From 974ec60d59b3b0845c74451767cca9ffc84571e7 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: openhands Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2026 14:55:41 +0000 Subject: [PATCH 1/2] Add OpenHands Commercial Open Source Strategy documentation Co-authored-by: openhands --- docs.json | 3 +- overview/strategy.mdx | 208 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 2 files changed, 210 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-) create mode 100644 overview/strategy.mdx diff --git a/docs.json b/docs.json index 127e4a4b..3a89175d 100644 --- a/docs.json +++ b/docs.json @@ -30,7 +30,8 @@ "overview/first-projects", "overview/faqs", "overview/community", - "overview/contributing" + "overview/contributing", + "overview/strategy" ] }, { diff --git a/overview/strategy.mdx b/overview/strategy.mdx new file mode 100644 index 00000000..d0f40a12 --- /dev/null +++ b/overview/strategy.mdx @@ -0,0 +1,208 @@ +--- +title: OpenHands Commercial Open Source Strategy +description: OpenHands' strategy to become the open standard for AI coding agents +--- + +## **Vision** + + +OpenHands' vision is to become **the open standard for AI coding agents** — a foundation for AI software development that is transparent, extensible, and community-driven. + + +## **Problems We Solve** + + +### **"Building With" OpenHands: Use OpenHands as an Inner Loop local AI coding agent** + + +Problem: Developers need a reliable and powerful AI coding agent to boost productivity. + + +- Designed for most **individual developers** +- **Ad-hoc usage** focused on local or small-team development +- Solves **developer productivity** challenges +- Provides **model-agnostic AI code assistance** that integrates locally +- Operates in a **highly competitive** landscape with multiple alternatives + + +### **"Building On" OpenHands: Use OpenHands to solve repetitive engineering tasks** + + +Problem: Organizations need a way to reduce the toil and burden of recurring engineering tasks that distract from roadmap, and are faced by nearly every development team. + + +- Designed for **teams and organizations — these tend to be Commercial entities** +- Within organizations, used by **Agent Engineers** who build agents with OpenHands +- Supports **repeatable, cloud-based workflows and automations.** Sometimes this is referred to as "Outer Loop" engineering tasks, such as PR reviews, security remediation, and documentation updates. +- Enables **API-driven integration** into applications and development pipelines +- Solves problems around **scalability, extensibility, and control** +- Focused on enabling **custom agent orchestration** + + +**Strategic Shift:** + + +We're evolving OpenHands to support "Building On" use cases — turning OpenHands into a platform for scaling 100s of agents that address repetitive engineering problems + + +## Example Use Cases — Repetitive Engineering Tasks + + +OpenHands is used across a wide range of powerful, scalable use-cases in the SDLC process: + + +- **Maintenance** + - Example: 30x throughput on CVE resolution + - Example: Automatic documentation and release notes +- **Modernization** + - Example: Adding type annotations to an entire Python codebase + - Example: Refactoring a monolithic Java application to microservices +- **Migration** + - Example: Upgrading 1000s of jobs from Spark 2 to Spark 3 + - Example: Moving from Redux to Zustand +- **Tech Debt** + - Example: Detecting and deleting unused code + - Example: Adding error handling based on production logs +- **Automated Testing, Bug Fixing, Documentation**, etc. + + +## **Target Customers for OSS and Commercial** + + +### **Open Source (OSS)** + + +- **Goal:** Empower individual developers with a model-agnostic, open, and extensible coding agent that integrates seamlessly into their workflows. +- **Primary audience:** Individual developers on the bleeding edge of software development; AI hobbyists. +- **Use cases:** Personal productivity, ad-hoc local development, experimentation, and contributing to open AI infrastructure. + + +### **Commercial** + + +- **Primary audience:** Mid-to-large enterprises and technical teams. +- **Goal:** Help organizations safely leverage AI at scale to modernize, refactor, and maintain complex systems across 100s of development teams. +- **User personas:** + - **Developers w/ AI experience:** Developers who already may be familiar with pairing with AI to accomplish work, but ready to begin delegating wholesale tasks to AI agents for maximum productivity. + - **Agent Engineers:** Developers on the edge of AI engineering who are looking to integrate agents into workflows or applications. +- **Buyer personas:** Engineering Leaders +- **Use cases:** + - "An OpenHands agent for every developer": Multi-user collaboration, scalability, governance, and security + - Refactoring and code modernization + - Embedding AI agents into apps and workflows + + +## **Dividing Lines Between OSS and Commercial** + + +OpenHands follows an **Open Core** model: + + +- **Open Source Core:** + + The foundation of OpenHands is open and free for all developers. Most new features default to open source unless they explicitly solve enterprise-specific needs. + +- **Enterprise Offering:** + + Focused on mid-to-large enterprises, addressing needs around multi-user management, scalability, and security. + + + +Our investment is roughly **50/50** between open source and commercial development. + + +### **Feature Selection Principle** + + +- **Developer problems → Open source by default:** + + Features that solve an individual developer's needs belong in the open source core (e.g., productivity, model integration, developer tooling). + +- **Buyer problems → Commercial features:** + + Features designed to solve organizational or managerial challenges are commercial (e.g., organizational management, collaboration, scalability). + + + +**Example:** + + +- Commercial feature: Organizational Management — features for managing OpenHands access across hundreds of developers +- Open Source: MCP support, Secrets Support, Planning Agent mode, etc. + + +## **Strategic Challenges** + + +1. **Large Product Portfolio** + + Balancing focus and resources across a broad range of features and use cases. + +2. **Driving More Community Contributions** + + Encouraging external contributors while maintaining code quality and stewardship. + +3. **Increasingly Crowded "Build With" Market:** + + Differentiating in a competitive field of AI coding assistants. + +4. **Wide-Ranging Developer Profiles:** + + Supporting diverse users — from new-to-AI developers to hobbyists to enterprise teams. + + + +## **Unique Differentiators** + + +- **Open Source Foundation:** Transparent, extensible, and community-driven. +- **Model-Agnostic Architecture:** Works with any LLM — the durable value lies in the agent layer, not the model. +- **Cloud-First Scalability:** Supports persistent, autonomous cloud agents that can handle repetitive, large-scale tasks. +- **Focus on Repetitive Tasks:** Automates ongoing engineering work — refactoring, maintenance, dependency upgrades — where AI delivers compounding value. +- **Dual Persona Alignment:** Serves both individual developers ("Build With") and enterprise teams ("Build On") through a unified ecosystem. + + +## **Strategic Roadmap Pillars** + + +1. **Bet on Cloud Agents as the best way to work with AI coding agents** + + Prioritize cloud-based runtimes for scalable, persistent, autonomous systems. + +2. **Shifting towards "Build On" to optimize for repetitive, high-leverage work** + + Emphasize ongoing tasks like maintenance and refactoring over one-off code generation. + +3. **Maintain a high performance, model-agnostic approach** + + Continue to integrate multiple models and support extensibility as the LLM ecosystem evolves. + +4. **Bridge both developer needs and enterprise needs** + + Build pathways that help individual developers grow into organizational adopters — "Build With" → "Build On." + +5. **Foster a thriving Open Source community** + + Grow contributor engagement, maintain transparent governance, and accelerate open development. + + + +## **Commitment to Open Source** + + +We believe open source works best with clear stewardship and active participation. + + +- We maintain the **roadmap** and **good first issues** to guide community contributions. +- We **review pull requests diligently** and recognize valuable contributions. +- We maintain **transparent metrics** across: + - **Community:** Total contributors and open PRs awaiting review. + - **Product Quality:** NPS and SaaS adoption as a proxy for user satisfaction. + - **Adoption:** Public reference examples and tutorials. + - **Impact:** Case studies highlighting enterprise deployments. + + +### Our long-term commitment: + + +To make OpenHands the **best open source generalized AI coding agent**, serving as the backbone of transparent, collaborative AI development. From 73ff6613a7d0c00a072777d229009d753fe542b2 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: jpelletier1 <44589723+jpelletier1@users.noreply.github.com> Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2026 10:07:08 -0500 Subject: [PATCH 2/2] Small edits --- overview/strategy.mdx | 32 ++++++++++++++++---------------- 1 file changed, 16 insertions(+), 16 deletions(-) diff --git a/overview/strategy.mdx b/overview/strategy.mdx index d0f40a12..b2d2b481 100644 --- a/overview/strategy.mdx +++ b/overview/strategy.mdx @@ -3,19 +3,19 @@ title: OpenHands Commercial Open Source Strategy description: OpenHands' strategy to become the open standard for AI coding agents --- -## **Vision** +## Vision OpenHands' vision is to become **the open standard for AI coding agents** — a foundation for AI software development that is transparent, extensible, and community-driven. -## **Problems We Solve** +## Problems We Solve -### **"Building With" OpenHands: Use OpenHands as an Inner Loop local AI coding agent** +### "Building With" OpenHands: Use OpenHands as an Inner Loop local AI coding agent -Problem: Developers need a reliable and powerful AI coding agent to boost productivity. +**Problem:** Developers need a reliable and powerful AI coding agent to boost productivity. - Designed for most **individual developers** @@ -25,11 +25,10 @@ Problem: Developers need a reliable and powerful AI coding agent to boost produc - Operates in a **highly competitive** landscape with multiple alternatives -### **"Building On" OpenHands: Use OpenHands to solve repetitive engineering tasks** +### "Building On" OpenHands: Use OpenHands to solve repetitive engineering tasks -Problem: Organizations need a way to reduce the toil and burden of recurring engineering tasks that distract from roadmap, and are faced by nearly every development team. - +**Problem:** Organizations need a way to reduce the toil and burden of recurring engineering tasks that distract from roadmap; and they seek solutions that can be scaled to nearly every development team in the organization. - Designed for **teams and organizations — these tend to be Commercial entities** - Within organizations, used by **Agent Engineers** who build agents with OpenHands @@ -66,10 +65,10 @@ OpenHands is used across a wide range of powerful, scalable use-cases in the SDL - **Automated Testing, Bug Fixing, Documentation**, etc. -## **Target Customers for OSS and Commercial** +## Target Customers for OSS and Commercial -### **Open Source (OSS)** +### Open Source (OSS) - **Goal:** Empower individual developers with a model-agnostic, open, and extensible coding agent that integrates seamlessly into their workflows. @@ -77,8 +76,7 @@ OpenHands is used across a wide range of powerful, scalable use-cases in the SDL - **Use cases:** Personal productivity, ad-hoc local development, experimentation, and contributing to open AI infrastructure. -### **Commercial** - +### Commercial - **Primary audience:** Mid-to-large enterprises and technical teams. - **Goal:** Help organizations safely leverage AI at scale to modernize, refactor, and maintain complex systems across 100s of development teams. @@ -92,7 +90,9 @@ OpenHands is used across a wide range of powerful, scalable use-cases in the SDL - Embedding AI agents into apps and workflows -## **Dividing Lines Between OSS and Commercial** +## Dividing Lines Between OSS and Commercial + +_OpenHands' CEO and founder discusses the lines between OSS and Commercial in this blog post: [Walking the Line with Commercial Open Source (June 2025)](https://openhands.dev/blog/walking-the-line-with-commercial-open-source)_ OpenHands follows an **Open Core** model: @@ -131,7 +131,7 @@ Our investment is roughly **50/50** between open source and commercial developme - Open Source: MCP support, Secrets Support, Planning Agent mode, etc. -## **Strategic Challenges** +## Strategic Challenges 1. **Large Product Portfolio** @@ -152,7 +152,7 @@ Our investment is roughly **50/50** between open source and commercial developme -## **Unique Differentiators** +## Unique Differentiators - **Open Source Foundation:** Transparent, extensible, and community-driven. @@ -162,7 +162,7 @@ Our investment is roughly **50/50** between open source and commercial developme - **Dual Persona Alignment:** Serves both individual developers ("Build With") and enterprise teams ("Build On") through a unified ecosystem. -## **Strategic Roadmap Pillars** +## Strategic Roadmap Pillars 1. **Bet on Cloud Agents as the best way to work with AI coding agents** @@ -187,7 +187,7 @@ Our investment is roughly **50/50** between open source and commercial developme -## **Commitment to Open Source** +## Commitment to Open Source We believe open source works best with clear stewardship and active participation.