Vol. I · No. 1

Thursday, August 6, 2026

Open source · Price: free

The Open Times

Written here

Mailed by you

Wired to every network

Index

Features

Publications Newsletter Paid subscriptions Discover Comments Import Crossposting Scheduling Per-network variants Analytics Bulk delete Own everything

Desks

Writers Paid newsletters Founders Developer advocates Maintainers Agencies

Late edition · Open source · Volume one

Publish it.
Send it. Own it.

Your publication, your newsletter and your paying subscribers, on software you run — with nobody standing between you and the people who read you.

By the staff · Filed from your own machine · MIT licensed

Every publishing platform you can sign up for makes the same trade: it hosts your words, and in return it holds your readers. The list is theirs, the payment relationship is theirs, and the terms are whatever they happen to be this quarter.

The Open Times is the other arrangement. It is one program, on one machine you control, that renders the page, sends the email, takes the payment and files the announcement to every network you post to. One action does all four.

There is no platform fee, because there is no platform — only your database, your mail provider, your Stripe account and your domain.

Start your paper Read the source
One publish — the page, the send and six announcements.

On the wire

02 The publication

A paper you are
not renting.

Long-form stories render at your own domain, on templates that are files in your project. The archive is a table you can query, back up and move.

How publications work
  1. 01

    Write the piece

    The same composer handles a two-line note and a three-thousand-word essay. Long-form gets a title, a slug and an archive entry.

  2. 02

    Decide who reads it

    Free for everyone, subscribers only, or paying subscribers only. A choice per story rather than a plan you commit to.

  3. 03

    Put it to bed

    The page goes live, the email goes out, and the announcement goes to every network you post to. One action covers all three.

The mail

Publishing a story is sending it.

Mail goes out through your own provider, so deliverability, reputation and cost per email all stay yours. Export the list whenever you want — it was never held anywhere else.

How sending works

The money

Charge for it. Keep all of it.

Readers pay into your Stripe account. The only fee is the one Stripe charges you directly, because there is nobody else in the transaction.

How payments work

03 The exchange

Found by people who already read.

Papers recommend each other. A reader who trusts one writer sees the handful that writer vouches for — ranked by subscriptions rather than by spend.

Your paper stays unlisted until you list it.

Three slots, six networks, one draft each.

04 Distribution

Every network,
from one draft.

Announce the issue, queue the follow-ups, and let each network get wording that fits it. Publishing the piece is where the sequence starts, not another chore after it.

  • 1Six networks from one composer
  • 2Per-network limits and previews
  • 3Schedule ahead or put it out now

Extra · Own it

Your list. Your revenue.
Your machine.

Subscribers, payments, stories and tokens all live in a database you run. A platform cannot change its terms on an audience it does not hold.

bunx opentimes

05 Colophon

Open source, and yours to change.

MIT licensed

Read every line, fork it, and run your own. No black boxes and no vendor.

Single binary

One Bun binary to run. No sprawling services to babysit at two in the morning.

Built on Stacks

A full-stack TypeScript framework underneath, end to end and all of it readable.

Final edition

Publish once.
Own everything.

Stand up your own edition of The Open Times and run your paper on something nobody can take away from you.

Start your paper Star on GitHub

Subscription coupon

Hear when the next edition ships

Occasional notes on releases and what changed — set and sent with The Open Times itself. No drip sequence, and one click to leave.