Lots of good work on open source projects gets funded by tech companies. It seems like kind of a weird purity test? Especially since in other circumstances, people complain that that big...
Lots of good work on open source projects gets funded by tech companies. It seems like kind of a weird purity test?
Especially since in other circumstances, people complain that that big businesses don't pay enough for the code they depend on. Sometimes they do fund them and rather generously, too. This is one of the ways it happens.
I mostly judge open source projects by the software they produce, not their governance. To the extent that governance matters, I think the team doing the work matters more than their financial...
I mostly judge open source projects by the software they produce, not their governance. To the extent that governance matters, I think the team doing the work matters more than their financial backing. For example, I think the Go team is pretty good and that’s largely independent of all the AI stuff that Google is doing? (This is assuming that the corporation pays their salaries but otherwise largely leaves them alone, which is only true of some teams at some companies.)
If the Go team somehow got worse then it’s nice that forking is an option.
So whatever other stuff Anthropic is doing, the relevant question is whether they will leave Bun alone to do their thing. That’s not easily predicted and is largely independent of whether Anthropic is a good company overall.
Okay, lots of tech companies have their issues but you cannot be collapsing the distinction between "AI company" and "tech company" so easily here, I'm sure you're familiar with plenty of...
Okay, lots of tech companies have their issues but you cannot be collapsing the distinction between "AI company" and "tech company" so easily here, I'm sure you're familiar with plenty of AI-company-specific reasons why people might actively not use their products!
One relevant reason here might be: how stable are Anthropic's finances? If finances become a problem a small non-priority team might go poof, and that's not a great outcome for anyone else using Bun's software.
The future seems hard to predict, especially for AI companies. Anthropic does have rapidly growing revenue, which seems promising. I think it would be weird to rule out Bun in advance based on...
The future seems hard to predict, especially for AI companies. Anthropic does have rapidly growing revenue, which seems promising.
I think it would be weird to rule out Bun in advance based on what might happen? Worst case, you have whatever Bun releases they already made and can migrate to something else.
I'd add to this that, from a dev perspective, Bun is a pretty low risk proposition. Javascript is still javascript regardless of what happens with Bun. If things were to go in a direction you...
I'd add to this that, from a dev perspective, Bun is a pretty low risk proposition. Javascript is still javascript regardless of what happens with Bun. If things were to go in a direction you didn't like you could fairly easily switch back to Node, or you could switch to whichever Bun fork you liked most, or fork it yourself.
This is open source working as intended.
It would be a bit different if Bun wasn't already VC funded, to me that's the bigger yuck. Open source companies trying to figure out how to force monetization to please investors often leads to unfortunate outcomes and misaligned priorities. Compared to that road, it seems to me that this increases the chances of Bun being a quality product, for longer.
Pretty much, the article mentions they would’ve had four more years to figure out a path to monetization, or raise more money, otherwise the product would just… end.
Pretty much, the article mentions they would’ve had four more years to figure out a path to monetization, or raise more money, otherwise the product would just… end.
“Generous” might not be quite the right word since it’s self-interested, but they did get a lot of funding for an open source project and apparently they didn’t have to think too hard about...
“Generous” might not be quite the right word since it’s self-interested, but they did get a lot of funding for an open source project and apparently they didn’t have to think too hard about revemue. When an important project gets funded that way, I think it counts as more good than bad.
And this exact situation has led to corporate capture, enshittification, and the complete defanging of what once seemed to be a movement with radical potential.
Lots of good work on open source projects gets funded by tech companies.
And this exact situation has led to corporate capture, enshittification, and the complete defanging of what once seemed to be a movement with radical potential.
Isn't that kind of the point, though? It sounds like you're saying "That was never going to happen, so we didn't really lose anything," but then I can just as easily say "This was always going to...
Isn't that kind of the point, though?
It sounds like you're saying "That was never going to happen, so we didn't really lose anything," but then I can just as easily say "This was always going to happen, so we didn't really gain anything."
Libre software has become a sacred cow. It demonstrably does not do what it was supposed to do, and yet we still treat it like an unquestioned good.
I think this discussion has gotten too abstract. If we're talking about Bun, I'm not disappointed in how it turned out. Maybe you're disappointed, but if so, what were you hoping for?
I think this discussion has gotten too abstract. If we're talking about Bun, I'm not disappointed in how it turned out. Maybe you're disappointed, but if so, what were you hoping for?
I had heard good stuff about Bun without understanding what exactly it was till now. It sounds cool technically, but yeah the acquisition makes me pause a bit.
I had heard good stuff about Bun without understanding what exactly it was till now. It sounds cool technically, but yeah the acquisition makes me pause a bit.
Yeah, I also found that line of reasoning to be a bit strange. All dependencies can break, so why not write every single LoC in-house then from here on out? Apart from that though, I totally get...
Yeah, I also found that line of reasoning to be a bit strange. All dependencies can break, so why not write every single LoC in-house then from here on out?
Apart from that though, I totally get the acquisition. Bun is not only awesome software, but “owning the stack” is also a cool appeal for Anthropic (if they have the funds for such a move without hurting their core R&D investments, which I’m not doubting in the current hype market/funding situation).
Claude Code ships as a Bun executable to millions of users. If Bun breaks, Claude Code breaks. Anthropic has direct incentive to keep Bun excellent.
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Bun's single-file executables turned out to be perfect for distributing CLI tools. You can compile any JavaScript project into a self-contained binary—runs anywhere, even if the user doesn't have Bun or Node installed. Works with native addons. Fast startup. Easy to distribute.
Claude Code, FactoryAI, OpenCode, and others are all built with Bun.
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Over the last several months, the GitHub username with the most merged PRs in Bun's repo is now a Claude Code bot. We have it set up in our internal Discord and we mostly use it to help fix bugs. It opens PRs with tests that fail in the earlier system-installed version of Bun before the fix and pass in the fixed debug build of Bun. It responds to review comments. It does the whole thing.
This feels approximately a few months ahead of where things are going. Certainly not years.
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We've been prioritizing issues from the Claude Code team for several months now. I have so many ideas all the time and it's really fun. Many of these ideas also help other AI coding products.
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Instead of putting our users & community through "Bun, the VC-backed startups tries to figure out monetization" – thanks to Anthropic, we can skip that chapter entirely and focus on building the best JavaScript tooling.
I am very skeptical on the direction of Bun now that Anthropic will be at the helm. From the press releases, yes, it looks like Jared and team are still going to work on Bun and push it forward....
I am very skeptical on the direction of Bun now that Anthropic will be at the helm. From the press releases, yes, it looks like Jared and team are still going to work on Bun and push it forward. However, being owned by a company that needs to turn a profit will mean compromises to the product to push that agenda. Its inevitable. Its always been the big question with Bun - how are they going to make money to maintain our project? - and it looks like Anthropic said "we need your engineering capacity so we'll solve that money problem for you."
We have started going in on Bun at work and the developers love it. There is a lot of plus side to the developer Experience moving to Bun from Node.js + TSC. I would have been just as fine with the team moving to Deno but they chose Bun (and who am I to get in the way of what developers want?). So I'll be keeping an eye on the changes and releases a little closer now.
Bun does use JavaScriptCore from Safari, which is maintained by Apple. I think the likelihood of either Apple or Google killing the JavaScript engines at the heart of their web browsers is very low.
Bun does use JavaScriptCore from Safari, which is maintained by Apple. I think the likelihood of either Apple or Google killing the JavaScript engines at the heart of their web browsers is very low.
Eh yuck. I'll stay away from anything supported by a AI company.
Lots of good work on open source projects gets funded by tech companies. It seems like kind of a weird purity test?
Especially since in other circumstances, people complain that that big businesses don't pay enough for the code they depend on. Sometimes they do fund them and rather generously, too. This is one of the ways it happens.
One of these situations leaves the open source thing independent and one of them doesn't. Do those hold equal weight for you?
I mostly judge open source projects by the software they produce, not their governance. To the extent that governance matters, I think the team doing the work matters more than their financial backing. For example, I think the Go team is pretty good and that’s largely independent of all the AI stuff that Google is doing? (This is assuming that the corporation pays their salaries but otherwise largely leaves them alone, which is only true of some teams at some companies.)
If the Go team somehow got worse then it’s nice that forking is an option.
So whatever other stuff Anthropic is doing, the relevant question is whether they will leave Bun alone to do their thing. That’s not easily predicted and is largely independent of whether Anthropic is a good company overall.
Okay, lots of tech companies have their issues but you cannot be collapsing the distinction between "AI company" and "tech company" so easily here, I'm sure you're familiar with plenty of AI-company-specific reasons why people might actively not use their products!
One relevant reason here might be: how stable are Anthropic's finances? If finances become a problem a small non-priority team might go poof, and that's not a great outcome for anyone else using Bun's software.
The future seems hard to predict, especially for AI companies. Anthropic does have rapidly growing revenue, which seems promising.
I think it would be weird to rule out Bun in advance based on what might happen? Worst case, you have whatever Bun releases they already made and can migrate to something else.
I'd add to this that, from a dev perspective, Bun is a pretty low risk proposition. Javascript is still javascript regardless of what happens with Bun. If things were to go in a direction you didn't like you could fairly easily switch back to Node, or you could switch to whichever Bun fork you liked most, or fork it yourself.
This is open source working as intended.
It would be a bit different if Bun wasn't already VC funded, to me that's the bigger yuck. Open source companies trying to figure out how to force monetization to please investors often leads to unfortunate outcomes and misaligned priorities. Compared to that road, it seems to me that this increases the chances of Bun being a quality product, for longer.
Bun was already VC funded, does this still count as a big business generously funding open source? In my opinion, no.
Pretty much, the article mentions they would’ve had four more years to figure out a path to monetization, or raise more money, otherwise the product would just… end.
“Generous” might not be quite the right word since it’s self-interested, but they did get a lot of funding for an open source project and apparently they didn’t have to think too hard about revemue. When an important project gets funded that way, I think it counts as more good than bad.
Yeah I totally get that, just AI companies in particular are a no for me.
And this exact situation has led to corporate capture, enshittification, and the complete defanging of what once seemed to be a movement with radical potential.
That's often true when you're comparing "potential" (what you imagine building) to what actually gets built.
Isn't that kind of the point, though?
It sounds like you're saying "That was never going to happen, so we didn't really lose anything," but then I can just as easily say "This was always going to happen, so we didn't really gain anything."
Libre software has become a sacred cow. It demonstrably does not do what it was supposed to do, and yet we still treat it like an unquestioned good.
I think this discussion has gotten too abstract. If we're talking about Bun, I'm not disappointed in how it turned out. Maybe you're disappointed, but if so, what were you hoping for?
Same. Being owned by an AI corp is yuckier than VC funding.
Good thing Google is only the world's biggest ad company, so they're cool. Right? =)
I had heard good stuff about Bun without understanding what exactly it was till now. It sounds cool technically, but yeah the acquisition makes me pause a bit.
So since Bun is a Zig project, Claude Code depends on Zig now? 🙃
Maybe Anthropic could shell out a million or two to the ZSF then.
Yeah, I also found that line of reasoning to be a bit strange. All dependencies can break, so why not write every single LoC in-house then from here on out?
Apart from that though, I totally get the acquisition. Bun is not only awesome software, but “owning the stack” is also a cool appeal for Anthropic (if they have the funds for such a move without hurting their core R&D investments, which I’m not doubting in the current hype market/funding situation).
From the article:
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I am very skeptical on the direction of Bun now that Anthropic will be at the helm. From the press releases, yes, it looks like Jared and team are still going to work on Bun and push it forward. However, being owned by a company that needs to turn a profit will mean compromises to the product to push that agenda. Its inevitable. Its always been the big question with Bun - how are they going to make money to maintain our project? - and it looks like Anthropic said "we need your engineering capacity so we'll solve that money problem for you."
We have started going in on Bun at work and the developers love it. There is a lot of plus side to the developer Experience moving to Bun from Node.js + TSC. I would have been just as fine with the team moving to Deno but they chose Bun (and who am I to get in the way of what developers want?). So I'll be keeping an eye on the changes and releases a little closer now.
Claude code’s CLI client UI is one of the most, idk, fancy CLI’s I’ve ever used, so if they did use buns that’s a solid endorsement.
Crush is definitely prettier, but Claude is more usable by far.
Hmm. I wonder if anyone will fork bun? I like that it doesn’t use V8 at its core, one less thing for Google to ruin or kill later.
Bun does use JavaScriptCore from Safari, which is maintained by Apple. I think the likelihood of either Apple or Google killing the JavaScript engines at the heart of their web browsers is very low.