Figma acquired Payload CMS. Is it the end of the open source project as we know it? I don’t think so. Many people have asked me what my thoughts are, so here’s a quick video that unpacks my perspective on the acquisition.
Transcript
What's up everyone?
Welcome to Next in Dev, a podcast where I'll cover topics and news about modern web development.
In this episode I'm going to cover Sigma's acquisition of payload CMS.
A few of you have been asking me about my thoughts on the situation, so I thought I would record a quick video about what I'm thinking and what I'm feeling about this news.
Most of you in this community already know what happened, but for those who don't know, what happened was a few weeks ago, while I was on vacation, Figma purchased payload CMS and I mentioned I was on vacation because I was thankful for that because it meant that I did not have a knee jerk reaction to the news.
If you look back to when the news was announced back in the discord, you'll see that there was a bunch of knee jerk reactions, a bunch of people jumping to conclusions and forming conspiracy theories.
But now, after a couple of weeks, things have calmed down and now we can think more clearly about what happened.
through the uproar from Discord and Reddit, one thing became abundantly clear.
People were confused about what was happening.
And that's understandable.
Many of us love using Payload CMS and we want to see it succeed.
And here is my main thought.
Acquisitions are not always bad.
Now, I know that's not what many of us want to hear, because I know how we feel about mega corporations in general, but specifically Figma.
But let's be honest, acquisitions bring new energy, new money and new resources to projects.
One of the Payload CMS team was joking—I hope they were joking—that they now have health care.
Now, whether or not that's true doesn't really matter.
But the principle remains.
the amount of relief and peace of mind that comes from having just even a standard benefits package of paid time off and health care cannot be understated.
With that relief comes focus.
When one is no longer concerned about the things that should be covered, they have the time and the energy to focus on the task at hand.
And everybody benefits from that.
In that sense this acquisition is a very good thing beyond the product.
It's a good move for the team.
just based on that fact alone, I could end this video and feel really good about my opinion.
The payload CMS team have worked really hard on this product, and the humans behind the product have been rewarded with more than a paycheck.
There is some more nuance here though, so I should address that as well.
I'll talk more about this later in the video, but let's be honest, it was just a matter of time before Payload CMS was acquired at all.
are already venture backed by investments from companies like Vercel.
So why Figma?
It's not really news, and it is my opinion that Figma has kind of been lagging behind in the technology race.
They recently had an event where they just announced a bunch of products that kind of already exist, and none of them were finished.
They were all kind of in beta.
And so now with the really true proliferation of AI, Figma continues to fall behind because they're not implementing AI into their product.
But now that's changing.
So with all of that in mind, it's not a stretch that they're going to reach out to. One of the most innovative CMS’s in our time: Payload CMS.
And with that, it can help build their AI product used to build sites.
At a certain point, companies have to decide if they're going to build something or buy something To me, it feels like Figma needed a way to jump ahead in the AI race.
They needed a way to catch up with the technology of their competitors in order to continue to compete in the market.
if we're honest, since they're coming from behind, there's no way that Figma was going to be able to build something in time to catch up with their competitors.
Enter payload CMS.
This is a product that they can buy.
They get a very smart team behind it and they can continue to build a product And now they can implement that product into their roadmap.
Sigma didn't just buy payload CMS, they put the team on their payroll.
yes, they got a great tool for developers by doing this.
but if we're honest, the biggest benefit is from the innovation of the core team.
does that make this an aqua hire type of move?
Maybe I'm optimistic that the team will continue to work on the open source version of payload. CMS.
And I do believe that the core team will continue to push the envelope, it continue innovating on the product as well.
With that in mind, I doubt Figma is going to try and gut payload or remove the ability to self-hosted.
However, there is a well-founded concern in the Payload community that something like this could happen.
It's no secret that Figma is more of a closed source type of software.
I have two thoughts here.
The first is that Figma benefits from the open source nature of Payload CMS developers continue to work on it.
Developers continue pushing it.
contributors continue advertising it, and more people learn about Figma through the process.
a tool for developers, by developers with an open source model is beneficial for even large enterprise companies.
The second Payload did not need to sell to Figma.
This is speculation, but that tells me that maybe payload had a little bit more leverage in this deal than maybe we give them credit for.
so why sell at all?
Well, open source is notoriously hard to monetize.
we know open source is important because it allows software to grow in public.
It also allows the community to fork the product and continue developing it.
So yes, someone smarter than me could fork Payload CMS tomorrow and continue working on it if things go off the rails with Figma.
But why is monetization important?
I shouldn't have to say this, but workers are worth their wages.
Workers should be paid for the work that they do.
with payloads. Current enterprise model.
I don't expect to see much to change for the general population.
there are already enterprise features—which we're able to build, by the way— And these features and cloud have been keeping payload afloat.
Figma features will likely be added as enterprise features and plugins, and the modular nature of payloads CMS will continue as it is.
I do believe payload CMS’s core will continue to be open source.
But I also know that we have become so accustomed to getting all of these great, amazing tools for free, but nothing in this world is truly free of cost.
Everything costs someone something, somewhere, whether in time or money.
If we continue to have this obsession of just getting everything for free, those who don't contribute will only consume until there's nothing left.
Okay, then I hear you.
What about unpaid contributors?
I won't lie here.
Things get sticky when we start talking about this.
But the truth is, that contribution was never required.
as I mentioned earlier in this video, payload CMS has been backed for a while by Y Combinator companies.
companies like Vercel and MongoDB.
so again, it was only a matter of time before someone else came in and scooped up payload CMS.
That means that we as contributors understood that our time investment was already a risky investment.
Another concern I've seen is this idea of vendor lock in.
This to me is a lazy argument.
similar to the one against Next.js.
Open source whether a forked version of payload CMS or the open source version that we have now will never truly be locked into any one vendor, Just as you can self-hosted Next.js anywhere.
You can run a Node.js application and even hosted on sites other than Vercel without limitation, I expect we’ll be able to deploy Payload CMS anywhere we'd like to.
So now for me, will I continue my contributions to payload CMS?
The answer to that is a resounding yes.
I believe in this project regardless of who owns it.
chances are high that with the increased resources that Payload CMS is receiving, I'll be able to increase my contributions to the project as well.
And I look forward to doing that.
Now, I admit I could be wrong in all of this.
I could be optimistic for no reason.
Those who are pessimistic could be right, I admit, and I acknowledge all of that.
we have all seen promising free and open source software take the path of acquisition.
We have all seen the promises that nothing will change.
Only to have everything change over time.
But nothing changes until the changes.
Until then, I'll remain optimistic.
I hope I've provided a well-balanced and reasonable argument for this acquisition.
Even as a person who has invested countless hours into the community through my videos and other contributions, with no real financial gain from it.
As always, I'm curious to hear what you have to think though, So feel free to drop a comment and I'll do my best to respond to all of them, just as I always do.
