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November 2024 Open Source Ecosystem Data Insight Report

· 5 min read
Frank Zhao
Frank Zhao
Ph.D candidate at X-lab, author of OpenDigger
Will Wang
Will Wang
Prof. @ ECNU / Founder of X-lab

The OpenRank indicator is an open source implementation of the evaluation indicators in the "Information Technology Open Source Governance" series of standards of the Electronic Standards Institute of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. It can effectively reflect the collaborative influence of open source projects among developers, thereby helping us understand the open source world, discover open source trends, and gain insight into open source events.

Hot Event 1: BlueSky's Surge, Driven by US Elections and AI Wave​

  • Data Facts: According to OpenDigger data, multiple BlueSky repositories on GitHub experienced a surge in activity. This includes their decentralized social media protocol repository, atproto, and the client repository, social-app. The total number of active developers across all repositories in November increased by 173% year-over-year to 1,082, with a total star increase of 5,800. The total OpenRank value increased by 67%, reaching 340 points.

  • Detailed Analysis: BlueSky is an independent project created by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, using a newly developed AT social network protocol to achieve a decentralized social media platform. Following the US elections on November 5, some users dissatisfied with the election results chose to leave Twitter in search of new social platforms, with BlueSky becoming a significant option. A week after the election, its client app topped the free app charts in the US Apple App Store. Additionally, on November 16, Twitter updated its Privacy Policy to allow third-party platforms to use user data for generative AI training. In response, BlueSky officially stated that it would not use user data for generative AI training, leading many high-quality content creators to migrate to BlueSky to protect their digital content. The platform had approximately 10 million registered users as of September 2024, and various events in November led to a surge in users, with registered users exceeding 20 million by November 20.

  • Author's Comments: The tech world is not isolated from real-world events, which can significantly impact the open-source community. The rise of generative AI has also highlighted underlying issues, with developers and users taking action to protect their interests.

  • Further Reading:

Hot Event 2: Redis Attempts to Control Peripheral Projects, Valkey Community Continues to Grow​

  • Data Facts: According to OpenDigger data, the number of active developers in Redis's Rust client repository, rust-rs, increased by 54% in November 2024 to 40, with many participating in discussions about Redis's request for the project's author to transfer control. Meanwhile, the Valkey community, which forked from Redis in March 2024, continues to grow, surpassing the main Redis repository in various metrics.

  • Detailed Analysis: On November 25, 2024, Armin Ronacher, the author of Redis's Rust client project rust-rs, opened an issue discussing Redis's request for control over the project. The maintainer of Redis's PHP client, Pedis, reported receiving a similar request. This is not Redis's first attempt to control community projects; between 2020 and 2024, Redis transferred several community clients, including Jedis, Redis-py, and Lettuce, to its GitHub organization. Meanwhile, there are concerns that new versions of community clients controlled by Redis may not be compatible with Valkey. Valkey is a community fork of Redis created in March 2024 after Redis announced changes to its project license. It is led by core developers from AWS, Alibaba Cloud, Google, and Tencent Cloud and is now hosted by the Linux Foundation. Since the Redis community split, Valkey has developed steadily, while Redis has become less active. According to OpenDigger data, Valkey's main repository OpenRank reached 71 points in November, while Redis's main repository dropped from 62 points in March to 27 points.

  • Author's Comments: Software ownership involves more than just code; it affects a project's sustainability and community trust. When an open-source project's ownership is transferred to a commercial company, community members often worry about the project's neutrality and openness. The future development of Redis and Valkey remains to be seen.

  • Further Reading:

Recommended Projects of the Month

Julia​

  • Julia is a high-performance dynamic programming language for numerical analysis and computational science, first developed in 2009 and released version 1.0 in 2018. With continuous improvements to its language core, the development focus has shifted towards supporting standard libraries. In November 2024, the community moved linear algebra-related standard libraries to a separate repository, transferring thousands of related issues. This migration was noted in logs as new issues, drawing attention from data insights. Julia's development remains stable, with an OpenRank value of 242 across all repositories as of November 2024.
  • Repository: https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia

Zen Browser​

  • Zen Browser is an open-source browser based on the Firefox engine, open-sourced in April 2024 and gaining popularity in August. In November, the repository had 882 participating developers. Known for its excellent user experience, the browser features a split-screen display, a popular feature not natively supported in Chrome. According to OpenDigger data, the repository's OpenRank value reached 262 in November, ranking 63rd globally.
  • Repository: https://github.com/zen-browser/desktop