Apr 2, 2026
September 2023, testing Documenso 1.0 on staging before launch
Our engagement with the community has been pretty limited recently, and I want to address that directly. Not because things are broken, but because it hasn’t really reflected how much we actually care about it.
The reality
The reality is simple. We are prioritizing commercial work. That’s what keeps the company running and ultimately what keeps the project alive. This is intentional, and it’s not going to change in the near term. If we don’t get this part right, there is no project to contribute to in the first place.
What this means in practice
What that means in practice is also pretty straightforward. Our bandwidth for issues and PRs is limited. Responses can be slow, not everything gets picked up, and some things will sit longer than they should. That’s the tradeoff we’re making right now.
At the same time, open source is core to how this started, and that still matters to us. Not as a marketing angle, but as part of how we build. We do care about contributions, we do read what comes in, and we do want to invest more here when it becomes viable.
What we’re improving
One thing we can improve immediately is clarity. Going forward, we’ll move reviewed items from triage to backlogged if we don’t have the capacity to work on them. That means issues won’t just sit in limbo without a signal. If something is backlogged, we’ve looked at it, but it’s not something we can prioritize right now. Triage becomes what it should be, a place for scoping, not a long term holding state. It’s a small change, but it makes things a lot more explicit.
We’re also starting to see small improvements already. As we get a bit more breathing room, we’re being more proactive on issues and PRs. It’s not fast and not perfect, but you should see more consistent engagement.
Another thing worth calling out is that we’re starting to see contributions from enterprise customers. For us, that’s a positive signal. It shows that contributions are part of how the product evolves, across both community and commercial users.
What to expect (and not expect)
To set expectations clearly, we’re not going to put timelines on when community investment increases. We’re not going to promise fast reviews or high throughput, and we’re not shifting away from our commercial focus right now.
What you can expect instead is clarity. Every issue should have a signal, you should know where things stand, and decisions should be visible, even if the answer is just “not now”.
How we think about this long term
At the end of the day, we are building this as a commercial open source company. Commercial work is what allows us to keep the project moving and, over time, get to a point where we can invest much more into the community again.
That’s the goal. Not just maintaining this balance, but improving it.
At the same time, being open source is not something we treat lightly. Today, that means providing a high value free community edition and making the code available under AGPL. That’s a core part of how we deliver value.
This is how we support the community today.
This isn’t the end state, it’s a stepping stone. We care about getting this right, and we’re building towards being able to reinvest much more deeply in the project and the community
