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December 2024 Open Source Ecosystem Data Insight Report

· 4 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: Ghostty is released, and it is still young again​

  • Data Facts: According to OpenDigger data, within 5 days of its release, the Ghostty project attracted over 530 developers, more than 1,000 discussions, and gained over 16,000 stars. Its OpenRank surged past 100, settling at 105.

  • Detailed Analysis: Ghostty is a terminal emulator that runs on MacOS or Linux systems. By utilizing local GPU resources, it enhances terminal functionality and provides a smoother user experience. On December 26, 2024, after more than 2 years of private repository development, Ghostty was open-sourced and officially released version 1.0. The author, Mitchell Hashimoto, founded HashiCorp at the age of 23. He stepped down as CEO in 2016 to become the CTO and later resigned from the CTO position in late 2021 to return to personal programming. He left the company he founded at the end of 2023. Data shows that the Ghostty project was created in March 2022, with over a million lines of code. Initially, Mitchell developed the project alone for two years until mid-2024, when other developers joined. Mitchell remains the primary developer, contributing over 90% of the project's code.

  • Author's Comments: As the founder of HashiCorp, Mitchell loves coding and is the founding engineer and core developer of well-known open-source projects like Vagrant, Consul, Terraform, and Vault. Despite being a multi-millionaire, his passion for coding remains unchanged, which is likely a significant factor in the project's popularity among developers.

  • Further Reading:

Hot Event 2: Generative AI Empowers Embodied Intelligence, Genesis Officially Released​

  • Data Facts: According to OpenDigger data, since its release on December 19, 2024, the Genesis project attracted over 500 developers within 10 days, with 21 contributors and nearly 20,000 stars. Its OpenRank settled at 85.

  • Detailed Analysis: Genesis is a research platform for embodied intelligence that integrates generative model capabilities. It consists of a general-purpose physics engine, robot simulation platform, photorealistic rendering system, and data generation engine powered by generative AI technology. This engine converts natural language into training data for various modules. The project is developed by a team led by Dr. Chan, Chief Scientist at the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab. In late 2023, the team published a paper introducing RoboGen, a framework that uses generative AI to provide unlimited learning data for robots and automate training. After over a year of development, RoboGen was open-sourced as the embodied intelligence research platform Genesis, gaining widespread attention.

  • Author's Comments: Embodied intelligence is a cutting-edge research area in artificial intelligence, with few open-source research platforms available. Facebook's Habitat platform, open-sourced in 2019, is a notable example. With the rise of generative AI, scientists are exploring its application in embodied intelligence to accelerate the development of intelligent robots. Dr. Chan's team, building on a solid theoretical foundation, has integrated generative AI technology into their research platform, which is expected to make significant contributions in this field.

  • Further Reading:

Recommended Projects of the Month

eliza​

  • eliza is a lightweight AI agent framework for individual developers, enabling quick creation of personal AI agents and workflows. Since its open-source release in July 2024, the project has focused on development and gained significant popularity in December 2024, with over 10,000 stars and 441 active developers in December. Its OpenRank has reached 149.
  • Repository: https://github.com/elizaOS/eliza

blink.cmp​

  • blink.cmp is a code completion plugin for the Neovim editor, unlike the popular Copilot, it is a traditional text indexing and fuzzy search-based completion tool known for its efficiency. It can respond in milliseconds with an index size of 20,000, making it popular among Neovim users. The project was open-sourced in October 2024 and had 294 active developers in December, with an OpenRank of 108.
  • Repository: https://github.com/Saghen/blink.cmp