On Tuesday, the software company Block announced the launch of Goose, an open-source AI agent that allows developers to customize the tool for different purposes and using different large language models.
The move comes just a week after the Chinese startup DeepSeek unveiled its R1 artificial intelligence model, a rival to U.S. leaders like OpenAI and Anthropic that boasted far lower development costs. While the launch continues to reverberate through the tech world, spurring the chipmaker Nvidia to lose $600 billion in market cap, one clear winner has emerged: open-source software like Goose. Where companies like OpenAI favor a closed model, DeepSeek makes its underlying code public, meaning other developers can use and modify it.
The surprise breakout of DeepSeek has brought the debate over open versus closed-source development into the forefront, with software engineers and tech leaders long arguing over the best approach to advance innovation. Jack Dorsey, the head of Block and former Twitter CEO, took the opportunity to make his own preferences clear. “Open source everything,” he posted on X on Monday.
Dorsey has long been a champion of open-source development, with Block working on landmark projects like the cross-computer gRPC communication protocol, and his company is doubling down on the approach. Last Tuesday, Block announced the opening of its Open Source Program Office, which will house five engineers who help work across the company’s suite of products, including Cash App, Square, and Tidal.
Today’s launch of Goose allows users to connect with large language models like OpenAI’s o1 or DeepSeek’s R1 to perform real-world tasks, from checking code for bugs to sending emails. In an interview with Fortune, Block’s open-source lead Manik Surtani said the approach is the “best way to build software.”
“It’s even more important for a financial services company to be building on open principles and open standards,” he said. “That is what everyone really wants. They want transparency.”
More on Block’s AI programming agent and open posture
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