Tea Inc. is a Puerto Rico-based corporation that is building the open-source toolkit that makes development possible and builds the internet. Developers can work on any platform, CI/CD on any platform, deploy on any platform; Tea abstracts this detail away so developers can get on with the work that matters. Those interested in joining the team fixing how open-source is funded should reach out through Telegram or Discord at https://linktr.ee/teaxyz.
Open source has a widely recognized problem that has yet to be adequately addressed. While open-source projects have become foundational pieces upon which the internet and all its innovations are built, they operate mainly as labors of love. And when open source is created and maintained with little or no compensation for its developers, that’s not only unfair to developers but potentially dangerous to users, who at times have been left vulnerable to cybersecurity issues. We believe that modern technology has been stunted because a high concentration of developers has been focused on improving FAANG ad revenue rather than creating the software infrastructure that benefits all humanity. We can no longer ask the small and underfunded open source contingent of the world’s developers to choose between a salary and keeping the internet running.
Read moreOpen source code is integral to tech stacks at many large companies, but its authors rarely get recognized — let alone compensated — for their work. Max Howell claims the package manager software he created, Homebrew, is the most contributed-to open source software program in the world. Still, companies including Square and Google that have leveraged Homebrew haven’t acknowledged Howell’s contributions to their product in any meaningful way, he told TechCrunch — though he noted they did send him some branded swag items, including a blanket.
Read moreTea Inc., a new company developing an open source software platform on the blockchain, has released a whitepaper outlining its protocol for compensating open-source developers. Tea is creating a groundbreaking decentralised system for fairly compensating open-source developers based on their contributions to the entire ecosystem. The Tea blockchain will include a reputation system and an immutable decentralised registry to distribute value to developers based on their contribution to the utility and health of the ecosystem. Because the registry knows the entire open source graph, value can enter the graph at apex points—apps and essential libraries—and be distributed recursively to the dependencies of those apex points and their dependencies. “Tea’s mission is to empower open source communities and ensure their contributors are supported as they create the tools that build the Internet,” said co-founder Max Howell, the creator of open-source software package management system Homebrew. “Tea’s combination of tools, information, and rewards will justly incentivize developers, helping stimulate the growth of open-source software and foster innovation.”
Read moreThe Internet is predominantly composed of open-source projects and has been since its inception. Over time, many of these projects have become foundational pieces upon which all future innovation is built. And while fortunes have been made from it, open-source is mainly created and maintained without compensation. Modern technology has been stunted by relying on the smallest percentage of the world’s developers to choose between a salary or keeping the internet running. Using a decentralized blockchain to secure the open source supply chain also offers an opportunity for fairly remunerating open source developers based on their contributions to the entire ecosystem. Although Web 2.0 accrued fortunes on the backs of free labor by unpaid open source volunteers, web3 has the power to change this. Open-source package maintainers could publish their releases to a decentralized registry powered by a Byzantine fault-tolerant blockchain with a host of storage options to eliminate single sources of failure and provide immutable releases. This would allow communities to govern their regions of the open-source ecosystem, independent of external agendas. The package manager is uniquely placed in the developer tool stack—it provides universal interoperability— and thus can enable automated and precise value distribution based on actual real-world usage.
Read moreCo-Founder and CEO Max Howell created the open-source software package management system Homebrew, also known as “brew,” which grew into the most contributed‐to open source software program in the world. Homebrew has been used by tens of millions of developers worldwide and has served as the backbone for the largest technology corporations to build their products without directly contributing to its development.
Co-Founder Timothy Lewis began his career in 2002 at e-velocity technical consulting as a Data Center Engineer for two years, after that he held any roles as a Consulting Engineer, worked at Oracle, Kaiser Permanente until he switched over to Blockchain Development in 2017 and has been involved in that area ever since. He now is the founder of a non-profit called DEVxDAO which supports DAO which provides grants to build cohesion and longevity in decentralized systems at large.