December 2020 Open Source Highlights
December brought a packed release cycle across the open source ecosystem, from major language updates to infrastructure overhauls. Here are the releases that stood out this month.
PHP 8.0
The general-purpose scripting language that powers much of the web has landed its latest major version. PHP 8.0 introduces union types, named arguments, and match expressions, alongside a range of other improvements. The PHP website offers a side-by-side comparison of PHP 7.0 against the new release.
Supabase 1.0
Supabase reached its 1.0 milestone this month. The platform aims to provide a full backend—database, authentication, storage, and custom functions—in under two minutes, removing much of the setup overhead from application development.
.NET 5.0
Hot on the heels of .NET Conf, .NET 5.0 is now available. The open source developer platform supports building applications across multiple languages, editors, libraries, and target platforms. This release adds support for C# 9.0 and F# 5.0, alongside updates to Visual Basic and performance work. Notably, the team skipped version 4.x to avoid confusion with .NET Framework 4.x; the documentation explains the reasoning behind the version jump.
Simple Icons 4.0
Simple Icons offers over 1,400 SVG icons for use in websites and graphics. Version 4.0 adds a GitHub Sponsors icon, along with numerous updated and renamed icons. The Mixer logo has been removed from the set. New additions include icons for Razer, Audio-Technica, Atom, and others.
Cypress 6.0
Cypress 6.0 brings full network stubbing to the browser testing framework. Tests can now intercept, modify, and wait on any type of HTTP request from the application under test. The release also includes the usual bug fixes and documentation updates, detailed in the release notes.
CircuitPython 6.0
CircuitPython, the programming language designed for microcontrollers, has shipped version 6.0. The release adds support for 38 additional microboards, expands computational capabilities, and completely revamps the network modules. No upfront downloads are required before getting started. The full list of breaking changes is available in the release notes.
WeeChat 3.0
WeeChat, the extensible chat client, has reached version 3.0. The release introduces new options for script downloads and commands, along with additional variables, arguments, and functions. The client supports multi-server setups, proxies, SASL authentication, and DCC. The full changelog is available on the WeeChat site.
InfluxDB 2.0
InfluxDB 2.0 is now generally available, bringing the time series database to a broader audience. The release promises a more stable and faster build. Flux, the query language developed by InfluxData, powers data manipulation and is designed for working with time series data. The platform includes an easy-to-use dashboard and cloud database for building and monitoring IoT and other time series applications.
Matomo 4.0
Matomo, the analytics platform formerly known as Piwik, has shipped version 4.0. The MySQL-based software, used on over 1.4 million websites, now requires PHP 7.2 or higher. This release closes 398 issues, with updates to tracking and improvements to security, privacy, and performance. Contributor credits are listed in the release notes.
Micro 3.0
Micro, the toolkit for building cloud services, has undergone a major restructuring with its 3.0 release, now branded M3O. The overhaul consolidates existing tooling to address the full workflow of building, running, managing, and consuming services in cloud native environments. The Micro blog details the server changes and the reasoning behind the redesign.
