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Comment by atonse | Hacker News Reader

I haven't tried Penpot yet but I am learning more and more Figma.

But it actually slightly _concerns_ me that they don't have a business model or a way to fund their developers until at least a year from now.

This kind of application is extremely complex to build, so what do the Penpot devs say to address how to keep the talent around? My worry is about locking core assets in a format that's only supported by volunteers.

Even if it's an open format, it isn't a _dev_ tool, it's a design tool, so the "consumers" aren't the ones that can just pick up the complex codebase and take over.

Or am I thinking of this wrong? If penpot went stagnant, would someone hopefully just come around and build a converter for Figma/Adobe XD?

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Last time I used penpot, everything was SVG, or easily exportable as such.

SVG is standard enough that everyone has, or easily has access to, a simple or advanced editor that can edit SVGs or at least import them.

Sure, but there would still be additional metadata not captured in SVG, right? Things like layers, components, variants, etc.

SVG support metadata, layers, linking and such.

They describe some of their potential plans for revenue generation here: https://penpot.app/pricing

It is very very surface level at the moment, but they mention things like limiting the storage in their SaaS, and providing paid tiers to increase it. They also mention enterprise-certified self-hosted deployments as a possibility.

It's also worth mentioning that the company behind Penpot is https://kaleidos.net/

On the about page on the Penpot website they also mention VC funding: "we have the unbelievable support from open source VCs Decibel Partners and Athos Capital" https://penpot.app/about

> But it actually slightly _concerns_ me that they don't have a business model or a way to fund their developers until at least a year from now.

Do you mean Penpot doesn't have a business model, or Figma? I'm keen on reading more about either, because you have valid points

Figma has a paid plan that we're happy to pay for.

Penpot currently doesn't even have a paid plan anywhere. And their pricing page says that they are planning to offer paid tiers in a year (Q1 2025). A sibling post has answered some questions that they do have some VC funding, which is good. I was concerned about "how have they paid the bills so far, and how will they pay the bills until a year from now when they start charging?"

I've been burned in the past by open source projects that didn't grow enough to have a critical mass of skilled talent (Ember.js being a big one, finding talent was a supreme headache so we abandoned it after 5 years). So I'm always nervous now about "who is going to know this tool, and who is financially motivated to keep it vibrant and going" and also, "is it worth paying to have someone learn this skill if it isn't growing", all tradeoffs we have to make when picking tools/technologies.

Enterprise? Feature paywall? Adobe purchase? Leaning into ‘open source / free to lure designers until then?

If one can’t easily see a straight answer then assume the worse.

Squarespace and Invision had similar paths. Best buddies with freelancers / small studios to gain traction / marketing. Heh.

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