Open Source at Hanzo: Building in Public
Announcing Hanzo's open-source strategy — why we're open-sourcing our core infrastructure and introducing revenue sharing for contributors.
Today we are open-sourcing significant portions of the Hanzo infrastructure and introducing a revenue sharing model for open-source contributors.
Why Open Source
Three reasons, in order of importance:
1. Trust
We ask customers to run their businesses on our infrastructure. They should be able to read the code that powers it. Not a sanitized sample — the actual code.
Open source is the ultimate transparency. If you want to know how we handle your data, read the source.
2. Quality
External contributors find bugs we miss. External reviewers catch design flaws we are blind to. The collective intelligence of an open community exceeds any internal team.
3. Ecosystem
Proprietary platforms create vendor lock-in. Open-source platforms create ecosystems. We want to be the hub of an ecosystem, not the walls of a prison.
What We Are Open-Sourcing
The following projects are now public on github.com/hanzoai:
- Hanzo Base: Backend-as-a-service framework
- Hanzo Identity: Authentication and authorization
- Hanzo MCP: Model Context Protocol tools
- Hanzo SDK: Client libraries (TypeScript, Python, Go, Rust)
- Candle: Rust ML framework (our fork with optimizations)
Additional projects will open-source on a rolling basis.
Revenue Sharing
Open source should benefit contributors financially, not just reputationally.
Our model:
- Contributors who submit merged PRs are eligible for revenue sharing
- Revenue share is proportional to contribution significance
- Paid quarterly based on the revenue of features their code supports
- No minimum threshold — every contribution counts
Details are in the CONTRIBUTING.md of each repository.
Licensing
All projects use permissive licenses (MIT or Apache 2.0). Use the code however you want. Build products on it. Compete with us if you like. The license is not a trap.
Get Involved
Browse the repositories. Read the code. Open issues. Submit PRs. Join the community Discord for discussion.
The best infrastructure is built in public.
Zach Kelling is the founder of Hanzo AI (Techstars '17).
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