Yael Rubinstein, writing on the Pocket Casts blog:

We’ve been eager to take this step since we joined Automattic last year — after all, the company’s creed includes the phrase “I know that open source is the most powerful idea of our generation.” We believe that podcasting can not and should not be controlled by Apple and Spotify, and instead support a diverse ecosystem of third-party clients.

It was just a matter of time when this would happen, as anyone who knows Automattic knows their love for open source. The only surprising thing to me is that Pocket Casts is only making their mobile apps open source, the Desktop and Web versions are not included in this anouncement and the company says it has no plans to do so either.

This announcement has generally been received positively by users and developers of other podcasts apps.

The iOS repository as well as the Android repository are up on GitHub with a Mozilla Public License 2.0.

We just released Episode 06 of the Wadicast and this is a fun one. We discuss the prevalent culture of fake WhatsApp messages & forwards in India, chat about the origins of our own surnames and some other interesting and funny Marathi surnames, and later everyone reminisces about the music they used to listen to back in the day.

We’re confident that you’ll thoroughly enjoy this one, and if you do, please consider subscribing to Wadicast.

Peter Kafka, reporting for Recode:

Sources say Spotify is in advanced talks to acquire Gimlet, the Brooklyn-based company which produces a network of popular shows and makes shows for advertisers like Gatorade. Gimlet has also been moving into TV production, including a deal that turned Homecoming, which started out as a scripted podcast, into an Amazon TV show starring Julia Roberts.

Podcasting is going big, and it’s good to see Spotify trying to get a piece of that pie.