Hi folks,
In this week’s edition of Forkable, I look at open source stalwarts Richard E. Fontana and Bradley M. Kuhn relaunching Copyleft-Next, a “strong” copyleft license inspired by the GNU General Public License (GPL).
Elsewhere, Eventual — the company behind open source, Python-native data query engine Daft — raises a big chunk of change. As does Mentra, a fledgling startup building an open source mixed-reality operating system for smart glasses.
And there is the usual array of stories spanning the open source technology spectrum.
As usual, feel free to reach out to me with any questions, tips, or suggestions: forkable[at]pm.me.
Paul
Open issues
A ‘new’ next-gen copyleft license
You might not think the world needs another open source license, but some would definitely disagree — such as open source stalwarts Richard E. Fontana and Bradley M. Kuhn, who this week relaunched Copyleft-Next, a “strong” copyleft license inspired by the GNU General Public License (GPL).
Fontana, a counsel at Red Hat and co-author of the GNU GPLv3 license; and Kuhn, co-creator of the Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) and who also helped draft GPLv3, were instrumental in a previous version of Copyleft-Next that dates all the way back to 2012. In its original guise, Copyleft-Next was essentially a GPLv3 fork with simpler language that was easier to understand than GPLv3 (read more about it here).
However, Copyleft-Next never really took off in any meaningful way. And so in the same week as GPLv3 turns 18-years old, Fontana and Kuhn (with the backing of the SFC) have relaunched the project.
It’s still early days, but the duo say that while Copyleft-Next was initially an “experimental hobby,” they’re now looking to make it a more “serious and professional” project. Essentially, they want to modernize the concept of “strong copyleft,” a licensing approach that ensures software — and any derivative or combined works — remain free and open under the same license terms.
“At least once in a generation, FOSS needs a new approach to strong copyleft,” they wrote. “Both of us were involved with the Drafting Committees of GPLv3, and we learned much from what was done right and (frankly) what was done wrong in drafting GPLv3. Indeed, Richard was prescient with Copyleft-Next — taking lessons learned from the GPLv3 process and doing copyleft license drafting better. So, what Richard began — almost exactly 13 years ago — as an experimental hobby, we relaunch today as a serious and professional effort to create the next generation of copyleft license.”
While they have the SFC’s support in terms of hosting and sponsorship, no decision has been made on whether the SFC will eventually become the license’s official steward. As a side note, it doesn’t appear that the Open Source Initiative (OSI) will be involved at all here (which might not be all the surprising given recent conflicts between Kuhn and the OSI).
Read more: What's next? [Copyleft.org mailing list]
$30m to build the future of data? Don’t be daft
It seems that open source is very much back on investors’ radars of late — I had one to report last week, and three the week previous.
This week, there are two. The first is Eventual, which announced it has raised a total of $30 million in seed and Series A funding.
Eventual is the company behind Daft, an open source, Python-native data query engine that lets developers work with multimodal datasets — including text, images, and video — all via a single interface. Daft is all about avoiding the complexity of Java-based tools, integrating more easily with AI and data processing libraries like PyTorch and Ray.
It’s still early days for Eventual as a commercial entity, but with $30 million in the bank, the company is now building out a cloud product built atop Daft, which will help AI teams build production-grade multimodal systems more efficiently.
Eventual CEO and co-founder Sammy Sidhu said:
The explosion of generative AI has created an unprecedented demand for multimodal data processing. Every company building AI applications needs to process massive amounts of text, images, documents, and video - but they're stuck using tools designed for web clicks and bank transactions.
Eventual is creating a new foundation for AI infrastructure that’s purpose-built for multimodal data. Our engine handles the inherent messiness of multimodal data as a feature, not a bug - making it possible to query petabytes of images and video with the same simplicity as SQL tables. In fact, our open-source engine Daft is already processing petabytes of multimodal data daily at companies like Amazon, CloudKitchens, Essential AI, and Together AI – these are mission-critical workloads spanning autonomous vehicles, recommendation systems, AI model training, and enterprise data processing.
The company’s Series A round was led by Felicis, with participation from Microsoft’s VC fund M12 Ventures and Citi. The seed round was led by CRV, with participation from Y Combinator (YC), Essence VC, and Array Ventures.
Read more: Eventual raises $30M to build the future of data [Eventual blog]
Patch notes
The joy of specs
Mentra, a nine-month-old startup based in San Francisco, has raised $8 million to develop an open source mixed-reality operating system for smart glasses — dubbed “Android for smart glasses.” It supports devices like Vuzix and Even Realities, offering real-time AI features (captions, translations, notifications) and a cross-device SDK for third-party development.
The $8 million funding round included some notable backers, such as the VC arms of Toyota and Amazon, as well as Android co-founder Rich Miner and YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim.
Read more: Mentra raises $8m to launch open source OS for smart glasses [Forbes]
Bridging the rift
Rust's popularity is largely down to its speed and memory safety features — the very same attributes that make malware written in Rust more challenging to analyze. This is why Microsoft's Threat Intelligence Center has released RIFT, an open source tool designed to assist malware analysts in identifying malicious code within Rust binaries.
Read more: Unveiling RIFT: Enhancing Rust malware analysis through pattern matching [Microsoft blog]
Lyon leaves Microsoft
As I reported in Forkable two weeks ago, Europe is really accelerating its shift from proprietary software to open source. The latest to join the throngs ditching Microsoft is the City of Lyon in France, which is replacing Microsoft Office with OnlyOffice, Windows with Linux, and Microsoft SQL Server with PostgreSQL.
It’s all about reducing its reliance on U.S. tech and growing its digital sovereignty.
Read more: La Ville de Lyon renforce sa souveraineté numérique [Press release]
Carmakers collaborate on open software stack
Volkswagen, BMW, and Mercedes-Benz have teamed up with suppliers Bosch and Continental to form a European software alliance aimed at developing a standardized, open source software platform. It’s basically designed to counter the dominance of U.S. tech firms (i.e. Google and Apple) in automotive software.
The initiative is backed by Germany’s automotive lobby group, the VDA.
“We are jointly building a future-proof, powerful software ecosystem — open, transparent, and secure,” the VDA’s managing director Marcus Bollig said in a statement.
The consortium say that they plan to deliver the core stack by 2026, with the first vehicles based on the platform entering into production by 2030.
Read more: Automotive industry signs Memorandum of Understanding for joint software development based on open source [Press release]
Meta joins Kotlin Foundation
Meta has formally joined the Kotlin Foundation as a gold member. The Kotlin Foundation is the nonprofit set up by JetBrains and Google back in 2018 to support and promote Kotlin, the programming language for building Android apps, server applications, and software across platforms.
Read more: Meta joins Kotlin Foundation [Meta blog]
Multipass goes fully open source
Ubuntu-maker Canonical has announced that Multipass, its lightweight virtual machine (VM) manager, is now fully open source as of the 1.16 release candidate. Previously, some components for Windows and MacOS were proprietary, but these have now been integrated into the open source codebase under the GNU GPLv3 license.
Read more: Canonical makes Multipass VM Manager fully open source [Phoronix]
$100M ARR for open source data platform
Aiven, the Finnish startup and provider of managed and hosted services for myriad open source data infrastructure projects, says it has passed $100 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR).
Read more: Aiven surpasses $100M ARR: A story of community, open source, and what’s next [Aiven blog]
And finally…
The 16-year-old who built his own modular mobile phone
Meet Gabriel Rochet, the 16-year-old French kid who built his own modular mobile phone, made entirely from off-the-shelf modules and open source code.
Paxo, as Rochet’s project is called, enables anyone to create their own DIY mobile for around €30 with the help of a 3D printer — it’s a fairly simple device which handles calls, texts, and a few games.
However, the whole project is open source, including the hardware design and the software, inviting anyone to follow suit and build their own.
Read more: How 16-year-old Gabriel built a €30 smartphone that baffles experts [Glass Almanac]