Why free, open tools are good for the data business

Disclosure: BrightQuery funds OpenBQ.

Some technology is too important for one company to own. The internet runs on open standards that nobody owns. Most of the cloud runs on Linux, which is free. I think financial data and AI are next.

OpenBB's move is good news on its own. It's also a sign of where our industry is going.

The problem we keep running into

There's more financial and economic data than ever, but it's scattered. An analyst might pull from dozens of sources, and each one works differently. The software that puts it all in one place is mostly expensive, and firms can't change it or take it with them.

AI makes this matter more. An AI agent is only as good as the data it can reach, and it needs to know where that data came from. When data is hard to reach, AI works from an incomplete picture and fills the gaps with guesses.

What open source changes

Connect once, use everywhere. Hook up a data source once and you can use it in a spreadsheet, a dashboard, a Python notebook or an AI agent. Standards catch on when free tools make them the easy choice.

You stay in control. Firms can mix their own data with public data, run it on their own systems, and aren't stuck with one vendor's prices or plans.

You can check the work. Anyone can read, test and fix open code. That matters more as AI agents start doing real work in finance and government.

What it means for the data business

When the software is free, the money is in the data.

Didier Lopes makes this point often: software gets copied, but good data is hard to replace.

For data providers, that's good news. Plug your data in once, and every team using these tools can reach it. No separate connection for each platform. Selling gets cheaper, and buyers judge you on the quality of your data.

For data buyers, it means owning the setup. They can bring in any provider's data, test it side by side, and keep what works, without being locked into one vendor.

OpenBQ is also adding a free, shared ID for every company, person and place, so data from different sources lines up.

Why a foundation matters

Free code isn't enough on its own. It needs a home that will outlast any one company, with clear rules people can trust. That's why it matters that this work now sits with a non-profit, and that the Workspace code is going to FINOS, part of the Linux Foundation.

The work ahead

Using free software is easy. Keeping it alive takes work. The banks, asset managers, data providers and agencies that get the most out of it need to pitch in.

I want to thank Didier and the OpenBB team for building something worth keeping open, and I invite everyone in our industry to use these tools and help build them.

Making the world more factual is a job for all of us. This is a big step.