Think about it this way: Sketch, Figma, Framer and InVision right now are spending most of their time developing exact same features, while they could innovate 4 times faster instead. I mean seriously, Figma have made relatively great leap with their components comparing to Sketch, but still it's miles away from a solution we all need now.
Seriously, it's been years now since Material design language was introduced and we still don't have an ability to reproduce it in any of the available design tools. A humble input field is impossible to implement in a single component with no specification. It consists of multiple states x different content structure x counters etc. We still end up with a mess of components which are slow both to design and use. There are development standards in place, but there are no clear design standards. Everything takes 10 times more resources to make then it really should.
Meanwhile we have 4-5 brilliant teams working on their design tools and goddamnit they all make same features over and over again. There should be a way to join forces and be able to make money at the same time. It's not a zero-sum game anymore. The growth of the whole market is more effective then fighting with each other on a tiny field even from a business perspective.
The future of product development is not exactly open-source though. But pretty close. The future of development anything lies in a new way of licensing intellectual property. So the best way to get new design tools is finding a way for developers to merge products without loosing money or pissing off the investors. The only alternative I guess is a new player, who will figure out the way to go almost open-source and leaving them eventually all in the dust.
How can such license work? It starts with a set of primitive principles:
0) Anyone has access to the codebase and can play with it 1) Every git commit has it's cost when proposed to master owner 2) Every product or sub-product inherits a license and becomes cheaper for everyone (including those who already payed, via partial returns) if number of users grows 3) Every usage of the product triggers the process of distributing the reward between all the authors proportionally to their contribution. 4) Capital is stored in decentralised way
Think about it this way: Sketch, Figma, Framer and InVision right now are spending most of their time developing exact same features, while they could innovate 4 times faster instead. I mean seriously, Figma have made relatively great leap with their components comparing to Sketch, but still it's miles away from a solution we all need now.
Seriously, it's been years now since Material design language was introduced and we still don't have an ability to reproduce it in any of the available design tools. A humble input field is impossible to implement in a single component with no specification. It consists of multiple states x different content structure x counters etc. We still end up with a mess of components which are slow both to design and use. There are development standards in place, but there are no clear design standards. Everything takes 10 times more resources to make then it really should.
Meanwhile we have 4-5 brilliant teams working on their design tools and goddamnit they all make same features over and over again. There should be a way to join forces and be able to make money at the same time. It's not a zero-sum game anymore. The growth of the whole market is more effective then fighting with each other on a tiny field even from a business perspective.
The future of product development is not exactly open-source though. But pretty close. The future of development anything lies in a new way of licensing intellectual property. So the best way to get new design tools is finding a way for developers to merge products without loosing money or pissing off the investors. The only alternative I guess is a new player, who will figure out the way to go almost open-source and leaving them eventually all in the dust.
How can such license work? It starts with a set of primitive principles:
0) Anyone has access to the codebase and can play with it 1) Every git commit has it's cost when proposed to master owner 2) Every product or sub-product inherits a license and becomes cheaper for everyone (including those who already payed, via partial returns) if number of users grows 3) Every usage of the product triggers the process of distributing the reward between all the authors proportionally to their contribution. 4) Capital is stored in decentralised way