Octobus

Octobus is a software services company that provides commercial support, consulting, and development services for Mercurial, the free distributed source control management tool. The company was founded in 2017 by Pierre-Yves David, a major contributor to the Mercurial project who began working on it in 2010. Octobus positions itself as a specialist vendor able to help organizations with any aspect of Mercurial usage, from performance tuning and feature development to migration, deployment, custom extension development, bug fixes, and user training. Beyond Mercurial-specific work, Octobus offers DevOps consulting and Python-related services, including web performance debugging and improvements, Python testing training, and tooling. The company also helps clients introduce Rust into their codebases for performance gains and to bring engineering teams up to speed. Its team includes experienced Mercurial contributors such as Raphaël Gomès, who joined after a background in full-stack web development. Octobus operates as a small, expert-driven consultancy rather than a large software vendor. Its value proposition rests on deep upstream involvement in Mercurial: the team states that since 2010 it has landed thousands of changesets, fixed hundreds of bugs, and delivered major upgrades to the tool. This upstream expertise allows Octobus to offer both standard support and advanced work on Mercurial internals, including the changeset evolution concept created by its founder. The company serves developers and organizations that rely on Mercurial for version control and need either ongoing support or targeted engineering help. Its services span performance improvement, new feature development, migration and deployment, extensions for custom needs, bug fixes, and training. Octobus is privately held and does not disclose detailed financial or ownership information publicly. Its primary public presence is its website, octobus.net, which describes its services and team.

Octobus was founded in 2017 by Pierre-Yves David, a developer who began working on the Mercurial project in 2010 while involved in testing and continuous integration. Over the years, David became one of the largest contributors to Mercurial, with thousands of direct contributions and reviews. He drove multiple deep changes to the tool, both user-visible (such as the phases concept) and internal (such as a new bundle and exchange format and unifying transaction logic). He also created the changeset evolution concept, a way for developers to safely exchange and rewrite draft changesets. David founded Octobus to put his expertise at the service of improving the experience of other developers. The company was established as a commercial vehicle for Mercurial support and related consulting. Its team includes other experienced contributors, such as Raphaël Gomès, whose career began in full-stack web development before joining Octobus. Since its founding, Octobus has provided a range of services around Mercurial, including performance improvement, new feature development, migration and deployment, extensions development for custom needs, bug fixes, and user training. The company also expanded into DevOps consulting and Python-related services, such as web performance debugging and improvements, Python testing training and tooling, and helping clients add Rust to their codebases for performance. The company states that since 2010 its team has landed thousands of changesets, fixed hundreds of bugs, and brought major upgrades to Mercurial. Octobus remains a privately held, specialist consultancy with a global client base of developers and organizations using Mercurial.

• 2017

  Octobus is founded by Pierre-Yves David to provide commercial Mercurial support and consulting.

• 2010

  Pierre-Yves David begins working on the Mercurial project while involved in testing and continuous integration.

Specialist commercial support and consulting for Mercurial, backed by deep upstream contributions and expertise in Python, DevOps, and Rust performance work.

• Commercial Mercurial support

  Ongoing support for organizations using Mercurial.

• Mercurial performance improvement

  Optimization services for Mercurial performance.

• Custom Mercurial extension development

  Development of extensions for custom needs.

• DevOps consulting

  Consulting on DevOps practices and tooling.

• Python testing training and tooling

  Training and tooling for Python testing.

• Rust adoption consulting

  Helping teams add Rust to their codebase for performance.

1. 1Octobusoctobus.net
2. 2Octobuswikidata.org
3. 3BlaBlaCar acquires Ukrainian company Octobusen.interfax.com.ua