Penpot: Open-source design and prototyping platform
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Submission timeline
2007–2026One slot for every year since HN launched. Height is that year's peak points; orange marks a 100+ point or 50+ comment breakout. Select a bar to open its strongest thread.
First comments on top threads
HN comment orderSounds like they have a interesting history behind the creation of Penpot: > Penpot was (effectively) born in a Kaleidos personal innovation week (PIWEEK, aka recurring hackathon) in 2018. Back then we had been recently forced to break one of our sacred rules at the company “only open source tools and platforms are allowed to build technology” due to F1gm4’s overwhelmingly productivity boost for designers at the company. “We are second-class citizens in open source, it’s frustrating and it’s painful!”…
It is hard to replicate or actually compete with proper proprietary design tools. There's a ton of UX and performance enhancements that are done over the years and IMHO OSS can never get to that. I'm speaking specifically about design tools. There have been a lot of tools that have been around with not a lot of adoption. I like and appreciate the effort and it is definitely a massive effort to build these OSS alternatives to design tools, but…
We're presenting Penpot at FOSDEM (online) this Sunday in case anyone wants to know more about the project: https://fosdem.org/2021/schedule/event/penpot_design_freedom...
Is this project completely open source or is the code for some of its key components being held back?
The first top-level comment from each of the four biggest threads, in HN’s own order. Excerpts are shortened; open a comment for full context.
- Breakout years
- 3
- Total points
- 1585
- Total comments
- 252
100+ points or 50+ comments
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
Every submission
| Date | Title as submitted | By | Points | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021-01-15 | Penpot – open-source Mock up and design tool | jsiepkes | 11 | 3 |
| 2021-02-02 | Penpot Alpha Release – Free and Open-Source Design PlattformFirst breakout | stephdin | 133 | 26 |
| 2022-06-13 | PenPot: Design Freedom for Teams | marcodiego | 2 | 0 |
| 2022-09-15 | Penpot: Open-source design and prototyping platformBest thread | wiradikusuma | 1145 | 128 |
| 2024-05-01 | Figma OSS AlternativeLatest 20+ point return | noashavit | 294 | 95 |