Mojo and Max, why bundle them?

Mojo
1

I’ve recently started a project with magic init life --format mojoproject but after looking at the dependencies I have:

max                   25.2.0.dev2025030905  release               9.7 KiB    conda  max
max-core              25.2.0.dev2025030905  release               211 MiB    conda  max-core
max-python            25.2.0.dev2025030905  release               109.8 MiB  conda  max-python
mblack                25.2.0.dev2025030905  release               127.6 KiB  conda  mblack
mojo-jupyter          25.2.0.dev2025030905  release               22.4 KiB   conda  mojo-jupyter

So I assume Mojo is bundled within Max.
My question is: Why bundle them up together? Shouldn’t the language and its standard lib be a separate part of the commercial solution (Max)?

While I know Chris has promised to make Mojo open source in ~2 years, from my POV, it doesn’t bode well if the commercial and the (future) open source solution already start shipping together.
Lots can happen in two years. The shareholders might decide that keeping the whole thing closed source is a good idea for the company’s bottom line.

Don’t get me wrong, I have a lot of respect and admiration for Chris and the Modular team and what they are trying to achieve, but each time I tell myself “Let’s pick up Mojo for my next project” I stumble upon a licensing issue that tells me to look elsewhere (last time was with the non-competitor terms that applied not just to Max but to Mojo too).

I might be pretty vocal, but I know I’m not the only person who thinks that way. I guess it’s wait and see until the solution becomes open source? (and stable at the same time)

1 Like
2

+1. Why this couldn’t be organized as with Flutter and Dart, when the language itself is standalone? Language itself could be very valuable and competitive and bundling it with AI stuff can be discouraging

1 Like
3

That’s a great question – our position on Mojo and MAX have evolved considerably as we’ve built into the technology, and we no longer frame MAX as “the commercial solution.” Today, we want both Mojo and MAX to be used for a wide variety of use cases, and want to unlock GPU programming with both working together.

We do have a paid commercial product aimed at enterprises (focused on cloud-based serving), but MAX is free; there is no “Mojo is free and MAX is paid” distinction anymore.

-Chris

4 Likes
4

Thank you for your response @clattner .
If Mojo is now part of Max (and will stay that way), where is the line drawn between the two?
Can Max be considered the standard lib of Mojo and Mojo the “language”?

This is confusing since Max also refers to the “cloud-based serving” solution.
Thanks!

5

If Mojo is now part of Max (and will stay that way), where is the line drawn between the two?
Can Max be considered the standard lib of Mojo and Mojo the “language”?

We’re actively discussing that, pretty much all the time. :slight_smile: MAX is growing to have new capabilities and we want an open ecosystem. We don’t have anything to announce today, but we’ll keep updating things in the next few months ahead.

-Chris

1 Like