Codex for open source

(openai.com)

274 points | by EvgeniyZh 4 days ago ago

126 comments

  • kelnos 2 days ago ago

    Same as Anthropic's similar offer, they're only giving 6 months free. This really just feels like a way to get OSS maintainers hooked so they buy subscriptions after the free period is over.

    If they were really serious about supporting OSS, they'd offer it for free perpetually (well, with periodic checks to ensure the maintainers are still affiliated with the project). Anything less just makes it look like a marketing stunt.

    And also, dumb how Github-centric this is, same as Anthropic's signup form. Most of my OSS contributions aren't on Github. Guess that means the projects I've worked on don't matter.

    • ACCount37 2 days ago ago

      The bulk of open source development is (still?) on Github.

      It's not like the Linux kernel isn't real. It's just that the kind of people who write Linux kernel patches and get them accepted are, in the eyes of an average open source developer, somewhere between "majestic magical creatures" and "madmen".

    • prodigycorp a day ago ago

      I read anthropic's offer is majorly nerfed compared to their regular 20x plan. I've seen OSS develoeprs ask anthropic to revert their plan to a paid plan because it's otherwise a hindrance.

    • petesergeant 2 days ago ago

      Presumably it's also sessions that they will absolutely use as training data?

    • dominotw a day ago ago

      is there any company or product that donates their subscription service free forever ?

  • zmmmmm 2 days ago ago

    Seems rather stingy - 6 months is barely longer than you will get on a free signup deal for a lot of online products anyway. Kind of worse than nothing if it causes you to adopt work patterns that aren't sustainable for the project after the offer ends.

    • EduardoBautista 2 days ago ago

      Which online product gives away 6 months of a $100 per month subscription?

      • mqus 2 days ago ago

        Jetbrains gives away for free infinity years of a $180+ per year subscription (its more expensive in the first year or for orgs)[1] for open source authors, students, and more. Sure, the per-month price tag is not as high but after year 4 you saved much more.

        [1] https://www.jetbrains.com/store/?section=students&billing=ye...

        • Gigachad 2 days ago ago

          Though it doesn't cost them anything of note to provide this other than maybe some lost sales to devs who would have bought it.

          • LoganDark a day ago ago

            After using JetBrains IDEs for years I can hardly really get into anything that isn't vertically integrated. Language servers are THE WORST -- I love Zed but only use it for things that don't require language integration at all.

            It's like how after using Apple hardware for years I couldn't put up with most Windows laptops -- either they were HiDPI ultrabooks with no performance or they were sloppy gamer machines with no class.

            Learning JetBrains gets you hooked.

      • HatchedLake721 2 days ago ago

        Every 2nd SaaS with a startup plan? I used intercom/customer.io/segment/amplitude/mixpanel for free for a year.

        • pastel8739 2 days ago ago

          The marginal cost of all of those is definitely much lower than for Codex, though

      • olzhasar 2 days ago ago

        An online product that was brought into existence by processing all the open source software in the world and makes money by selling the resulting knowledge base, should be accessible free of charge by the producers of that open source software.

      • runlevel1 2 days ago ago

        The price might be more commoditized if OpenAI kept true to the original mission that lives on, albeit vestigially, in their name.

      • zzyxy 2 days ago ago

        Make it $200/month subscription which actually gives you access to O($1K) worth of codex compute. Even at the face value it is very generous, IMO.

      • wodenokoto 2 days ago ago

        6 email addresses gives you 6 one months trials …

        • tclancy 2 days ago ago

          Where am I going to find multiple+email@adress.es?

          • manquer 2 days ago ago

            Using a plus sign is subaddressing [1] and most ESPs[2] will route to the main address ( multiple@addre.es) . So you can use use multiple+email@adress.es, multiple+xyz@adress.es and both will route the email to you.

            In my experience most SaaS apps do not filter this out and allow re-sign ups with sub-addresses.

            Gmail has an additional behavior that dot character is ignored in local component of the address . multiple@gmail.com, mult.iple@gmail.com mult.ip.le@gmail.com all route to the same inbox as well.

            [1] https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc5233 [2] Less common in work hosted ESPs but almost universally default enabled in public ESPs for consumers.

            • dhshhshsj 2 days ago ago

              This is not true (anymore?). I have a rather unfortunate exact naming collision with a family member. They use the full name without dot for the local gmail component, I use a dot between the first and last name.

              Two or three mails have been misplaced in a decade.

              • manquer 2 days ago ago

                It is still the rules for Gmail (https://support.google.com/mail/answer/7436150?hl=en).

                It would be feasible to change something like that without breaking security now.

                Google can hardly start allowing/routing a new account for first.last@gmail.com when you were getting it for years even though your account is firstlast@gmail.com and sensitive communication like say from your bank would routed there.

          • Groxx 2 days ago ago

            One can consult the oracle, /dev/random

          • maybe_pablo 2 days ago ago

            icloud+ hide my email for $0.99

        • Supermancho 2 days ago ago

          you need a non-voip phone number for codex SMS now, as well.

          • testfrequency 2 days ago ago

            This. I tried even tried signing up with my paid business line and it denied me due to VoIP.

        • gruez 2 days ago ago

          Since when did they have trials?

          • wodenokoto 2 days ago ago

            I’m running on my 3rd codex trial and have had a month of Gemini Pro. I think Claude is the only one without trials.

      • undefined 2 days ago ago
        [deleted]
      • throwitaway222 2 days ago ago

        That's what I was thinking, but the downvoters are hunting today.

    • jiggawatts 2 days ago ago

      They're doing everything possible to drive up their MAU before their IPO.

    • cush 2 days ago ago

      No good deed goes unpunished

    • undefined 2 days ago ago
      [deleted]
  • fortuitous-frog 2 days ago ago

    FYI this program is ~3 months old, and Anthropic has a similar Claude for Open Source program (see https://claude.com/contact-sales/claude-for-oss).

    • mickael-kerjean 2 days ago ago

      I applied for my oss project Filestash which satisfy all their criterias but never heard back despite the project having millions of users, more than 14000 stars on github and representing more work than a single person can cope with

      • overfeed 2 days ago ago

        I doubt considerations are based on need. Filestash is cool, but probably isn't the marquee marketing opportunity they are looking for; it jas to be a household name they can name-drop or place a logo on a marketing page and get instant street-cred "${AI_MODEL}: Used* by the React project in 95% of PRs closed last quarter"

        • matheusmoreira 18 hours ago ago

          I see, so it was never about giving back to the conmunity whose works they used to train the LLMs in the first place...

          • overfeed 7 hours ago ago

            Not only that, but such sponsorships would also generate new, high-quality end-to-end training data from targeted projects, including work-in-progress edits and prompts which are not present in scraped git histories.

      • ternaus a day ago ago

        Same here, 15k stars, 150M downloads and never heard back.

        • mkurz a day ago ago

          Same here ~13k stars. Never hever heard back from them. So frustrating.

          Also applied for Codex Open Source - within 2 days I got confirmation and using it since then. Great Job OpenAI! Shame on you Antrophic for not even sending out a refusal message with the cause.

      • huflungdung 2 days ago ago

        [dead]

    • rmast 2 days ago ago

      I applied for both. Heard back from neither. Mentioned two particular projects when applying, one with 2k stars and 5M monthly downloads, and another with 2M monthly downloads.

      • matheusmoreira 2 days ago ago

        Now I'm wondering what the bar is since even people with millions of users aren't making the cut. I'm orders of magnitude smaller but I signed up too since I had nothing to lose. Didn't get a response, of course.

        • adrithmetiqa 2 days ago ago

          Is it possible this is vapour marketing and no projects are actually being selected? Perhaps someone from a project who has heard back can respond here?

          • matheusmoreira a day ago ago

            Anthropic released Fable with builtin prompt injection for sabotage purposes. I suppose anything is possible.

  • vldszn 2 days ago ago

    I applied for the first time a couple of months ago and again this month, but unfortunately I haven’t heard back from them :(

    I’m building EasyInvoicePDF - a free and open-source invoice generator. (900+ GitHub stars, 2k monthly users on average, 10k total invoices downloaded)

    https://github.com/VladSez/easy-invoice-pdf

  • ixtli 2 days ago ago

    If you only give 6mo then this is the opposite of a commitment to open source it’s a drug dealers tactic of giving the first taste for free.

    • georgemcbay 2 days ago ago

      > If you only give 6mo then this is the opposite of a commitment to open source it’s a drug dealers tactic of giving the first taste for free.

      Its arguably even more self-serving than the drug dealer tactic because of the feedback loop involved (if you use it to maintain your open source project, OpenAI will surely use that new code [along with all the existing code in your project] to train future models).

      So it would be like if the drug dealer gave you the first taste for free and also the drug caused you to shit out more drugs and the drug dealer harvested your shit to sell to both future you plus other people.

      • KetoManx64 2 days ago ago

        Very vivid analogy that I'm never going to forget now.

    • altmanaltman 2 days ago ago

      drug dealers should teach MBA classes at this point - so many strategies pioneered by them get used by large tech companies

  • hmokiguess 2 days ago ago

    What does this clause here mean and why would they include it? https://developers.openai.com/codex/codex-for-oss-terms#7-su...

    Isn't the thing open source and governed by its own license?

    • arjie 2 days ago ago

      That is interesting. I would have thought they had that right without needing to add it to the ToS.

      • gruez 2 days ago ago

        It's better to have something in writing than to possibly have lawyers argue over it in court.

  • ilia-a 2 days ago ago

    I did fill the form our a while back (it was around for a few months now) without any response. I guess must be really big OSS project for maintainer to qualify.

    • spooneybarger 2 days ago ago

      Same. But I got one from Anthropic.

    • MeetingsBrowser 2 days ago ago

      What project did you apply for?

      • ilia-a 2 days ago ago

        PHP

        • jstummbillig 2 days ago ago

          [flagged]

        • arcanemachiner 2 days ago ago

          If you harass the right person on Twitter, you could probably get that ball rolling a little faster.

  • colinsane 2 days ago ago

    a huge aspect of open source is the user -> contributor -> maintainer pipeline. maybe they mean well, but in fact they're constructing a wall between those last two groups.

    especially in larger projects where maintainership duties are heavily delegated, the last thing i want is some tool that can only be used by me, because suddenly i can no longer share the workload that tool targets with people who aren't "technically" maintainers.

  • 28304283409234 2 days ago ago

    6 whole months?! Gee golly thanks mister!

    • hnthrow10282910 2 days ago ago

      Agreed. Seems like it should be indefinite given they created a multi billion dollar company off the backs of these maintainers dedicating their hard earned timed for free to begin with and then trained models against their code.

      IMO this is an insult if anything

      • nish__ 2 days ago ago

        Especially considering they trained the damn thing on our code.

    • baq 2 days ago ago

      Do you complain to the bank that credit cards have expiration dates or to the government that passports also do?

      • LtWorf 2 days ago ago

        The bank mails me a new one automatically.

  • drw 2 days ago ago

    Mycli (https://github.com/dbcli/mycli) is a happy recipient of sponsorship from this program. OpenAI asked for nothing in return; not even a link.

    • mrgoldenbrown 2 days ago ago

      Are you saying they aren't getting training data from you?

      • drw 2 days ago ago

        I'm sure they are getting training data! But it is hands-off otherwise.

    • tclancy 2 days ago ago

      [flagged]

  • 2001zhaozhao 2 days ago ago

    I think programs like this are cool, the company gets to promote their product and do good at the same time. This looks like a broader program than past ones and giving out GPT5.5 could be meaningful in improving open-source projects' security.

  • mkagenius 2 days ago ago

    6 months a bummer, but we got it for apple sandbox - coderunner (https://github.com/instavm/coderunner)

    We got it yesterday, maybe they just started rolling it out and hence op posted this.

  • veni0 2 days ago ago

    I applied last months ago and again, but there not have any information, but Claude is very fast. I build the https://github.com/go-vgo/robotgo, https://github.com/go-ego/gse and others, 20k+

  • metalspot a day ago ago

    I wouldn't use anything but open weights models for developing open source software. This is just training OpenAI and Anthropic to steal your work for their proprietary models.

    • maccard a day ago ago

      If your license is open then Anthropic and OpenAI are using your work anyway.

      • metalspot a day ago ago

        the user prompts and harness used for development are much more valuable for training than the final source code.

        my approach to open source development with AI now is to include all of the agent sessions used in development in the repository, which makes this data freely available for training for both proprietary and open weights models, but that is just my own approach. every open source developer ultimately has to make their own judgement on the best way to integrate AI in accordance with their values.

    • _the_inflator a day ago ago

      The crux of open source: per definition it is opened for the public to use it.

      I see it as a chance. Many OS projects themselves offer LLM readable websites, their docs.

      This way the project at least not only gets ingested but receives referential treatment.

      Some sort of collaboration. Ingested it will be, anyway.

      • metalspot a day ago ago

        > I see it as a chance

        absolutely. AI is the same as any other software, and open source has to integrate, adapt, and lead to make sure that open source values continue to propagate.

        my personal approach is to focus on developing with open weights models, so that my work is optimized for them, and leads to their development. proprietary labs are free to copy, but they have a structural cost disadvantage. my objective is that open weights models remain competitive on capability but lead on capability/cost.

  • seu 2 days ago ago

    Of course the solution to overusing AI is... to use more AI. Love it.

  • breve 2 days ago ago

    What are AI companies doing to respect open source licenses and copyright?

    I'm sure they train their models on open source software, so how do I know that LLM generated code doesn't reproduce substantial chunks of, for example, GPL licensed code? If indeed there are GPL violations, what are AI companies doing to police themselves?

    I wonder if open source licenses will start to include "not to be used for LLM training" clauses.

    • sofixa a day ago ago

      > I wonder if open source licenses will start to include "not to be used for LLM training" clauses

      As if the LLM trainers would care. They've ignored every single license and copyright policy out there because "fair transformative use". It's undergoing litigation in various jurisdictions, and the chaotic side of me really wants to see what happens if a UK or California decide that training an LLM on pirated copyrighted material is not fair use, and the rights holders have to be compensated.

  • upghost 2 days ago ago

    theprimagen called this[1] like three days ago. That was fast.

    [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-bT5v5Tm7w&t=164s

    • 3836293648 2 days ago ago

      No, he didn't? He predicted that third parties would donate tokens to FOSS projects, not that the labs would. One is PR that started ages ago, the other is a reasonable prediction of where the world is going.

      • goodroot 2 days ago ago

        Not quite donate tokens directly (technically and practically weird), but donation -> compute has been out for a couple months on opub.dev (disclaimer, built it). So his prediction was somewhat correct if not late!

    • jasonjmcghee 2 days ago ago

      They’ve been doing this since at least March

  • bibryam a day ago ago

    A few AI companies giving free stuff to OSS maintainers - Dosu - CodeRabbit - OpenAI - Anthropic

    https://www.oss.fund/explore/?pillar=operational-support&cat...

  • vintagedave 3 days ago ago

    I wonder how well this supports niche languages. There's an indication there for stars or other signals of importance to 'the ecosystem'; that could match the Big Libraries but likely not ones for small languages.

  • monster_truck 2 days ago ago

    How is this different from https://openai.com/form/codex-open-source-fund/ and are the winners listed anywhere? I've only ever seen devs say it isn't worth bothering, many of which I would've expected to be shoe ins for something like this.

  • winfredJa 2 days ago ago

    my guess is they get high quality training data.

    • measurablefunc 2 days ago ago

      This is correct. The most valuable form of data for any AI company is corrective feedback from real use cases.

  • vinhnx 2 days ago ago

    Applied in March when it first launched for VT Code, a Rust-based terminal coding agent, but haven't heard back from OpenAI. The bar seems high, which makes sense given the fund's limited scope and requirements.

  • tuananh 2 days ago ago

    a very good way of collecting high quality training data.

    i imagine the usage from maintainers of high quality projects are excellent training data. much better than average joe

  • purpleidea 2 days ago ago

    The difference between this one (good) and the Anthropic program (bad) is that openai doesn't force you into a marketing clause while Anthropic does.

    I mean seriously, you already ripped off all the worlds open source code. Be more generous and don't demand anything else back. Six months is so little too.

  • holografix 2 days ago ago

    Nice way of guaranteeing access to source code as training material and intelligence gathering

  • einpoklum 2 days ago ago

    "Critical open source software" should not, and maybe cannot, be maintained with its development requiring huge commercial-corporate infrastructure in the form of OpenAI's LLMs.

    It should be maintained by humans, relying on widely available hardware and software, requiring little of both.

    Not saying that using LLMs as a convenience is forbidden or anything, but the direction is problematic.

    (Also, this sounds like a cheap alternative to actually funding FOSS work.)

  • undefined 4 days ago ago
    [deleted]
  • ramon156 a day ago ago

    First hit's free

  • jeena 2 days ago ago

    I like that a project only qualifies if it's hosted on GitHub.

  • medmarrouchi a day ago ago

    Applied twice and didn't get any response

  • sscaryterry 2 days ago ago

    Hurdles, more hurdles.

  • ev3lynx727 2 days ago ago

    These grant programs feel inconsistent—sometimes they genuinely help OSS, other times they look more like marketing. Hard to tell where the balance really lies.

    • wseqyrku 2 days ago ago

      When in doubt, go with marketing. There are things that are 'just marketing' you wouldn't believe.

    • akoboldfrying 2 days ago ago

      > sometimes they genuinely help OSS, other times they look more like marketing

      Whenever companies do things like this, it's both, or at least trying hard to be. To the extent that it's perceived by developers (that is, potential OpenAI customers) as helping OSS, it's effective marketing. This perception may or may not correspond to reality.

  • TZubiri 2 days ago ago

    What a visionary Stallman was.

  • julianlam a day ago ago

    6 months is a joke.

    Companies a thousandth their size are giving free or at-cost access for OSS projects.

  • outime 2 days ago ago

    Codex for open source stored in GitHub*

  • akoboldfrying 2 days ago ago

    The amount of gift-horse-mouth-looking in this thread is amazing to me.

    How dare they only give me this much free stuff! I want that much free stuff!

    • ahartmetz a day ago ago

      I want my license fee from my software that they trained their models on.

      (Actually I don't, I want their stuff as Free Software and I mean everything, training data, pipelines and all)

  • undefined 2 days ago ago
    [deleted]
  • agentifysh 2 days ago ago

    just applied

    I've forked tensorzero after they archived the repo and will be updating and fixing issues going forward.

    https://github.com/agentify-sh/gateway

    this is my 2nd attempt

    I am using my idle codex usage but would benefit from more inference

  • ameon 2 days ago ago

    what they do when someone switches from open source to closed source later

  • dottchen 2 days ago ago

    it's hard to trust them when there is little human support behind the scenes

  • realo 2 days ago ago

    After what just happened to Anthropic, no way in hell will I ever use, support or give money to Kushner's OpenAI.

    • OutOfHere 2 days ago ago

      That was Amazon's doing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48519092

      Correction: only in part

      • wyrdcurt 2 days ago ago

        The Axios article[1] I read says "calls from Amazon — as well as at least five other companies to a variety of senior administration officials Thursday evening and Friday morning — led to the model being shut down by Friday night".

        Yes, Amazon is the only company named, but would anyone be surprised if OpenAI was one of the other five companies? It's hard to imagine a company that would materially benefit more from this event.

        The evidence is circumstantial, of course, but can you blame people for making a connection?

        [1] https://www.axios.com/2026/06/13/anthropic-amazon-white-hous...

  • fuddle 2 days ago ago

    "6 months of ChatGPT Pro, which includes Codex" - come on, just make it free. Last time I checked OpenAI was worth $852 billion.

    • baq 2 days ago ago

      This valuation is derived from the fact the three tokens aren’t free

  • goodroot 2 days ago ago

    Trying to get https://opub.dev off the ground to solve this in a more open way.

    If you have more than 100 stars, you can get $50 in starter credit.

    Ideally organizations, more so than people, provide the bulk of future donations.

    As for this program, ehh... Sceptical in general of any frontier program that ends at some time.

    Once you're embedded, and all that...

  • emsign 2 days ago ago

    They are coming for the repositories now.

  • htrp 2 days ago ago

    Anyone know how much API credit openai offers?

    • idank 2 days ago ago

      They give out the subscription by default, and if they find your use case interesting enough they'll give you credits. Not sure if there's an upper limit, but I would be surprised if it's more than a few hundred dollars a month.

      (no internal knowledge, this is based on my experience with explainshell.com, thanks OAI!)

  • dartharva 2 days ago ago

    On a side note, am I the only one who feels Codex models have a higher general first-pass success rate than Claude models on coding what you want? I use Github Copilot and always find myself drifting more towards them when working.

  • ashish296 2 days ago ago

    [flagged]

  • verdyshd 2 days ago ago

    [flagged]

  • ReptileMan 2 days ago ago

    The moment a corporation starts to endorse open source is the moment they admit they know that are behind.

    • SweetSoftPillow 2 days ago ago

      Anthropic published essentially the same offering recently. By your logic, does that mean they're behind too?