Modular has opened Mojo’s compiler and tooling under Apache 2.0, but says outside compiler contributions will have to wait until later this year.
Last week, the Mojo programming language released version 1.0, which is generally considered the “we’re confidently ready for prime time” release. Yesterday, the project announced that it’s now fully open source, released under Apache 2.0 with LLVM exceptions. The latter means that programs written and compiled in the language won’t have to be released under Apache or any other open source license.
“The Apache 2.0 license is the gold standard for programming languages and compilers, because it provides great flexibility to be used in all sorts of applications,” the Modular team said in an announcement on its website. “The LLVM extensions to the license further expand those freedoms for building and distributing binaries compiled from Mojo. We want you to be able to adopt and use Mojo in as many applications as you can imagine.”
“The source code for the Mojo compiler, tooling, and everything else you need to build the language are now available in our modular GitHub repository,” the company added.
Mojo is a fairly new language focused on AI and heterogeneous computing. It’s developed by Modular, a company founded in 2022 by Chris Lattner and Tim Davis, a couple of former Google engineers, with an eye on developing a unified software layer for AI that could target heterogeneous accelerators. Modular was acquired by Qualcomm in July.
Mojo’s road to open has been incremental. When the language was first launched in 2023, it was available for free to download and use, but it wasn’t covered under an open source license. In 2024, core portions of the language’s standard library were released under Apache 2.0 with LLVM exceptions. This January the entire standard library was released under the same license.
That means the entire project — from language to standard library to compiler to tooling — is now open source. Complete instructions for downloading and building the compiler are included on the open source announcement page.
Even though the project is now fully open source, the company says that it isn’t yet prepared to accept contributions to the compiler and tooling.
“We aim to accept contributions to the compiler and tooling by the end of this year, and we’ll share more details when we can,” it said.
For questions — “or to share what you’re working on” — Modular points users to its forums.
“Clone the source code and let us know what you’re building with the Mojo language. We’re excited to open Mojo up to the world and see how it grows!”
Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux
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