Tea, an open source unified package manager for software developers, today announced it has added another $8.9 million in seed funding to its coffer as it builds on recent momentum that has seen some 16,000 developers sign up for Tea.
Tea is the brainchild of Max and Timothy, creators of popular open source package manager Homebrew. Tea emerged from stealth in March of this year with $8 million in funding from notable backers including the venture capital arm of bicyle giant.
A new web3 protocol will be used by the company to help open source software creators get paid. Digital contracts will make it easier for companies to sponsor people in their tech stack. When package maintainers complete a package submission, they will receive a non-fungible token, which is used to evidence their work and is the key that directs tea rewards.
Tea focused on the first iteration of the product which launched last month to challenge well-established incumbents in the package management space.
The tea cli interface is an image.
Tea will be more than a package manager, it will be a universal package manager, and a virtual environment manager. It is flexible, with developers and companies able to adapt to their own needs.
The base features that we have released so far are what a cli tool of its kind should have. It makes you think about what you want to accomplish and what you want to build. The future of tea will be extensions created by the community to cater to their individual niches.
Supporting open source developers in their efforts to get paid is the biggest game-changing change here. The high-profile chaos of the FTX collapse may cause people to pause for thought. In addition to the involvement of high-profile investors, Tea's proposed protocol will see package maintainers receive a non-fungible token when they complete a package submission, and which is used to evidence their work and is the key that directs tea rewards.
The issue of payments has been a constant point of discussion in the open source sphere. Any way that a robust software supply chain can be supported is likely to get some attention.
Tea doesn't have a firm date for when it will be ready for prime-time, but the company says it will be available in 2023.
We won't launch until we understand how it should be best built and have gone through trial and error. We will make sure the tool is useful and valuable for developers.
The core components of the protocol will be optional for all involved when it launches. Tea's own business model will be based on it.
Lewis said that they intend to build tools on the protocol that will be revenue generating and encourage others to do the same. Depending on what the community finds most useful, we have a long list of revenue generating outcomes.
There will be scope for enterprise-specific services.
Lewis said that they feel that they can excel in licensing. The security of the open source supply chain is important. We will be able to identify potential threats and operate to monitor license compliance with the thousands of different open source components.
Tea's latest seed round was led by a group of companies.
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