A new report presents the top 20 open source principles around the world, above half of which are closely aligned with AI.
The report is the craft of the European Business Company Runa capitalwhich has operated the Runa Open Source Startup (Jack) Index by 2020. The index serves quarterly updates on the fastest growing projects in terms of github “stars”-a measurement that is similar to a “such as” social media. Starting in 2023, Runa began producing annual reports, highlighting the most popular open source commercial businesses in a given year.
Last year’s report showed that AI and data infrastructure led to demand for open source tools, with Lanshati Hitting a pole in the ROSS index for the open source box for the manufacture of LLM-Centric applications.
This year is a similar story, with AI Central up to 11 of the top 20 companies.
It is worth noting that the Ross index is highly curated and does not include any old open source project. The qualifiers must be closely linked to a commercial company (that is, a project under the ledge of the seller), which means that there are no side projects. In addition, these companies must be younger than 10 years. increased less than $ 100 million in funding. and be completely independent – so they are not a subsidiary or public.
Asteroid
At the top position in Ross 2024 index is Ollamaa combination of y alum This is built an open source tool to run LLMS such as Llama Meta and Deepseek locally (ie, desktop). Ollama’s GITHUB STAR COUNT It increased by about 76,000 to 2024, increasing 261% to over 105,000 (since then it has increased to more than 135,000 stars in recent months).
Then on the list is Zed industriesA Cross-Platform Collaboral Code Processor “Designed for high performance collaboration with people and AI.” The Zed project was for a while but that went only open source In January 2024, and within the rest of the year he won more than 52,000 stars gitHub.
In third place is LancianThe company behind a LLM open source application development platform called Diffusibility. The project reached over 43,000 news GitHub stars Last year, increasing 326% from about 13,000 to almost 57,000 – a figure that has since increased to more than 84,000 stars.
And then there is ComfyuiA program based on open source nodes to create images, videos and audio using AI genetic models. The work GITHUB STAR COUNT It increased 195% to 61,900 stars last year.
The rounding of the top five is All the crewThe company behind an open source platform called Openly For the construction of software development agents. Openhands has garnered 39,600 Github stars from its launch last March to the end of 2024 and has since added another 12,000 stars to the mixture.
While Ross Index for last year depicts explosive growth in AI and LLMS also shows how programmer tools are still hot in the open source world, with Zed and those who like Zed and Uv astral (No. 9) Both characterized at top 10. Elsewhere, the presence of the PDF handling tool Stirling PDF (No. 7), funding software Perhaps funding (No. 8) and remote desktop software Rust (No 17) suggests that the tools focusing on privacy are still in high demand.
And focused on Ethereum Blockchain Fuel (No. 12) shows that Crypto/Web3 is alive and kicks.
Open source software by its very nature has always been distributed, as the contributors from all corners of the globe can be involved. This is often the case for projects led by the seller. However, commercial entities usually have a center of gravity – even if it means exactly where it has been officially incorporated.
The Ross index for last year shows that San Francisco hosts six of the top 20 Ross newly established companies, while Canada has three Europe (United Kingdom, Switzerland, Hungary and Czech Republic), Singapore and China.
Methodology
There are other ways to monitor “hot” open source projects. Works two ventures sigma The open source indexwhich is similar to the concept of Ross index, in addition to presenting the 100 top projects without specific focus on commercial newly established businesses (it also offers different ways of filtering data).
And GitHub himself offers a List of Top Trains projectsagain without the special focus on commercial businesses.
It is also worth seeing the methodology Behind the Ross index. GitHub “stars” can be an incomplete measurement, as it just shows that someone has “liked” the project, as opposed to active use or monitoring it. The earlier projects will naturally have more “stars”, and for this Runa focuses on the relative development of stocks over a 90 -day period for its quarterly reports and the absolute number of new stars acquired during the year for its annual report.
This also means that the annual report may be quite different from quarterly reports, as absolute stars measurements will not always be aligned with rapid growth.
There may also be some issues around what is classified as an “open source”. While many of the directory projects have actually been released under recognized Copyleft license or a permissible open source permit, this is not a rigorous arrangement of the Ross index. Runa says he follows the “commercial perception” of open source, not the Official Definition of Open Code. Therefore, a company that has released its software in public permit (server Side PublicSspl), for example, would still be characterized as an open source, although the The open source initiative has not stretched SSPL as “open source”.
Still, the index is a useful indicator not only for the type of open source technology, but also companies are trying to build businesses at their top.
