Tuist’s vision for an open, cross-platform future

A business model is the balance between producing and capturing value. Since open source is not a business model, it focuses entirely on producing value. In fact, it can generate significantly more value, and at a faster pace, than proprietary alternatives. However, as an open-source project gains popularity, maintenance costs increase, forcing projects to find ways to capture value in order to sustain themselves. That was the case with Tuist.

We started as a client-side, value-production-only solution, but as maintenance demands grew, we had to explore ways to capture value to sustain development. Due to the nature of our technology—where most of the value resided in the client—and the lack of a registered brand, we suffered from free riding. To protect the project’s future, we had to draw a line and partially close-source some of the client-side value. We have never regretted that decision, but we do miss being fully open source. Now, we’re going back.

Our goal is to become the go-to productivity platform for app development—not just for the Apple ecosystem, but also for Android, React Native, and Flutter. Achieving this with limited capital and resources is nearly impossible. However, by turning it into a community-driven effort, we can build a unique solution in the ecosystem, much like Grafana has for dashboards, Supabase for databases, or PostHog for analytics.

But where do we draw the line? You might wonder. The complexity of Tuist will lie in hosting—not because we’ll deliberately add complexity, but because it will be an inherent aspect of the platform. This complexity will become evident when we introduce remote execution and CAS. Additionally, we may differentiate our product by offering certain features exclusively for large enterprises, similar to GitLab.

Indie developers and small companies won’t concern themselves with hosting—it’s not their focus. Moreover, they won’t pay unless they use the platform extensively, in which case their payment will be proportional to the value they receive. Large enterprises, on the other hand, might opt for self-hosting but will be encouraged to purchase a license for access to enterprise-only features like SSO.

We don’t just want to build a developer productivity platform for app developers—we want it to be the most valuable solution. And let’s be honest: only open source can get us there.