Today we’re announcing that OpenAI will acquire Astral, bringing powerful open source developer tools into our Codex ecosystem.
Astral has built some of the most widely used open source Python tools, helping developers move faster with modern tooling like uv, Ruff, and ty. These tools power millions of developer workflows and have become part of the foundation of modern Python development. As part of our developer-first philosophy, after closing OpenAI plans to support Astral’s open source products. By bringing Astral’s tooling and engineering expertise to OpenAI, we will accelerate our work on Codex and expand what AI can do across the software development lifecycle.
This does suck, but there’s time. I doubt the actual legal hand over has happened yet, and OpenAI is (likely, I don’t actually know) an absolute mess, HR/structure-wise, internally. If the aquisitions I’ve been a part of in the past are any indication, there’s a 1-2 year ramp before things really start to go to shit within Astral (assuming there isn’t an immediate massive exodous of talent). Or I’m totally wrong!
Is there any example of such move that does not ends with enshittyfication?
Off the top of my head, no. I’m just pointing out that there’s time to respond before things get shitty. This isn’t Redis rug-pulling their license. The community can be considered. Thoughtful.