Happy Monday! If you too have a public holiday today, I hope your weather is as good as ours 
When we open-sourced the App Server, we got a lot of questions (including quite a few on this forum) that amounted to “what were you thinking?!”.
So we wrote up a blog post, talking about our development philosophy, what Anvil is (and isn’t) meant to be – and why open-sourcing the App Server fits nicely into our business model:
We need very strong ears to hear ourselves judged frankly, and because there are few who can endure frank criticism without being stung by it, those who venture to criticize us perform a remarkable act of friendship, for to undertake to wound or offend a man for his own good is to have a healthy love for him.
–Michel de Montaigne
Meredydd,
Please understand that every challenge I make comes from a place of love. You have been at this for a while now, and have no doubt seen much of what I have seen. Many people claim to know both software and business, but few actually do. These people tend to be very busy. I’ll share just a couple of thoughts.
Businesses that succeed typically have one thing in common. Their goals are aligned with their customers. They work obsessively solve their customer’s problems. In your many in-depth conversations with Anvil users, how many of your customers have told you they want to fix the web? Not their primary objective - fine. Is it second on their list of priorities? Third? Fourth? Fifth? Now let me ask a different question. How much of the Anvil effort goes towards furthering your stated mission? How much is directed at helping your customers to achieve theirs?
Sometimes what people don’t say is more important what they do. And I am a firm believer that identity is best defined in opposition. More important than what you are, is what you are not. It may be obvious to you, but saying you are not a “low-code enterprise product”, when you sell a code-saving product with an enterprise plan, believe it or not, is actually quite important.
This is a huge step forward. You have always known what you wanted Anvil to be, and you are finding the confidence to shout about it. That gets nothing but respect from me. If you want to talk, my door is open.
Best wishes,
Sam