:focal(smart))
Conda-forge is a 100% community created and maintained channel and a valid alternative to the “defaults channel”. Anaconda is currently generously hosting the artifacts of conda-forge on their servers and this makes it available for everyone to enjoy. We’re grateful to Anaconda for this, along with so many other things they have done and continue to do for the community. In addition, Anaconda has stated that it has the stance that access to conda (the package and environment manager) and conda-forge (hosting of artifacts) will remain free.
What people are concerned about is only part of the conda ecosystem and concerns the defaults channels, often confusingly referred to as “the default” channel, which are main, r, msys2, and thus not conda-forge.
Anaconda is responsible for the creation and curation of the packages on the defaults channels and thus holds the opportunity to monetize these. As a summary of the difference between the two, take a look at this table:
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| |
|---|---|---|
Packages maintained by: | Anaconda | 6000+ Open source contributors |
Governed by: | Anaconda | |
Artifacts available on: | Mainly anaconda.org, but mirrors are available, to avoid single point of failure: Github OCI Mirror Prefix mirror Create your own: Quetz | |
Package build instructions (recipes): | GitHub org: AnacondaRecipes | GitHub org: conda-forge Single repo that is easy to fork: feedstocks |
Included channels: |
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Paid by: |
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Pricing: | Free, but feel free to donate | |
Commercial Support: | Not Available |
There are currently different ways of installing the different conda based package managers and that determines which channels they use by default, this is illustrated in the table below:
Installer: | Package Manager: | Automatically sets as default: |
|---|---|---|
conda |
| |
conda |
| |
conda/mamba |
| |
mamba |
| |
pixi |
|
If you want to switch channels in your conda environment you can follow the conda documentation.
We care a lot about conda-forge, it’s the backbone of the open source conda-ecosystem. We’re working on advancing the channel and thus want to make sure everybody understands the situation correctly. Here is some of the work we’re doing:
CEP Proposal: A Conda Enhancement Proposal (CEP) aims to enable all tools to install from the GitHub OCI Mirror, enhancing alternative hosting options for artifacts. Along with others: #84, #74, #71, #63
Build Process Innovation: Ongoing efforts to improve the conda-forge build process include the introduction of rattler-build, a new tool designed to boost CI speeds and usability.
Transition rattler to the community: We have transitioned our foundational rattler library to the conda organization, ensuring its long-term sustainability.
Active Governance Participation: We actively participate in the "conda-community," an open-source governing body under the NumFOCUS umbrella. This community allows every company, including Anaconda, a maximum of two seats; we currently hold both of our allocated seats.
As part of our community efforts, we are still figuring out how to do things best. So we think these kinds of situations only help make us think about how we can further ensure sustainable open access to data in the future. At prefix.dev we are also committed to this. This event has also made us reflect on how we can ensure the sustainability and open access of pixi and other open source tools we are creating, and see that we still have some work to do there. We will get back to you on this in the near future.
We hope that this blog has given you some further insight into the situation, and hopefully alleviated some of your concerns. Thank you for your time reading this article :)! And we can’t stress enough, you can reach us on X, join our Discord and have a chat, shoot us an e-mail or follow projects on our GitHub.
