At the end of Frappeverse, there is usually an open mic session, where people can say whatever they want to say. On the first day, people were just saying very nice things about Frappe, making the audience diabetic. But things are always good and bad. So by the end of the second day, so we requested the audience that they only have to give critical feedback.
“If you want me to network, then I should be able to refill my plate”, said someone noting that there was only one (plentiful) serving for everyone. Others did not like the food, some felt there was not enough networking place. We agree, the food wasn’t great, but it wasn’t bad either. For me, food is sustenance. The reason we went for simpler food was that we wanted to make the entry accessible to more people by making it free, but we miscalculated. But everyone isn’t me and we forgot that people come to events for the food, not matter how much free software you showcase. Period. It is the basic human need that trumps all others. Something we should fix for next time.
Once people were done with criticising the food, they went on to criticise other aspects of the event. It seemed they were confused with two tracks, not knowing which one to attended. Maybe we should have given away a time turner as well so that people could attend both the tracks. Too much of a good thing is also bad we learnt. There was also the feeling that we did too much of “Frappe selling” at the event (maybe they missed the part where we named it “Frappeverse”). It felt more like a business conference than a community one.
This part I tend to agree. Our first few conferences were held in a community hall, with fewer than a couple of hundred attendees. The food was much simpler and the talks were raw. Every once in a while someone started promoting their “closed” application and someone in the audience would erupt saying “This ain’t open source”. I used to be the angry young man myself, asking people about “where is your contribution?”. Being poor meant we only had ideology to hang on to. Over the years though Frappe has prospered commercially, first one of our users decided to give us some money and then we pivoted to being a “cloud” company and creating a stable stream of revenue.
To be very clear none of this has meant that Frappe has changed its values. We do more free software today than we ever did. One persistent and stinging criticism was that our hosting platform wasn’t open source, but now it is. There is almost nothing people can criticise us for other than being successful at business. It almost seems that being successful at business can only come as a sin.
When I was getting married, in-laws used to think that all “business people” are crooks (me coming from a "business" family). Obviously that is not always true. What makes people suspicious of business people is that they may end up making “disproportionate money”. Everyone in the world tends to work hard, maybe those toiling away doing physical labour probably end up working the hardest. “The city is built on the sweat and blood of labour, but we live in shanties” is what my activist friend used to tell me. Business people don’t seem to be physically suffering doing hard labour, so their wealth somehow feels ill-gotten.
The other category of people that probably should be rewarded are artists. We all know that there is nothing more common than failed artists in every art field from music to cinema to painting. These are people who toil away their lives in the search of perfection, yet most of them end up becoming failures in the eyes of society. It all feeds into the unfairness of business people succeeding where others have failed. What do business people do differently that others don’t seem to comprehend?
There is one more criticism of businesses. Business by definition are creatures of the market, where the market decides who succeeds and who fails. Somehow it means that business that succeed, give in to the needs of the market, by doing whatever it takes, no matter the morality of those needs. This criticism is not unfair. Companies sell all kinds of things that are directly harmful to people and society - and use psychological tricks to convince people of its value. Think of consumer goods, sugar drinks, cars, addictive software among others. Business are only committed to profits and not honest living.
With all of this it is probably understandable why people are suspicious of Frappe’s success and maybe feel that the “poor old Frappe” was somehow more idealistic. This is something I keep questioning myself. What values are we giving up for success? Are we becoming greedy? narcissistic? hypocritical? manipulative? Are we promoting values that just benefit us and not the community in general?
The answer to these questions is not simple. The one tool that I think is very useful in this circumstance is self-criticism. During the discussion I asked myself what are we not talking about? One thing that kind of bothered me is that our commercial model, Frappe Cloud, is not “universal” and we have created an exclusive community of “Frappe Partners” whose success is tied to the success of Frappe Cloud. The success of Frappe Cloud is crucial to the success of the overall community because without the commercial success, we would not have been able to invest in technology, trainings or even this conference.
Maybe the question to ask is how does the success of Frappe Cloud harm the community? As I mentioned earlier, Frappe Cloud itself is 100% open source, with several installations in the wild. So there is nothing that stops others who are capable to run their own Frappe Cloud. Frappe Cloud provides real value to companies by taking care of reliability and uptime. So it is a non exclusive, value adding service that helps sustain the Frappe community, and maybe even help it become more productive.
Frappe Cloud also does not violate any of the four freedoms of free software - the freedom to use, study, modify and redistribute. Unlike other “FOSS” companies, we don’t make it un-necessarily hard for people to self host and install Frappe Cloud by refusing access to documentation or critical libraries or binaries that are only available with us.
When I asked the community if we should dismantle the Frappe Partnership program because it causes some kind of inequality, most people spoke up overwhelmingly in support of the partnership program. The strongest criticism came from me that Frappe Cloud might end up encouraging “rent seeking” behaviour in Frappe - where we keep getting “free” income from our assets. While there is always that risk, but we are too small at the moment to worry about it. This is something we should always be aware as we are growing up.
The only fair criticism (according to me) is that the Frappe Partner Listing - a great source of leads to the everyone, is only exclusive to those who sell Frappe Cloud. This is something we should reflect inside Frappe. If we can de-couple this listing from Frappe Cloud sales, then it would be ideal. On the other hand, the business alignment that Frappe Partners have with Frappe Cloud is what keeps the revenue growing. One option is what Mina Botros from Axentor, Egypt had proposed. An alliance of partners - “Frappe Alliance” that will manage its own community and listing. Then we outsource the problem of ranking and quality to the partners themselves. These are all tough questions that we will have to handle democratically with our partners.
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I did not write much about the talks - the main content, which were superb. I was happy that our business team has started to get their act in place with a much more polished presentations. The engineering presentations were great with several products showing signs of maturity. Frappe engineers and consultants spoke with confidence and poise. The new launches, Frappe Mail and Slides both look exciting and I look forward to them reaching full maturity in the coming months. The showstopper was definitely Rucha with Frappe Studio, probably our most ambitious product till date. It makes me super proud to be part of such a talented and activated team and community.
Everything from the website, murals, to the registration app, to guest management was done by our team and volunteers, ably managed by Palkan who is now a pro in events. This time where was also an expo that looked fabulous with more than 20 stalls by our partners. With 900 participants, the majority of the crowd was full of first-timers. Frappeverse is a milestone in our journey and always a great opportunity to stay in touch with the community - many of whom are now friends. As Frappeverse keeps getting bigger, we are always unsure what is next for us. Will this momentum continue?
Frappe Team
