This is also my question. I think ruff is a great tool. I love it and use it on all my new projects. It is an insanely fast and enjoyable tool in a Python world where tools are frequently very slow and a pain to use. But how are you going to make money as a linting tool?

I will say that seeing from afar Charlie has been hiring some very smart people. Not sure how it will turn out but hopefully something good will come of it.

This seems to be their business model.

> In the future, we’ll build and sell services on top of our tools — but the tools themselves will remain free and open-source.

> Our plan is to provide paid services that are better and easier to use than the alternatives by integrating our open-source offerings directly. Our goal is for these services to be as impactful as Ruff itself — but you may choose not to use them. Either way, Ruff will remain free and open-source, just as it is today.

It's there in their announcement post.

https://astral.sh/blog/announcing-astral-the-company-behind-...

> Our plan is to provide paid services that are better and easier to use than the alternatives by integrating our open-source offerings directly.

What are the paid alternative services they are talking about?