Penpot 2.0 Released
community.penpot.appI 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?
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.
I’ve never heard of penpot before, and the blog post barely helps. From the name I guess that had something to do with penetration testing or honeypots. It really bugs me when clicking on the logo of a site like this takes me to the blog index rather than the general landing page so I can figure out what the thing is.
The Penpot Features page [1] proclaims, "Penpot is the Open-Source Design Tool for Design and Code Collaboration" and "A browser-based design tool that gets the web. Create beautiful user interfaces in collaboration with all team members. Keep consistency at scale with components, libraries and design systems." The page describes dozens of specific features.
I feel like I see a post like this every time someone releases a new version of something. These posts are clearly pitching to the already converted, but there has to be a way to anticipate the curious outsider, right?
My understanding is that it's an open source Figma.
> It really bugs me when clicking on the logo of a site like this takes me to the blog index rather than the general landing page so I can figure out what the thing is.
I somewhat agree; it's the default behavior of many message boards (in this case, Discourse). However this is useful when trying to get back to the index of the message board.
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You probably haven't read it but the footer description is good enough "Penpot is the first Open Source design and prototyping platform meant for cross-domain teams." The small animation on the homepage is also clear enough.
Some people still use google this days when they haven't heard about something.
Even the link in the header takes you to the tool itself (where you need to create an account to get anywhere).
Main site link here: https://penpot.app/
It's a release announcement of an existing product, so obviously it's tailored to people who are anticipating an update and want to know whats in it.
I love that Penpot's open source - many enterprises would love some ability to add features or fork the editor, since design files are so critical to development these days - but I really dislike that it's written in ClojureScript. That makes it really hard for most web devs to contribute to.
Maybe ClojureScript is better than a SSPL license :)
I am excited to try, Penpot 1 was sluggish felt like I was painting pixels to the screen manually so I hope that is all resolved now I have a team of people who would eagerly use it if its good
Yeah Penpot's performance was shockingly bad when I tried it not that long ago.
Really neat. I was mainly curious to know when they are planning to release the self hosted docker versions of Penpot 2.0. Although I found this issue on their Github and it Looks like its coming in the next couple days hopefully [1].
Disclosure: I am not a GitLab team member, but I am part of the community "GitLab Core team". This is purely hypothetical. I have zero knowledge of anything internal to GitLab. Having said that.
I think it could be really good to have a company like GitLab either acquire PenPot to integrate it into their platform, or build a really tight embedded integration with the service.
You would have designers and developers using the same platform to manage things from both initial idea (Epics/Issues), through the design process (integrated PenPot), and then into the development of the feature (Issues/Merge Requests). This would give everything really tight integration and make moving between the different stages of the SDLC really smooth. I'd imagine the designs having their own git repo too, it wouldn't need to be exposed to the designers, but would give a nice easy way to export the data, view it locally, and move it into another product if needed.
Now that the Adobe and Figma acquisition is no more, I wonder how Penpot will fare. It is good that it's open source but it might slow adoption as people have no need to migrate now from Figma as many stated they would had Adobe completed their purchase.
As a designer and website builder, I'm eager to explore how the new version of Penpot can help me build clean HTML+CSS, and sprinkle on some Hugo later on!
I've been toying a little with self hosted Penpot and it was really nice. I haven't used Figma too much, but Penpot was easy to use though it felt a little difficult to handle components.
This is a very welcomed release, kudos for the team for delivering.
I'm a Figma guy until such time as they enshittify it, but I'm glad there's competition. Figma, Sketch, and Penpot all look like reasonable options, though maybe for different use cases.
Does it have versioning and forking?