A different company

Since we began working on transforming Tuist into a sustainable business, I’ve been deeply reflecting on the type of company we aspire to build. Here are some key observations and ideas that have been shaping our vision:

Open Source as a Foundation, Not Just a Marketing Tool

Unlike many companies in our space that treat open source merely as a marketing tool, we view it as the foundation for building better tools. We believe that openness and diverse contributions are crucial for long-term success and inspiring others to create their own open-source solutions and businesses. We plan to open-source our entire business, including the server implementation, following in the footsteps of successful open-source companies like Ghost, GitLab, Posthog, and Penpot. We’re committed to commoditizing many of our technologies with permissive licenses, as evidenced by our work on extracting Xcode project generation logic into a Tuist-agnostic package. Stay tuned for two new open-source projects we’ll be announcing in the coming months!

Embracing Standards for Long-Term Sustainability

We’re betting on widely-adopted standards when choosing technologies, formats, and designing our product. This approach aligns with our goal of building a long-term solution that can withstand the test of time. We aim to avoid the pitfalls of constantly refactoring due to rapidly changing frameworks or vendor lock-in. For example, our web setup uses raw HTML, CSS, and JS, intentionally sidestepping the complexities of the JavaScript ecosystem.

Openness Beyond Software

Our commitment to openness extends beyond our code. We’ll be transparent about our pricing (with the exception of custom on-premise solutions), drawing inspiration from Posthog’s model. Additionally, we’ll maintain an open handbook documenting our company’s operations. This transparency will help potential clients make informed decisions and support our goal of building an asynchronous remote company by fostering a culture of comprehensive documentation.

Simplifying the Developer Experience

We believe that teams shouldn’t have to rely on complex scripting to glue tools and services together by default. Tuist will continue to help teams streamline their setups, advocating for simpler, more integrated solutions. Our goal is to provide a single, cohesive tool with multiple well-integrated features, rather than a collection of independently negotiated tools that prioritize profit over user experience. We put people first, and unnecessary complexity is not part of our equation.

Challenging Convention and Fostering Innovation

We’re leveraging our culture of innovation to challenge cargo-culted solutions and move the ecosystem forward. In the coming months, I’ll be sharing more ideas on how we plan to approach common problems in novel ways.

Building Tuist is like working with a blank canvas, allowing us to create the company we envision based on our values. We’re not simply copying what’s been done before, but rather reflecting deeply on what we want to achieve. Our goal is to build a unique company that embraces open source without fear.