DEV Community: Sabir Ibrahim

Free Workshop: Building a Company Around an OSS Project

Sabir Ibrahim — Thu, 07 May 2026 18:57:14 +0000

Chinstrap Community offers a free 5-week workshop on commercial open source software (COSS) for startup founders, potential founders, and early startup team members.

Dates have now been set for Cohort 4: May 28, June 4, June 11, June 18, and June 25. All dates are Thursdays and all sessions are at 9 am Pacific (GMT-7) and will be offered via Zoom.

This workshop is for anyone who has launched or is considering launching a startup around an OSS project, or anyone who is part of a startup that is considering open sourcing its core product.

Topics covered include:

COSS business and monetization strategy
License choice
Brand management
Community engagement
Go-to-market strategies for COSS

The workshop will be taught by renowned OSS experts Heather Meeker and Sabir Ibrahim.

Note: All Chinstrap Community workshops are offered free of charge. However, in order to facilitate fruitful discussions and engagement, we limit the number of participants. To apply to attend, visit: https://chinstrap.community/workshop/coss-for-founders/

Introducing Cossmology: a Map of the Commercial OSS Universe

Sabir Ibrahim — Wed, 06 May 2026 23:05:59 +0000

Chinstrap Community is proud to introduce Cossmology, a comprehensive, worldwide directory of over 1,000 commercial open source software (COSS) companies.

If you’re working on an OSS project around which you’ve built, or plan to build, a commercial offering, tell us about it by using our Submit feature.

We’ve also launched COSS Weekly, a newsletter that delivers all the latest COSS news, funding rounds, acquisitions, and other headlines to your inbox. No sales pitches, no ads, just all of the week’s most relevant news from the COSS universe (check out our COSS Weekly archive).

We’ve mirrored much of the Cossmology dataset on GitHub (repository, searchable index) so be sure to star us.

Feedback welcome!

COSS Weekly: ComfyUI raises $30m, Warp.dev goes OSS, Portkey acquired by Palo Alto Networks, and more

Sabir Ibrahim — Mon, 04 May 2026 17:30:00 +0000

This week in COSS: Palo Alto Networks moves to secure AI agent ecosystems by acquiring Portkey, while Cohere merges with Aleph Alpha to bolster AI capabilities. Two companies go opposite ways on COSS—Warp embraces full open-sourcing, whereas MinIO completes its shift away from open source, prompting users to look for OSS replacements. Meanwhile, ComfyUI raises significant capital to improve AI-generated media and DeepSeek introduces a new model that 'closes the gap' with competing LLMs while preserving its famous advantages in efficiency. The growing use of AI-written software raises new security concerns and sparks competition with emerging agent platforms like OpenClaw and Microsoft's new efforts.

We also feature the following companies in Cossmology: NestJS, NocoBase, Pretzel AI, ReactiveSearch, Refact.ai, Rio, SeaweedFS, Shuttle, Warp, and Zed Industries.

COSS Headlines

Unkey raised $4.5M to ship APIs, not infrastructure

Companies mentioned: Unkey
Funding · Unkey

AI-written software creates hassles for wary security teams

Companies mentioned: ProjectDiscovery
Media Mention · CIO Dive

Microsoft is working on yet another OpenClaw-like agent

Companies mentioned: OpenClaw
OSS News & Views · TechCrunch

OpenClaw Struggles to Grow Up After Overnight Success

Companies mentioned: OpenClaw
OSS News & Views · The Information

MinIO Is Done With Open Source, What Are Your Options?

Companies mentioned: MinIO, RustFS, SeaweedFS
OSS News & Views · It's FOSS

Evolving Our License for Long-Term Sustainability

Companies mentioned: Directus
Announcement

ComfyUI hits $500M valuation as creators seek more control over AI-generated media

Companies mentioned: ComfyUI
Funding · TechCrunch

Warp is now open-source

Companies mentioned: Warp
Announcement · Warp Blog

I Switched from OpenClaw to Hermes Agent. Here’s What Nobody Told Me.

Companies mentioned: Nous Research
Media Mention · Medium

How Superlinked's Ben Gutkovich Is Solving the AI Infrastructure Problem Most Teams Don't See Coming

Companies mentioned: Superlinked
Media Mention · Forbes Councils

Why Cohere is merging with Aleph Alpha

Companies mentioned: Aleph Alpha
Announcement · TechCrunch

DeepSeek previews new AI model that 'closes the gap' with frontier models | TechCrunch

Companies mentioned: DeepSeek
Announcement · TechCrunch

ComfyUI raises $30M to scale open-source AI for creative production

Companies mentioned: ComfyUI
Funding · ComfyUI Blog

Stability AI Announces $101M in Funding for Open-Source AI

Companies mentioned: Stability AI
Funding · BigDATAwire

Palo Alto Networks to Acquire Portkey to Secure the Rise of AI Agents

Companies mentioned: Portkey
Announcement · Palo Alto Networks

More COSS Headlines →

Featured COSS Companies

SeaweedFS

Distributed object store and file system

NocoBase

Open-source no-code/low-code app builder

Warp

AI-powered agentic development terminal

ReactiveSearch

Open-source search API gateway and UI toolkit

Rio

Python web app framework, no JS required

Shuttle

Cloud platform for Rust backend deployment

Refact.ai

Open-source AI coding assistant & agent

NestJS

Progressive Node.js framework

Zed Industries

Fast, collaborative code editor with AI

Pretzel AI

AI-native open-source Jupyter alternative

More COSS Companies →

COSS Weekly: Hugging Face on Open vs. Closed, Orkes Raises $60M, DeepSeek seeks $20B valuation, and more

Sabir Ibrahim — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 17:00:00 +0000

This week in COSS: Orkes raised $60M to build more reliable AI workloads, while Tencent and Alibaba are in talks to invest in DeepSeek at a valuation exceeding $20 billion. Supabase is reportedly in talks to double its valuation to $10 billion, ClickHouse expanded its strategic collaboration with Google Cloud, and Forbes declared that open source AI is moving from sideshow to strategy.

We also feature the following companies in Cossmology: Activeloop, Arcee AI, Artillery, Chromatic, Dash0, Instill AI, Lightning AI, Lost Pixel, Octopus, Transactility, TrustGraph, and Wave Terminal.

COSS Headlines

Bluesky blames DDoS attack for server outages

Companies mentioned: Bluesky
OSS News & Views · Engadget

Khoj Cloud - Service Deprecated

Companies mentioned: Khoj
Announcement · Khoj

ClickHouse expands strategic collaboration with Google Cloud

Companies mentioned: ClickHouse
Announcement · ClickHouse Blog

Infleqtion Awarded $2 Million DARPA Contract for Heterogeneous Quantum Software

Companies mentioned: Infleqtion
OSS News & Views · Quantum Computing Report

Announcing the LangChain + MongoDB Partnership

Companies mentioned: LangChain, MongoDB
Announcement · LangChain

Database Startup Supabase in Talks to Double Valuation to $10 Billion

Companies mentioned: Supabase
Funding · The Information

Open Source AI Is Moving From Sideshow To Strategy

Companies mentioned: Hugging Face
Media Mention · Forbes

Orkes raises $60M for more reliable AI workloads

Companies mentioned: Orkes
Funding · Axios

Tencent, Alibaba in talks to invest in DeepSeek at over $20 billion valuation

Companies mentioned: DeepSeek
Funding · Reuters

App host Vercel says it was hacked and customer data stolen

Companies mentioned: Vercel
Announcement · TechCrunch

AI and the Future of Cybersecurity: Why Openness Matters

Companies mentioned: Hugging Face
OSS News & Views · Hugging Face Blog

More COSS Headlines →

Featured COSS Companies

Activeloop

GPU-native database for AI agents

Artillery

Load testing & E2E testing platform

Dash0

OpenTelemetry-native observability platform

Chromatic

Visual testing and UI review platform for Storybook, Playwright, and Cypress.

Instill AI

AI workspace for document intelligence

Lost Pixel

Open-source visual regression testing

Lightning AI

AI cloud platform for developers

Octopus

AI-powered open-source code review tool

Wave Terminal

AI-native open-source terminal

TrustGraph

Graph-native AI context platform

Transactility

Commercial licensing and support for jPOS

Arcee AI

Open-weight AI models and enterprise agentic AI

More COSS Companies →

COSS Weekly: Cal.com Goes Closed Source, Mistral Borrows $830M for Data Centers, OpenAI Acquires Promptfoo, and more

Sabir Ibrahim — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 22:15:45 +0000

This week in COSS: Mistral raised $830 million in debt financing for AI data center expansion, OpenAI acquired Promptfoo signaling a growing focus on AI security, and Cal.com made waves by going closed source in a move that sparked debate about the future of open source software security. Self-hosted AI automation stacks featuring n8n, Dify, and Ollama are gaining traction, while PrestaShop announced a formal collective restructuring process and Starburst unveiled an AI-powered front end aimed at replacing conventional BI dashboards. We also feature the following companies in Cossmology: ACI.dev, Beanbag, Builderz, Cachix, Code Machine, DataChain, Flox, HTTPie, Manticore Software, and Redgate Software.

Featured COSS Companies

Redgate Software
Database DevOps tools and solutions

Manticore Software
Open-source fast database for search

Cachix
Nix binary cache hosting service

Builderz
AI agents & blockchain dev agency

ACI.dev
AI tooling governance platform

DataChain
AI data warehouse for unstructured data

Beanbag
Open source code review tools for teams

Code Machine
Multi-agent AI coding orchestrator

HTTPie
Human-friendly API testing tools

Flox
Reproducible dev environments built on Nix

More COSS Companies →