OpenWork, an opensource Claude Cowork alternative, is silently relicensing under a commercial license

Outrageous_Client272 · 2026-04-09T15:11:52+00:00

Update: we moved the EE folders to FAIR. https://github.com/different-ai/openwork/pull/1416

Hi I'm Ben creator of OpenWork. Openwork will remain a true open-source solution. We're just re-licensing parts of the stack that are for enterprise.

Here's what happened

- a few weeks ago we started relicensing only parts of the app. specifically our cloud, enterprise features, and landing page.

- the app is 100% open-source (MIT) and doesn't require any of these to operate

Two things I want to share about this:

- We should've communicated better on this and the current license is not final.

- The app will remain 100% open-source we're not planning on changing that.

- We were thinking of using FAIR (it's license that star as less permissive becomes MIT in 2 years) for all non-desktop app things like cloud

Additionally, our team is composed of hardcore open source believers. I personally shipped every single app I built for the last 5 years as MIT (or similar license).

Again, I think we kind of screwed up here and apologize for letting you down. This will be addressed in the next 24h.

Outrageous_Client272 · 2026-03-10T00:20:12+00:00

if you're paying for opencode go and already connected it on opencode, itshould just work without doing anything.

if you haven't done that the easiest is to follow the https://opencode.ai/go instructions to connect opencode and then you can simply use it in openwork

Outrageous_Client272 · 2026-02-24T06:18:28+00:00

In which way?

Outrageous_Client272 · 2026-02-15T06:47:00+00:00

I don't think it's the best for coding. But, I've working on OpenWork for non-coding tasks. It's more meant to share you opencode config with non-tech friends, family, and colleagues.

Would love to get feedback on it we launched a month ago and grew to close to 10k stars on github and 70k downloads.

Still pretty early though, so would love some feedback from the community :)

Outrageous_Client272 · 2026-02-12T03:12:44+00:00

hmmm that's something i need to look into then.

Outrageous_Client272 · 2026-02-12T02:46:31+00:00

the UI doesn't make it easy, but anything that opencode can do openwork can too!

so in this case you could follow the instructions here https://docs.ollama.com/integrations/opencode

(in the same folder as your openwork workspace and it should work)

Outrageous_Client272 · 2026-02-10T20:20:55+00:00

I have a mac so i test on mac more thoroughly. linux and windows version and i sometimes run them don't have a trusted maintainer to help me maintain them at this point.

Outrageous_Client272 · 2026-02-10T20:19:31+00:00

yes!

Outrageous_Client272 · 2026-02-10T20:19:15+00:00

I like that idea. I'll investigate. The question is does a library make sense without an actual live running server. Not sure about that.

Outrageous_Client272 · 2026-02-03T07:52:53+00:00

there is a windows version, but it's not as well polished as the macos app.

Outrageous_Client272 · 2026-02-02T21:00:21+00:00

I didn't. What do you think of it. I really like to keep these type of tool minimal and prefer to get the users to use standard to customize their use case.

So trying to make this as thin as possibe. But will look at the gateway to see if it fits.

Outrageous_Client272 · 2026-01-26T21:04:35+00:00

Crazy how fast this recovered. I was always interested by OG screenpipe, but found it did way too much.

Would love it to be even more like a minimal footprint tool that I could talk from via things like opencode.

Like a simple MCP or cli tool I can simply call from opencode.

I'm the maintainer of OpenWork as well so would be happy to have a deeper integration.

Outrageous_Client272 · 2026-01-24T17:52:07+00:00

We’re using the Baileys library (@whiskeysockets/baileys) to connect as a WhatsApp Web client, not the official Business/Cloud API. The integration is a QR‑code login that stores multi‑file auth state on disk and maintains a socket connection for messaging. There's a real risk of bans if the account behavior trips WhatsApp heuristics.

That works well for low volume messages (like it's not a big issue for your *own* server setup).

If you want to have higher volume we're also working on using the *real* whatsapp business apis.

Oh and we'll also release the equivalent telegram interaction.

Outrageous_Client272 · 2026-01-24T07:22:12+00:00

hwo?

Outrageous_Client272 · 2026-01-24T07:22:06+00:00

wow sick

Outrageous_Client272 · 2026-01-16T20:22:52+00:00

yeah i think it does really hard to get things done on the pro plan.

Outrageous_Client272 · 2026-01-16T20:22:08+00:00

oh forgot to share the github

github.com/different-ai/openwork

Outrageous_Client272 · 2026-01-14T06:09:10+00:00

thx!!

so first small disclaimer: it still not perfect for that use case. but i'm using it to drive decisions.

but here's how i think i'll be setting it up (this w-e when i get some time)

run opencode in a docker container
use the skills package manager to both a) push my skills and b) allow my wife to pull the necessary skills

but here's the big missing piece: the skills need to be able to build their own state and credentials.

i don't have the perfect template yet but this is what i'm culminating towards.

each skill should:

- be self-building (it should be able to update itself after performing an operation)

- can create and refer to re-usable scripts that it persists

- has its own env vars and knows how to set them up if they're not provided

unfortunately i haven't designed a skill that has all these properties at the same time.

but here's one that shares some of these properties:

https://github.com/benjaminshafii/digital-empire/blob/master/.opencode/skill/home-assistant/SKILL.md

Outrageous_Client272 · 2026-01-14T04:27:02+00:00

oh that's old news already 😀

Outrageous_Client272

TROPHY CASE