helix-editor/helix vs rizsotto/bear
helix-editor/helix shows stronger signals overall
As of June 2026, helix shows healthier maintenance signals than bear. helix rates Healthy overall while bear rates Mixed. helix last saw a commit 1 month ago with 42+ active contributors, while bear last saw a commit 1 month ago with 5+ active contributors. helix is MPL-2.0-licensed while bear is GPL-3.0-licensed. Neither has known critical or high-severity CVEs in its dependency tree.
Informational only. RepoPilot summarises public signals at the time of analysis. Not professional, security, or legal advice.
helix-editor/helix →
Healthy across the board
Permissive license, no critical CVEs, actively maintained — safe to depend on.
Has a license, tests, and CI — clean foundation to fork and modify.
Documented and popular — useful reference codebase to read through.
No critical CVEs, sane security posture — runnable as-is.
- ✓Last commit today
- ✓42+ active contributors
- ✓Distributed ownership (top contributor 16% of recent commits)
- ✓MPL-2.0 licensed
- ✓CI configured
- ✓Tests present
Computed from maintenance signals — commit recency, contributor breadth, bus factor, license, CI, tests
rizsotto/bear →
Single-maintainer risk — review before adopting
copyleft license (GPL-3.0) — review compatibility; top contributor handles 95% of recent commits
Has a license, tests, and CI — clean foundation to fork and modify.
Documented and popular — useful reference codebase to read through.
No critical CVEs, sane security posture — runnable as-is.
- ⚠Single-maintainer risk — top contributor 95% of recent commits
- ⚠GPL-3.0 is copyleft — check downstream compatibility
- ✓Last commit 4d ago
- ✓5 active contributors
- ✓GPL-3.0 licensed
- ✓CI configured
- ✓Tests present
What would improve this?
- →Use as dependency Concerns → Mixed if: relicense under MIT/Apache-2.0 (rare for established libs)
Computed from maintenance signals — commit recency, contributor breadth, bus factor, license, CI, tests
Signal-by-signal breakdown
| helix | bear | |
|---|---|---|
| Stars | 44,261 | 6,313 |
| Last commit | 1mo ago | 1mo ago |
| License | MPL-2.0 | GPL-3.0 |
| Open issues | 1,533 | 1 |
| Has tests | ✓ | ✓ |
| Has CI | ✓ | ✓ |
| Test coverage | 34% | 65% |
| Dependency CVEs | No CVEs | No CVEs |
| Architecture grade | — | — |
| Cycles | — | — |
| Bottom-line | Healthy signals | Mixed signals |
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