have the flat namespace of top level python imports, which is the same as the package name for ~95% of projects, so I'm not sure how they
could really change that.
notatallshaw · 21m ago
Package names and module names are not coupled to each other. You could have package name like "company-foo" and import it as "foo" or "bar" or anything else.
But you can if you want have a non-flat namespace for imports using PEP 420 – Implicit Namespace Packages, so all your different packages "company-foo", "company-bar", etc. can be installed into the "company" namespace and all just work.
Nothing stops an index from validating that wheels use the same name or namespace as their package names. Sdists with arbitrary backends would not be possible, but you could enforce what backends were allowed for certain users.
ddavis · 48m ago
Been waiting to see what Astral would do first (with regards to product). Seems like a mix of artifactory and conda? artifactory providing a package server and conda trying to fix the difficulty that comes from Python packages with compiled components or dependencies, mostly solved by wheels, but of course PyTorch wheels requiring specific CUDA can still be a mess that conda fixes
notatallshaw · 42m ago
Given Astral's heavy involvement in the wheelnext project I suspect this index is an early adopter of Wheel Variants which are an attempt to solve the problems of CUDA (and that entire class of problems not just CUDA specifically) in a more automated way than even conda: https://wheelnext.dev/proposals/pepxxx_wheel_variant_support...
zanie · 2m ago
It's actually not powered by Wheel Variants right now, though we are generally early adopters of the initiative :)
PaulHoule · 48m ago
Been waiting for something like this to make it easier to manage multi-package projects.
TheChaplain · 42m ago
Pyx is just a registry, just like Pypi, or did I misunderstood it?
woodruffw · 30m ago
Not exactly -- part of pyx is a registry (and that part speaks the same standards as PyPI), but the bigger picture is that pyx part of a larger effort to make Python packaging faster and more cohesive for developers.
To be precise: pyx isn't intended to be a public registry or a free service; it's something Astral will be selling. It'll support private packages and corporate use cases that are (reasonably IMO) beyond PyPI's scope.
(FD: I work on pyx.)
bitpush · 32m ago
Sounds like it. Also ..
> pyx is also an instantiation of our strategy: our tools remain free, open source, and permissively licensed — forever.
woodruffw · 23m ago
FWIW, I think the full paragraph around that snippet is important context:
> Beyond the product itself, pyx is also an instantiation of our strategy: our tools remain free, open source, and permissively licensed — forever. Nothing changes there. Instead, we'll offer paid, hosted services that represent the "natural next thing you need" when you're already using our tools: the Astral platform.
pyx itself is not a tool, it's a service.
wiseowise · 50m ago
Honey wake up, new Astral project just dropped.
metalliqaz · 9m ago
> Waitlist
> Private registry
ouch.
yoavm · 3m ago
I actually think this is great. If Astral can figure out a way to make money using a private registry (something that is used mainly by companies), then they'll have to resources to keep building their amazing open-source projects — Ruff and uv. That's a huge win for Python.
This is a joke, obviously. We've had more than 14 for years.
We've been fed promises like these before. They will inevitably get acquired. Years of documentation, issues, and pull requests will be deleted with little-to-no notice. An exclusively commercial replacement will materialize from the new company that is inexplicably missing the features you relied on in the first place.
> Beyond the product itself, pyx is also an instantiation of our strategy: our tools remain free, open source, and permissively licensed — forever. Nothing changes there. Instead, we'll offer paid, hosted services that represent the "natural next thing you need" when you're already using our tools: the Astral platform.
Basically, we're hoping to address this concern by building a separate sustainable commercial product rather than monetizing our open source tools.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44712558
Now what do we have here?
(I work at Astral)
But you can if you want have a non-flat namespace for imports using PEP 420 – Implicit Namespace Packages, so all your different packages "company-foo", "company-bar", etc. can be installed into the "company" namespace and all just work.
Nothing stops an index from validating that wheels use the same name or namespace as their package names. Sdists with arbitrary backends would not be possible, but you could enforce what backends were allowed for certain users.
To be precise: pyx isn't intended to be a public registry or a free service; it's something Astral will be selling. It'll support private packages and corporate use cases that are (reasonably IMO) beyond PyPI's scope.
(FD: I work on pyx.)
> pyx is also an instantiation of our strategy: our tools remain free, open source, and permissively licensed — forever.
> Beyond the product itself, pyx is also an instantiation of our strategy: our tools remain free, open source, and permissively licensed — forever. Nothing changes there. Instead, we'll offer paid, hosted services that represent the "natural next thing you need" when you're already using our tools: the Astral platform.
pyx itself is not a tool, it's a service.
> Private registry
ouch.