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In thirty years LaTEX will still be open source and probably will be maintained. Typst appears to be a mix of open source and closed source; the general model

In thirty years LaTEX will still be open source and probably will be maintained. Typst appears to be a mix of open source and closed source; the general model here tends to be neglecting the open source part and implementing critical features in the closed source portion. Which is to say, it's unlikely to live beyond the company itself.

the-wumpus 1y ago
I disagree. The web app editor is closed source, but much of what it provides is open source so editing is a similar (and imo better) experience locally. The typst compiler and LSP and everything you need to use it is open source. Imo the situation is more like if overleaf were also the people who made the LaTeX project originally. I think the only possible issue with the typst org dying (assuming after the full 1.0 version so it's mostly maintenance) is that packages are automatically downloaded from the typst site, but an open repo can trivially be made considering that the set of packages used is just from a open source git repo and the closed source site just hosts tar.gz files of the folders in the repo. Not a big deal I think.
- dleslie 1y ago
  They have a deep incentive to drive users to subscribe, and that's directly at odds with keeping all of the document rendering open source. It makes a lot of sense for them to provide document features that are only available to subscribers.
  - the-wumpus 1y ago
    They have some incentive to drive users to subscribe, but they have other forms of income, and I think if they ever implemented even a single feature of actual rendering that was closed source their community would riot and we'd get a community managed fork (probably by the guy who does the language server...). The only way they can continue to gain traction is if they never ever in any way lock people to the web app. Documents must be portable, it's part of why someone would want typst anyways. I do not see a future where this happens, and if it does it will be because the typst org has changed hands and is also no longer particularly relevant to the future of typst the language.
    - ummonk 1y ago
      Is there really a community of volunteer contributors that could fork it if that happened? Typically with a corporate-backed project like this, the corporate development tends to crowd out the formation of a volunteer community of contributors that would be able to take over development.
      - gf000 1y ago
        All the typesetting extensions and such are a community effort. There are so many specific use cases that can only be/will be done by very specialized academics that a non-networked product would die on the vine.
  - justinnk 1y ago
    What you suggest seems plausible, but there is a very good counter example. Overleaf is also managing well by relying on the open-source LaTEX. What drives people to subscribe is not the typesetting itself, but the ecosystem around it (collaborative editing, version management, easy sharing, etc.). You can make money with those and still have the rendering free/open-source. I believe a similar thing is/will be true for Typst as well.
    - diffeomorphism 1y ago
      That is a bad counterexample. There is a world of difference between the main devs offering a paid service and some unaffiliated company offering services. In principle, having a reliable source of funding for typst is great. However, as a journal this would make me hesitant: what if down the road some essential features become subscription-only?
    - franga2000 1y ago
      It helps that the LaTeX ecosystem is such a flaming dumpster fire that you all but need a tool like OverLeaf to use it effectively.
  - gf000 1y ago
    There is quite a clear distinction/border between an Input-Output rendering kind of program sitting beneath everything, and a web service providing stuff like collaborative editing, free hosting etc on top.
agnishom 1y ago
> implementing critical features in the closed source portion Like which critical features, for example?
- dleslie 1y ago
  For now, that's the entire collaboration component. It would make sense to build a portion of document rendering in that context which won't be found in the open source portions. A value-add to convince users to subscribe.
  - moelf 1y ago
    >For now, that's the entire collaboration component. And LaTeX has this for free? It's separated concerns, I think the analogy is Overleaf and LaTeX but just happened to be made by the same group of folks, it doesn't have to go down the monetization-at-the-cost-of-your-user route.
    - gucci-on-fleek 1y ago
      > And LaTeX has this for free? Yes, Overleaf is both free-as-in-beer [0] and free-as-in-speech [1]. The OSS version is pretty easy to self-host, but it's missing quite a few features from the paid version. I still prefer compiling from the command-line for most of my documents, but I run the self-hosted version for collaboration. [0] https://www.overleaf.com/user/subscription/plans https://www.overleaf.com/user/subscription/plans [1] https://github.com/overleaf/overleaf/ https://github.com/overleaf/overleaf/
      - agubelu 1y ago
        Actually I've never understood the "free-as-in-beer" thing. Where is beer free?
        pedvide 1y ago
        I've always understood "free as in beer" as: if someone hands you a beer and says it's free, you know that you don't have to pay to consume the beer, but that doesn't mean that you also get the recipe, brewing instructions, factory plans, glass making instructions etc. The only thing that is free is the liquid itself, nothing else.
eviks 1y ago
> neglecting the open source part So it's no different than fully open sourced projects.
cAtte_ 1y ago
you are wrong. typst's lead dev has stated that an important goal is to have the CLI (which is open source) and web app behave identically, even refusing to implement such a basic feature as PDF embedding because, due to technical reasons, it is currently incompatible with this goal. [1] typst, the project, is not by any means a "mix" of open and closed, even if typst, the company, is. indeed, the most thorough LSP implementation available (tinymist) is not only open source but a community project. for another funny example see typstify, a paid typst editor not affiliated with the company. [2] [1]: https://github.com/typst/typst/issues/145#issuecomment-1753161946 https://github.com/typst/typst/issues/145#issuecomment-17531... [2]: https://typstify.com/purchase/ https://typstify.com/purchase/
- jorams 1y ago
  I believe their intentions are good, and keeping functionality the same for different outputs to avoid fragmentation is good too. An alternative interpretation, however, directly in line with the fear expressed by GP, is that they're already crippling the open source CLI because they can't support the feature in the closed source web app.
veunes 1y ago
On the flip side, new tools like Typst are trying to push the UX forward in ways that the LaTeX ecosystem often struggles with. I think it comes down to what risks you're comfortable with
mayli 1y ago
Does that matter? The article is in PDF, as other latex generated PDFs.
- diffeomorphism 1y ago
  Yes, obviously. Do you delete all source code once you compiled a binary? Any future corrections, additions or other modifications are made to the source, not the generated old pdf.
  - mr_mitm 1y ago
    LaTeX is not as stable as people make it out to be. I don't know how many packages there are for working with tables, but 20 years ago, `tabu` was the most recommended package, until the maintainer stopped responding. Now the package is incompatible with almost everything else, leading to headaches when trying to compile old documents: https://github.com/tabu-issues-for-future-maintainer/tabu https://github.com/tabu-issues-for-future-maintainer/tabu https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/470107/incompatibility-of-fix-in-latex3-latex2e-in-respect-to-unmaintained-tabu-packa https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/470107/incompatibili... Typst at least has dependency pinning out of the box. If you value reproducibility, you should invent a similar mechanism for your LaTeX documents. Also, I'm loosely following the activities around LaTeX on Github and Stackexchange and it seems that it's mostly maintained by three people or so (Carlisle, Mittelbach, Fischer), who - no offense - aren't getting any younger. I wonder how well LaTeX will be maintained if these long time contributors have to step down eventually.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
Paapaa 1y ago
Typst is fully open source licensed under Apache-2.0 license. It is not a mix of any kind. Don't confuse the web app with Typst engine. The web app is a similar service to Overleaf and that is closed source. It is not mandatory, you can use Typst fully on your local machine. The team tries to make money and cover development costs with the web app. But the actual typesetting engine is fully open source and free.
- meehai 1y ago
  https://github.com/overleaf/overleaf https://github.com/overleaf/overleaf hm ?
  - Paapaa 1y ago
    "That" in my sentence meant that Typst web app is closed source.
    - mollerhoj 1y ago
      But that doesn’t make much sense - by your account Latex would also be a mix of closed and open source, since closed source web apps exists for writing Latex.
      - Paapaa 1y ago
        What does not make sense? Did you mean to answer to someone else? I only stated that Typst (the typesetting engine) is free to use and modify, and only the web app is closed source. Typst can be used without touching any web apps. I use Typst locally. I made no claims about any mixes or claims about LaTeX.
        RobertBobert 1y ago
        [dead]
        deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
thezoq2 1y ago
That is a real concern, but I wouldn't say there are any critical features in the closed source portion. I wrote the whole thesis locally with only open source tools. One of the included papers was written in the cloud platform for collaboration. It is a concern that there is a single company doing most of the development, but there is quite a bit of community involvement so I don't think it is an immediate concern
ykonstant 1y ago
>In thirty years LaTEX will still be open source and probably will be maintained. The latter is a genuine concern. Will it be maintained? I like LaTeX a lot, but would I want to maintain its internals? No. Could I? If I were paid handsomely, yes. Emphasis on handsomely. Which leads to another worry: LaTeX itself may be OSS, but down the line it is possible that maintained forks will be controlled by big publishers paying maintainers to deal with the insanity of its internals. And we all know how lovely those publishers are (凸ಠ益ಠ)凸
- shakna 1y ago
  TeX Live started in 1996, current update release is March, and has active conferences next year. They're an open source group, that has so far survived the test of time, and I'd suggest motivations are there to keep that into the distant future. Unless academia collapses.
  - ykonstant 1y ago
    I hope you are correct!

the-wumpus 1y ago

I disagree. The web app editor is closed source, but much of what it provides is open source so editing is a similar (and imo better) experience locally. The typst compiler and LSP and everything you need to use it is open source. Imo the situation is more like if overleaf were also the people who made the LaTeX project originally. I think the only possible issue with the typst org dying (assuming after the full 1.0 version so it's mostly maintenance) is that packages are automatically downloaded from the typst site, but an open repo can trivially be made considering that the set of packages used is just from a open source git repo and the closed source site just hosts tar.gz files of the folders in the repo. Not a big deal I think.

dleslie 1y ago
They have a deep incentive to drive users to subscribe, and that's directly at odds with keeping all of the document rendering open source. It makes a lot of sense for them to provide document features that are only available to subscribers.
- the-wumpus 1y ago
  They have some incentive to drive users to subscribe, but they have other forms of income, and I think if they ever implemented even a single feature of actual rendering that was closed source their community would riot and we'd get a community managed fork (probably by the guy who does the language server...). The only way they can continue to gain traction is if they never ever in any way lock people to the web app. Documents must be portable, it's part of why someone would want typst anyways. I do not see a future where this happens, and if it does it will be because the typst org has changed hands and is also no longer particularly relevant to the future of typst the language.
  - ummonk 1y ago
    Is there really a community of volunteer contributors that could fork it if that happened? Typically with a corporate-backed project like this, the corporate development tends to crowd out the formation of a volunteer community of contributors that would be able to take over development.
    - gf000 1y ago
      All the typesetting extensions and such are a community effort. There are so many specific use cases that can only be/will be done by very specialized academics that a non-networked product would die on the vine.
- justinnk 1y ago
  What you suggest seems plausible, but there is a very good counter example. Overleaf is also managing well by relying on the open-source LaTEX. What drives people to subscribe is not the typesetting itself, but the ecosystem around it (collaborative editing, version management, easy sharing, etc.). You can make money with those and still have the rendering free/open-source. I believe a similar thing is/will be true for Typst as well.
  - diffeomorphism 1y ago
    That is a bad counterexample. There is a world of difference between the main devs offering a paid service and some unaffiliated company offering services. In principle, having a reliable source of funding for typst is great. However, as a journal this would make me hesitant: what if down the road some essential features become subscription-only?
  - franga2000 1y ago
    It helps that the LaTeX ecosystem is such a flaming dumpster fire that you all but need a tool like OverLeaf to use it effectively.
- gf000 1y ago
  There is quite a clear distinction/border between an Input-Output rendering kind of program sitting beneath everything, and a web service providing stuff like collaborative editing, free hosting etc on top.

agnishom 1y ago

> implementing critical features in the closed source portion Like which critical features, for example?

dleslie 1y ago
For now, that's the entire collaboration component. It would make sense to build a portion of document rendering in that context which won't be found in the open source portions. A value-add to convince users to subscribe.
- moelf 1y ago
  >For now, that's the entire collaboration component. And LaTeX has this for free? It's separated concerns, I think the analogy is Overleaf and LaTeX but just happened to be made by the same group of folks, it doesn't have to go down the monetization-at-the-cost-of-your-user route.
  - gucci-on-fleek 1y ago
    > And LaTeX has this for free? Yes, Overleaf is both free-as-in-beer [0] and free-as-in-speech [1]. The OSS version is pretty easy to self-host, but it's missing quite a few features from the paid version. I still prefer compiling from the command-line for most of my documents, but I run the self-hosted version for collaboration. [0] https://www.overleaf.com/user/subscription/plans https://www.overleaf.com/user/subscription/plans [1] https://github.com/overleaf/overleaf/ https://github.com/overleaf/overleaf/
    - agubelu 1y ago
      Actually I've never understood the "free-as-in-beer" thing. Where is beer free?
      - pedvide 1y ago
        I've always understood "free as in beer" as: if someone hands you a beer and says it's free, you know that you don't have to pay to consume the beer, but that doesn't mean that you also get the recipe, brewing instructions, factory plans, glass making instructions etc. The only thing that is free is the liquid itself, nothing else.

eviks 1y ago

> neglecting the open source part So it's no different than fully open sourced projects.

cAtte_ 1y ago

you are wrong. typst's lead dev has stated that an important goal is to have the CLI (which is open source) and web app behave identically, even refusing to implement such a basic feature as PDF embedding because, due to technical reasons, it is currently incompatible with this goal. [1] typst, the project, is not by any means a "mix" of open and closed, even if typst, the company, is. indeed, the most thorough LSP implementation available (tinymist) is not only open source but a community project. for another funny example see typstify, a paid typst editor not affiliated with the company. [2] [1]: https://github.com/typst/typst/issues/145#issuecomment-1753161946 https://github.com/typst/typst/issues/145#issuecomment-17531... [2]: https://typstify.com/purchase/ https://typstify.com/purchase/

jorams 1y ago
I believe their intentions are good, and keeping functionality the same for different outputs to avoid fragmentation is good too. An alternative interpretation, however, directly in line with the fear expressed by GP, is that they're already crippling the open source CLI because they can't support the feature in the closed source web app.

veunes 1y ago

On the flip side, new tools like Typst are trying to push the UX forward in ways that the LaTeX ecosystem often struggles with. I think it comes down to what risks you're comfortable with

mayli 1y ago

Does that matter? The article is in PDF, as other latex generated PDFs.

diffeomorphism 1y ago
Yes, obviously. Do you delete all source code once you compiled a binary? Any future corrections, additions or other modifications are made to the source, not the generated old pdf.
- mr_mitm 1y ago
  LaTeX is not as stable as people make it out to be. I don't know how many packages there are for working with tables, but 20 years ago, `tabu` was the most recommended package, until the maintainer stopped responding. Now the package is incompatible with almost everything else, leading to headaches when trying to compile old documents: https://github.com/tabu-issues-for-future-maintainer/tabu https://github.com/tabu-issues-for-future-maintainer/tabu https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/470107/incompatibility-of-fix-in-latex3-latex2e-in-respect-to-unmaintained-tabu-packa https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/470107/incompatibili... Typst at least has dependency pinning out of the box. If you value reproducibility, you should invent a similar mechanism for your LaTeX documents. Also, I'm loosely following the activities around LaTeX on Github and Stackexchange and it seems that it's mostly maintained by three people or so (Carlisle, Mittelbach, Fischer), who - no offense - aren't getting any younger. I wonder how well LaTeX will be maintained if these long time contributors have to step down eventually.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]

Paapaa 1y ago

Typst is fully open source licensed under Apache-2.0 license. It is not a mix of any kind. Don't confuse the web app with Typst engine. The web app is a similar service to Overleaf and that is closed source. It is not mandatory, you can use Typst fully on your local machine. The team tries to make money and cover development costs with the web app. But the actual typesetting engine is fully open source and free.

meehai 1y ago
https://github.com/overleaf/overleaf https://github.com/overleaf/overleaf hm ?
- Paapaa 1y ago
  "That" in my sentence meant that Typst web app is closed source.
  - mollerhoj 1y ago
    But that doesn’t make much sense - by your account Latex would also be a mix of closed and open source, since closed source web apps exists for writing Latex.
    - Paapaa 1y ago
      What does not make sense? Did you mean to answer to someone else? I only stated that Typst (the typesetting engine) is free to use and modify, and only the web app is closed source. Typst can be used without touching any web apps. I use Typst locally. I made no claims about any mixes or claims about LaTeX.
      - RobertBobert 1y ago
        [dead]
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]

thezoq2 1y ago

That is a real concern, but I wouldn't say there are any critical features in the closed source portion. I wrote the whole thesis locally with only open source tools. One of the included papers was written in the cloud platform for collaboration. It is a concern that there is a single company doing most of the development, but there is quite a bit of community involvement so I don't think it is an immediate concern

ykonstant 1y ago

>In thirty years LaTEX will still be open source and probably will be maintained. The latter is a genuine concern. Will it be maintained? I like LaTeX a lot, but would I want to maintain its internals? No. Could I? If I were paid handsomely, yes. Emphasis on handsomely. Which leads to another worry: LaTeX itself may be OSS, but down the line it is possible that maintained forks will be controlled by big publishers paying maintainers to deal with the insanity of its internals. And we all know how lovely those publishers are (凸ಠ益ಠ)凸

shakna 1y ago
TeX Live started in 1996, current update release is March, and has active conferences next year. They're an open source group, that has so far survived the test of time, and I'd suggest motivations are there to keep that into the distant future. Unless academia collapses.
- ykonstant 1y ago
  I hope you are correct!