Zed Code Editor Now Open-Source

The Zed code editor being led by the creators of the Atom editor and Tree-sitter syntax parsing framework have announced today that the Zed editor is being open-sourced.

Zed is a high performance -- multi-threaded and GPU accelerated -- code editor and boasting an array of features from a built-in terminal to a Vim mode and more. Zed editor has so far been focused on macOS but with it now being open-source will hopefully begin seeing Linux work sooner rather than later.

The Zed editor will be GPL licensed while server-side components are AGPL licensed. The GPUI UI framework that powers Zed will be under an Apache 2.0 license.

Zed is going open-source as their business model will now be based on selling services rather than a proprietary editor. Zed may begin charging for extra services in the future as well as exploring the possibility of server-side compute for AI features as another monetization strategy.

"Today, we're open sourcing 100% of the code we've written so far. In the future, however, we may still offer proprietary products targeting commercial and enterprise use cases, though we always intend for proprietary code to be a tiny fraction compared to the code we open source. We also intend to ensure our need to generate revenue never interferes with your need to write software. We're never going to show you a banner ad in your code editor, and if we do, you can always build Zed from source."

While no Linux details were shared as part of today's announcements, those interested in learning more on Zed going open-source can do so via the Zed.dev blog. The Zed editor's source code is available via GitHub.