The tools that build the Internet have steeped too long.
It’s time for a fresh brew.
$ sh <(curl tea.xyz)
Like its predecessor, brew,
tea is the base of the
developer stack—seated beneath the tools that build the Internet.
We’re uniquely placed to have tangible impact on all aspects of software development
and we intend to.
We will make sure devs have the tools they need to build the Internet and
the compensation they need to keep on building.
For more than twenty years the Internet has been built upon the fruits of freely available open source. Whenever a project enabled new functionality it was (whether desired or not) added as a new brick in the tower of infrastructure; giving the Internet new powers and capabilities; becoming a new foundation for all the innovations that followed. The maintainers of these new bricks became thanklessly unpaid volunteers.
Homebrew has been used by tens of millions of creators to build things we all use every day,
and yet Max Howell—the creator of brew and co‐founder of tea—was
unable to make a living from Homebrew alone.
Maintaining such a large project was more than a full‐time job but every few years Max
would have to go back to working on somebody else’s idea for money.
Of the countless enterprises that have utilized Homebrew,
only two have ever said thanks:
Google sent him a blanket and Square sent him an iPad.
As generous as (the iPad) was, small gifts don’t pay bills.
We’re making sure such a thing never happens again and that open source developers
can focus on building things they love without compromise.
Max tells the story himself at Medium →
The problem has always existed, but the technology to solve it hasn’t. tea facilitates the graph of open source that underpins all modern digital infrastructure. We’re putting it on‐chain creating a map we’ll use to guide value redistribution to the open source that makes the Internet possible.
We’re not changing how open source works—it’s still free. web3 has introduced powerful new paradigms that allow value to be compensated without direct payment. Creator economy, meet open source.
Want an email when the white paper is released?
Wherever you develop, wherever your CI/CD runs, however you deploy your app, tea is there. We abstract this detail away so you can get on with the work that matters to you.
$ sh <(curl tea.xyz) ci
Your README, blog post or internal install instructions can
all use the same, simple one‐liner.
$ sh <(curl tea.xyz) install deno.land
Here, our one‐liner installs deno
to ./bin/deno. If tea is installed it
integrates with that installation, if not the script just exits;
tea itself is not installed either way.
We’re happy to be just the transmission layer.
Good developers create. Great developers collaborate.
You don’t work alone and neither should the tool that sits at the root of your stack. We’re designing tea to be super great for teams.
tea sets your stack up right and makes working with it a delight so you and your team can focus on building what matters.
tea’s decentralization offers tangible benefits to ecosystem security. Every layer of your apps and dapps is signed and verified on‐chain. Users can rest assured that the software they are using is what all its creators intended.
In day to day development our decentralization increases reliability (leftpad is a sore memory) and gives developers the flexibility they need to turn inspiration into empires; when a single proprietry vendor controls how your stack is composed and deployed your stack is centralized and under their control.
We’re also saying goodbye to centralization at the installation layer. Say hello to native, built‐in “version management”† for every tool in your stack and goodbye to dependency hell.
† similar to tools like rbenv, nvm or Python’s virtualenv.
tea is built with a “it just works” philosophy. It’s our job to set you up for success and then get out of your way so you can work as effectively as possible. Development is hard enough without the toolset being a source of pain as well.
Much like its predecessor, brew, tea is full of delightful touches.
You’ll have to try it and see.
Of course delightful also means fast. You’ve got plenty to do and need tools that respect your time.
We believe the open source community needs to direct and control the ecosystem we will help launch. The DAO will be an open, transparent and evolving governance structure where the depth of your contributions will matter more than the depth of your pocket.
Join the team that is both fixing how open source is funded and creating the tools that will accelerate its creation for the benefit of all humanity.
Max Howell, our CEO, created brew.
He’s a self‐taught developer,
yet has written software used by tens of millions of people.
He doesn’t care if you know how to invert a binary tree.
If you have a passion for changing the world and have
built some cool stuff then why not email us
and speak for what job you have in mind?