I predict it'll be the best and then the 'worst' thing: they'll go hard on monetisation.
Just look at this post: 1839 points and 1048 comments! That is insane. It's captured the hearts and minds of Python devs and I'm sure they know it.
I'm not against projects making money, just remember you'll likely pay a price later on once you invest in more of Astral's ecosystem. It's just temporarily free.
The Python Software Foundation includes highly competent contributors. One reason I adopted uv is confidence in the Python community’s engineering decision to prevent the take over of the platform.
Progress is already underway. PEP 751 proposes a standardized format for lock files: https://peps.python.org/pep-0751/
This helps to reduce tool-specific lock-in.
uv is open source, so forking remains viable. Build metadata is committed, and conversion to other tools is feasible if needed.
However, we must all remain vigilant against the risk of lock-in.
Many competent contributors have left or were silenced by the politicians. PyPI had multiple severe vulnerabilities. pip has no adequate story for the scientific ecosystem. Building from source via pip usually fails, unlike around 2010 when it usually worked.
The only thing that prevents lock-in is the religious zeal of most Python users to use anything presented by the PSF high priests, not technical merit.
The reason uv exists is the utter incompetence of PyPA.
It has always been like this. The only way to get glory and money in the Python space [1] is to set up a new package manager or package repository or both.
Active State, Enthought, Anaconda, now Astral.
[1] Discounting pure SaaS companies that just use Python but offer no tools.
Yes, but how far apart will the fracture be? For instance, Mac and Windows are further apart than Ubuntu and Fedora, despite both being fractures in the OS 'ecosystem' - it's far easier to be cross-platform between Ubuntu/Fedora than between Mac/Windows.
Just look at this post: 1839 points and 1048 comments! That is insane. It's captured the hearts and minds of Python devs and I'm sure they know it.
I'm not against projects making money, just remember you'll likely pay a price later on once you invest in more of Astral's ecosystem. It's just temporarily free.