The folks behind Penpot also make a kanban management tool, kind of like Trello, called Taiga: http://taiga.io/ It's also OSS (Django/Angular), self-hostable, and very pleasant to use.
I'm rooting for both of these, and now that they have some funding I hope they'll dedicate effort on polishing the rough edges (and do something about the gratuitous amount of white space that permeates all of their web presence, and maybe reconsider their color palette to be less muted and more saturated, heavier, and decisive). They seem to be actively working on Figma imports, auto layouts, multi-user edits and more at this moment so they're on the right track.
For both of them, even if the VCs pull the rug from underneath to race for an exit, it being OSS is good insurance. A fork would mean that we don't have to spend time learning yet another tool. The good will fostered by it being OSS is what encourages some of us to look into their offerings, and in this way what we see is something that seems like a sustainable model for OSS projects.
Disclaimer - I work for Figma but had no part in the acquisition. My comments are my own and I don't represent Figma.
Technically I'm very curious to see how Penpot evolves with this investment, especially in regards to their choice to base everything on SVGs. IMO this will be their greatest superpower and also greatest weakness. Keeping things tied explicitly to code means exporting the final product is going to be near-perfect translation wise, but it will also mean they're tied explicitly to the browser's ability to render the combined html+svgs.
Currently Penpot's performance starts dropping rapidly once you approach around 1000 layers. Most robust design systems I see run around 10-40k layers (with the record I've seen being 250k). I'm very curious if they'll be able to optimize their approach to support those sizes of libraries.
> Before September 15, Penpot’s CEO and co-founder Pablo Ruiz-Múzquiz said that sign-ups were growing at around 40% per month: after Adobe’s news, that figure ballooned to 5,600%, and has stayed consistent since then. On-premise deployments have also grown 400%.
5600%! Good for them. I'm sure a lot of it was folks exploring options but I wonder how many of those new users will stick around -- anyone try it out and decide to make the commitment to use Penpot as a full replacement? Anything it still needs / hesitations?
I tried it out a month or 5 ago. And my main concern was in performance. Haven't tried it again since. Might be a good time now to give it another spin.
Good question, and exactly what popped up in my head. Is there any documentation of the type of VC money that was accepted? Does this _really_ mean that from now on the investors are in control? Or is this a type of open source funding without strings attached? I can't really see that happening.
I'm an experienced Vue/Nuxt developer. After trying out Typescript and Svelte, I think I want to go all in on ClojureScript.
Currently learning through an open source book right now (https://www.learn-clojurescript.com/). I was planning on paying for it after I read the book to see if it was worth it, but I paid for it halfway through.
I'm surprised to hear someone say that. The weird sidebar slider thing, the orange pencil "edited" icon, the green box showing the category and tags under the title, and the "suggested topics" at the bottom are all very distinctive Discourse interface elements.
Taking any app and adding Google Docs style "collaboration" to it is a recipe for success, in the same way that taking a piece of art and making it an NFT did, for a period time, make its value 10-1,000,000x greater.
From an engineering POV, maybe someone should sell a CRDT service that proxies multiple users into one and pretends to be general, but really authors domain-specific stuff since CRDTs and OT "general" is not very valuable.
Conceptually, yes. However "taking any app and adding Google Docs..." is less about adding, and more about rethinking the base app from scratch so that the fundamental actions are atomic enough and determinant enough to easily sync between users despite latency issues.
It wouldn't be easy to take Illustrator and add collaboration and get Figma. Microsoft bought a company that had already made a collaborative version of Word to get a head start on that process, and O365 is still clunky compared with Google Docs.
In the 3D mechanical CAD world, Onshape has done an amazing job of taking the functionality of Solidworks (or Creo or NX or ...) and making it collaborative. But really the biggest change is that they turned every user step into a "micro-version" which can be undone (pretty much infinite undo/redo). They built a Github style branching/merging (and reverting) version control system on top of the micro-versions. They have one service which runs the versioning system and another which runs the geometry engine. If you have all the steps, you are always guaranteed to get the same geometry - this fundamental rule of their system design means that only the deltas of micro-versions need to be shared between users/locations.
Anyone who's opened a Word file on a few different computers can tell you that the fonts, font handling and subtle version differences between different installs of Word means that the same source file doesn't equal the same visual layout. To some degree, putting "Word" in the cloud should mean that every user is using the latest (same) version of Word, but that's not the case still...
There's a reason that Google Docs doesn't have an offline mode or support any font in the world.
It gives me hope for the future to see commenters on HN, a forum made by a VC company to talk about VC funding, dunk on companies for taking VC funding. Any tech enthusiast who has been around long enough has seen VCs and acquisitions eventually destroy everything they've ever loved. Our incredible journey, indeed: https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/
The question is, can we organize around alternatives to the VC model, and build communities with control over their own destiny, instead of having the rug pulled out from under them repeatedly due to the whims of capital (and founders securing the bag)?
The concept of "exit to community" appeals to me, but unfortunately I see crypto grifters / DAOs trying to take over any "decentralization" narrative. Unless the crypto crash wipes those scammers out, I fear the community may flee from VC scammers into the arms of crypto scammers, new boss same as the old boss.
I hope that we can build some sort of cooperative movement that can avoid the "world domination or acquisition" pressure from VCs, while also avoiding weird technocratic "fixes" like DAOs. There's no replacement for organizing and community, tech cannot replace that difficult and necessary work of marshalling people to pull together in the same direction, accept no substitutes or "shortcuts."
> Before September 15, Penpot’s CEO and co-founder Pablo Ruiz-Múzquiz said that sign-ups were growing at around 40% per month: after Adobe’s news, that figure ballooned to 5,600%, and has stayed consistent since then. On-premise deployments have also grown 400%.
Scott Tolinski (Syntax podcast, LevelUp tuts) did a video about Penpot on the day that the Figma acquisition was announced. Check it out to see how it compares to Figma.
Open source alternatives do really well when a lot of people are complaining about the pricing of the closed source leaders (e.g. Snowflake). I don't hear many people complaining about Figma's pricing, but maybe that will start once Adobe starts meddling.
Microsoft will buy them. Penpot will be absorbed into Microsoft Office 365 Design Studio and Taiga will be absorbed into Microsoft Project Management for Teams.
All the downvotes.. Decibel is an independent venture capital firm created in partnership with Cisco, their play is to invest strategically in companies that Cisco can acquire. This isn't some made up witchcraft.
I saw earlier this year that the Figma team had (finally) got around to thinking about the accessibility of their UI. Out of curiosity I went hunting to see if Penpot has UI accessibility built-in. It's not one of the founding principles, but good to see they say it's one of their 'values' going forward - https://github.com/penpot/penpot/issues/2195
As a full-time Figma user and one-time evangelist for it, I looked eagerly for alternatives after the recent news. Penpot is not ready for my team to switch over yet, but I hope that if, in the future, Figma suffers the same fate as Adobe's other software design tools, Penpot will by then have grown into a viable OSS alternative.
Congratulations to the team behind it (Kaleidos, Peter & Pablo)
I trust them to make really great things and still fully OSS, this is where they are coming from. I can't believe for a second they will betray their own vision.
20 billion is just a lot of money though right? I never thought Figma was that great to use anyway. Maybe there’s more than meets the eye on the way it is set up in the back end and adobe is looking to leverage that knowledge.
How do open source companies make money? The only thing I figure here, is that VCs are betting another company like Microsoft will want to acquire the number 2 player, and exit that way.
My guess is partly consumer donations, partly industry donations (e.g. "Google donates $1M to Penpot since it uses it heavily and can't let it die") and, perhaps money from cloud hosting and technical support.
2 is why Linux is alive, too many large companies depend on it for it to die.
[+] [-] pen2l|3 years ago|reply
I'm rooting for both of these, and now that they have some funding I hope they'll dedicate effort on polishing the rough edges (and do something about the gratuitous amount of white space that permeates all of their web presence, and maybe reconsider their color palette to be less muted and more saturated, heavier, and decisive). They seem to be actively working on Figma imports, auto layouts, multi-user edits and more at this moment so they're on the right track.
For both of them, even if the VCs pull the rug from underneath to race for an exit, it being OSS is good insurance. A fork would mean that we don't have to spend time learning yet another tool. The good will fostered by it being OSS is what encourages some of us to look into their offerings, and in this way what we see is something that seems like a sustainable model for OSS projects.
[+] [-] debacle|3 years ago|reply
As an aside, does anyone know what software this page is running:
https://community.penpot.app/
It looks like a taiga plugin but I don't know what it's called.
[+] [-] gizzlon|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jjcm|3 years ago|reply
Technically I'm very curious to see how Penpot evolves with this investment, especially in regards to their choice to base everything on SVGs. IMO this will be their greatest superpower and also greatest weakness. Keeping things tied explicitly to code means exporting the final product is going to be near-perfect translation wise, but it will also mean they're tied explicitly to the browser's ability to render the combined html+svgs.
Currently Penpot's performance starts dropping rapidly once you approach around 1000 layers. Most robust design systems I see run around 10-40k layers (with the record I've seen being 250k). I'm very curious if they'll be able to optimize their approach to support those sizes of libraries.
[+] [-] shishy|3 years ago|reply
5600%! Good for them. I'm sure a lot of it was folks exploring options but I wonder how many of those new users will stick around -- anyone try it out and decide to make the commitment to use Penpot as a full replacement? Anything it still needs / hesitations?
[+] [-] marapuru|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ricardobeat|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marapuru|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] atoav|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jacooper|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] victor9000|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tbatchelli|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] b0afc375b5|3 years ago|reply
Currently learning through an open source book right now (https://www.learn-clojurescript.com/). I was planning on paying for it after I read the book to see if it was worth it, but I paid for it halfway through.
[+] [-] petercooper|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] diacritica|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nerdponx|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwthisbro1|3 years ago|reply
From an engineering POV, maybe someone should sell a CRDT service that proxies multiple users into one and pretends to be general, but really authors domain-specific stuff since CRDTs and OT "general" is not very valuable.
[+] [-] s1mon|3 years ago|reply
It wouldn't be easy to take Illustrator and add collaboration and get Figma. Microsoft bought a company that had already made a collaborative version of Word to get a head start on that process, and O365 is still clunky compared with Google Docs.
In the 3D mechanical CAD world, Onshape has done an amazing job of taking the functionality of Solidworks (or Creo or NX or ...) and making it collaborative. But really the biggest change is that they turned every user step into a "micro-version" which can be undone (pretty much infinite undo/redo). They built a Github style branching/merging (and reverting) version control system on top of the micro-versions. They have one service which runs the versioning system and another which runs the geometry engine. If you have all the steps, you are always guaranteed to get the same geometry - this fundamental rule of their system design means that only the deltas of micro-versions need to be shared between users/locations.
Anyone who's opened a Word file on a few different computers can tell you that the fonts, font handling and subtle version differences between different installs of Word means that the same source file doesn't equal the same visual layout. To some degree, putting "Word" in the cloud should mean that every user is using the latest (same) version of Word, but that's not the case still...
There's a reason that Google Docs doesn't have an offline mode or support any font in the world.
[+] [-] karimf|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Kukumber|3 years ago|reply
VC funding = it'll become Figma
[+] [-] erikpukinskis|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rvz|3 years ago|reply
Like what happened to Keybase, also what happened to Bitwarden and is now happening to Penpot.
With all of this, it will just end up just like Keybase as investors will race for an exit.
[+] [-] skyfaller|3 years ago|reply
The question is, can we organize around alternatives to the VC model, and build communities with control over their own destiny, instead of having the rug pulled out from under them repeatedly due to the whims of capital (and founders securing the bag)?
The concept of "exit to community" appeals to me, but unfortunately I see crypto grifters / DAOs trying to take over any "decentralization" narrative. Unless the crypto crash wipes those scammers out, I fear the community may flee from VC scammers into the arms of crypto scammers, new boss same as the old boss.
I hope that we can build some sort of cooperative movement that can avoid the "world domination or acquisition" pressure from VCs, while also avoiding weird technocratic "fixes" like DAOs. There's no replacement for organizing and community, tech cannot replace that difficult and necessary work of marshalling people to pull together in the same direction, accept no substitutes or "shortcuts."
[+] [-] lbotos|3 years ago|reply
Why is this a "VC Scam?"
A competitor just got aquired for $$ and a startup raised funds to attempt to compete in the space.
I don't see anything here that looks like a "scam" to me.
Keybase as an idea was much more pie in the sky vs. "an open source figma clone".
[+] [-] jacooper|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rapnie|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] devteambravo|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] swyx|3 years ago|reply
wow. check out their growth https://star-history.com/#penpot/penpot&Date
[+] [-] flanbiscuit|3 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pj7D0tSNmEg
[+] [-] monkin|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] mritchie712|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Zealotux|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] caloique|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] costcofries|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nerdponx|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] costcofries|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rikroots|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SSLy|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dharma1|3 years ago|reply
Would be great to be able to import .fig files
[+] [-] simulo|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] __d|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] karaterobot|3 years ago|reply
As a full-time Figma user and one-time evangelist for it, I looked eagerly for alternatives after the recent news. Penpot is not ready for my team to switch over yet, but I hope that if, in the future, Figma suffers the same fate as Adobe's other software design tools, Penpot will by then have grown into a viable OSS alternative.
[+] [-] js4ever|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] o0-0o|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pixxel|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iamwil|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MisterSandman|3 years ago|reply
2 is why Linux is alive, too many large companies depend on it for it to die.