TTOSA is now zero: open source alternatives appear the same day software ships
bibryam · x · 2026-10-19
André Staltz updated his four-year-old TTOSA (Time Till Open Source Alternative) metric and found it has dropped to zero days — the latest example being OpenMausBot, an open source alternative to Grok Bot that appeared the same day it launched.
Key points:
- He used Claude Opus 5.5 to scrape proprietary and open source release data, then curated the list manually. The updated scatter plot shows the time-to-open-source-alternative for post-2020 software approaching zero.
- He argues the trend is irreversible: any proprietary release should assume near-instant open source cloning. The process itself can be automated — bots listening for product announcements and kicking off open source alternatives, all feasible with today's tools.
- Implication: proprietary software must be designed and monetized assuming immediate open competition; software is becoming more remixable and personalized, driving niche enterprise software.
- Data and charts are open at github.com/staltz/ttosa (CC-BY-NC 4.0).
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