VarBear

Open source in 2025 quietly told a story that keeps repeating across the ecosystem: the projects that win are the ones that remove friction from real, existing workflows.

GitHub recently published its list of the year's most influential open source projects. Look closely, and a few clear themes emerge.

1) Time-to-shipping infrastructure is the moat

Appwrite exists because developers are tired of rebuilding the same backend Lego set over and over again.

GoReleaser exists because release engineering is boring, fragile, and too important to keep doing manually.

Homebrew is still the default because onboarding and environment setup matter more than most teams like to admit.

2) The browser renaissance is real, and it's about trust

Ladybird is a bet that control, transparency, and a clean-slate architecture are worth the pain. This isn't nostalgia. It's a reaction to growing complexity, security surface area, and platform capture.

3) Developer ergonomics keeps eating everything

Oh My Zsh and its ecosystem are proof that developers will invest serious time into improving their daily feedback loop.

4) Security is shifting from vibes to checklists

The Open Source Project Security Baseline (OSPSB) is interesting because it isn't a tool. It's a standardized minimum. That's how ecosystems scale without collapsing under supply-chain risk.

5) Graphics and creative coding still power modern UI

Projects like PixiJS, p5.js, and SparkJS are the frontier engines behind interactive experiences. Many so-called "AI demos" are still shipped on top of these foundations.

6) AI is getting smaller and more deployable

Moondream signals a clear direction: models that fit real constraints (size, edge deployment, no GPU dependency) are often more useful than the biggest model on the leaderboard.

7) Structured communication beats chaos-chat

Then there's Zulip, which firmly sits in the "boring but correct" category. Structured conversations scale better than endless chat streams, especially over time.

_ _

GitHub's full list is available here:
This year's most influential open source projects

We also published our own deep dive, 100 GitHub Projects That Defined 2025: A Community-Driven Ranking, if you want to explore more tools worth knowing.

If you want to continue the discussion, the LinkedIn post is here:
Open source in 2025: the projects removing real friction

Have a great week ahead,
Aymen from FAUN.dev()

Linus says AI is just another wrench—and then quietly uses it—while Mac malware gets trickier and the browser finally takes off its mask. Pair that with a practical model for internal tools and a candid case for coding with assistants—dive in and come away faster and harder to fool.

🤖 Don't fall into the anti-AI hype
🌐 How Browsers Work
🛠️ How to build internal developer tools with a small team
🐧 Linus Torvalds Draws a Line on AI in the Linux Kernel but Embraces It in Personal Projects
🛡️ The Mac Malware of 2025
🕸️ Web development is fun again

Ship faster, with fewer blind spots.

Cheers!
FAUN.dev() Team

Throughout these pages, you'll discover how to effectively weave security into every stage of your software development lifecycle, using proven DevSecOps practices and powerful tools. We'll share practical steps, real-world examples, and clear guidance to help your teams collaborate more effectively, reduce security vulnerabilities, and speed up your delivery without sacrificing safety.

DevSecOps in Practice is for every developer, operations engineer, security engineer, and anyone else involved in the software development lifecycle who wants to get their hands dirty, learn from each step, and, most importantly - start building. Because when you "just do it," you don't only learn faster; you also create solutions that are robust, resilient, and secure from the ground up.

You don't need to be a security expert to start implementing the practices in this guide. The code snippets and examples are designed to be easy to understand and follow, the security concepts are explained in a way that is accessible to everyone, the tools used are open-source and widely available, and the infrastructure is accessible to everyone.

Welcome to a more responsible DevOps implementation. Welcome to the world of DevSecOps.

Linus Torvalds isn’t buying the AI hype, at least not the hand-wringing around it. He told Linux kernel docs to treat AI like just another tool, not some special-case snowflake.

Then, in true Linus fashion, he walked that talk. Days later, he revealed he’s been using Google’s Antigravity AI tool in a personal GitHub project. No fanfare. Just doing the thing.

System shift: When the godfather of open source leans into AI, you can bet it’ll seep deeper into the kernel of developer culture.

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👉 Check this out!

An interactive open-source guide breaks down browser internals with slick, step-through models covering DNS resolution, TCP handshakes, and HTML parsing. It walks through the browser's sequential pipeline - from URL to DOM - blending protocol deep-dives with hands-on visuals you can poke at.

The 2025 macOS malware scene leveled up hard. Think modular infostealers, built for stealth, slipping in with staged loaders, encrypted configs, and slick social engineering - fake updates, bogus job interviews, even sketchy terminal promos like “ClickFix.”

Attackers leaned on AppleScript, JXA, and Go-based backdoors - often code-signed or notarized - to sneak past macOS defenses by riding legit tooling.

A seasoned dev takes a hard look at today’s messy full-stack reality: scattered tools, niche deep-dives, and burnout baked into the job. But AI coding assistants flipped the script. They help offload overhead, mimic pro-level workflows, and sanity-check the code. Now this dev moves across frontend and backend like it’s nothing, turning weeks of build time into days.

A fresh way to think about internal dev tooling: three axes, width (new features), depth (polish and stability), and preparation (future-ready architecture). Instead of treating tradeoffs as binary, the model maps them as vectors in a shared space. Less tug-of-war. More informed roadmap moves.

The writer recently left their job to explore AI and programming through various projects, including creating a YouTube channel focused on these topics. They discuss how AI is changing the landscape of programming, allowing for faster, more efficient coding methods. Despite concerns about job displacement, they emphasize the importance of embracing AI tools to enhance programming capabilities and continue building innovative projects.

Cloudflare error page generator (unofficial)

A polyglot document intelligence framework with a Rust core. Extract text, metadata, and structured information from PDFs, Office documents, images, and 50+ formats. Available for Rust, Python, Ruby, Java, Go, PHP, Elixir, C#, TypeScript (Node/Bun/Wasm/Deno) —or use via CLI, REST API, or MCP server.

SETA: Scaling Environments for Terminal Agents - Environments

Bichon – A lightweight, high-performance Rust email archiver with WebUI

Write like a high-level language, run like C.

Did you know that Cargo shares GNU Make’s jobserver to keep parallel builds under control? Nested builds reuse the same job tokens, so a make -j128 started inside cargo build -j8 still runs at about eight jobs. If builds suddenly use too many CPUs, a tool is likely ignoring those tokens.

"Frameworks promise you won't need to know the internals; debugging is the art of disproving that promise. Tooling moves complexity out of sight, not out of the system."
— SenseiOne

Make it a habit to keep a small engineering log. Each day, write down one non-obvious bug or design flaw you encountered, its exact root cause, and the telemetry or code signal that would have revealed it sooner. Over time, that log will become your personal catalog of warning patterns, and it will help you read unfamiliar code and reason about systems in production more effectively.

This Week’s Human is Sambhav Gaur, Associate Director of Innovation at Fidelity International with 16+ years in AI, blockchain, and cloud. He ships prototypes to production, delivering cost reductions and market expansion, has scaled an innovation team to 35+ across five regions, and has overseen maintenance and enhancements for 23+ global websites while aligning stakeholders and compliance.