[NEW] AppFlowy's 6-month Technical Roadmap

[annieappflowy]

Hi all, I'm excited to share our product roadmap for Q1-Q2 2023, including three major updates:

• We will be able to insert databases into a page
• AppFlowy will support mobile platforms
• You will find more plugins for the community by the community

As always, we're open to your feedback and very much looking forward to working with you all!

[heyakyra]

Are certain features going to be made closed-source proprietary, like 'grid version history' as shown in the previous roadmap? I hope AppFlowy can stay open source instead of open core

[annieappflowy]

Again, as I replied to you on April 15th, if you'd like something to be built by us, you can submit a feature request or become a contributor yourself.

[heyakyra]

Thanks for the quick response—and I'm sorry if I misunderstood your message. I interpreted your reply as confirming that the grid version history would be proprietary. If I am mistaken, and you plan to stay fully open source, I would definitely get behind the project 100%, ahead of others like Focalboard, Tagspaces, Baserow, Grist, etc! I am sure many others agree.

I have only been asking about a feature that was already marked as "(closed source)" on the roadmap you shared last year, so I assume any new ticket would be redundant to the tasks you are already tracking. Since I did not get a reply for a month on the previous discussion, I tried again here. After another month went by with no reply again, I finally tried discord and I do appreciate that I was able to get some clarity (I thought). I'd been very excited about Appflowy since it hit Hackernews, but I'm just personally much less interested in open core projects, and since others seemed interested in the question, I wanted to link the two together so others have the context too.

[annieappflowy]

As you can check from my remarks on Jan 16, the version history didn't get built at all and is not included in the latest roadmap posted in this thread. You can consider it not planned. And you should see our open-source codebase as a single source of truth and always refer back to it when making claims.

We rely on feature requests and bug reports by the community to guide our direction. The version history has many variations from high-level aggregated actions to very granular transactional operations. Some variations can be beneficial to application users while others can be commercialized by proprietary companies who use our codebase to sell commercial solutions without contributing back. Since we don't receive your feature request, we don't know what problems it would solve, thus good solutions to your needs. Again, I believe you have good intentions. If you can provide us with more context, we will consider prioritizing it.

We'd appreciate more specific use cases, customer needs, and meaningful contributions.

[suntorytimed]

@annieappflowy looking at https://github.com/AppFlowy-IO/AppFlowy-Collab the repository is currently not licensed under an open source license. Will this happen in the future and was just not done at the current state of development or will this incur some kind of non-commercial use licensing?

[annieappflowy]

Thanks @suntorytimed for bringing it up. We forgot to add the license. Now it's under AGPL-3.0

[juna962]

AppFlowy Technical Roadmap: H1 2025
Executive Summary
This roadmap outlines AppFlowy's technical development priorities for the first half of 2025, focusing on performance optimization, feature expansion, and platform stability. Our goals are to enhance the user experience, improve data handling capabilities, and strengthen our position as a robust local-first productivity solution.
Q1 2025 (January - March)

1. Core Performance Improvements

Database Optimization

Implement database connection pooling
Add query optimization for large datasets
Introduce caching layer for frequently accessed data
Optimize SQLite indices for faster search operations

Memory Management

Reduce memory footprint for large documents
Implement progressive loading for extensive content
Add memory usage monitoring and optimization tools
Optimize resource cleanup for closed documents

2. Enhanced Offline Capabilities

Local Storage Management

Implement efficient data compression
Add storage space monitoring and cleanup tools
Optimize file structure for faster access
Introduce automatic backup system

Template System Overhaul

Create local template storage system
Add template versioning support
Implement template import/export functionality
Develop template customization tools

3. Collaboration Features

Real-time Sync Engine

Build conflict resolution system
Implement operational transformation
Add change tracking mechanism
Create sync status indicators

Q2 2025 (April - June)
4. Platform Extensions

Plugin Architecture

Design plugin API specification
Create plugin sandbox environment
Implement plugin management system
Add plugin marketplace foundation

Integration Framework

Build API integration layer
Add OAuth authentication support
Create data import/export pipelines
Implement webhook system

5. User Experience Improvements

Editor Enhancement

Add advanced formatting options
Implement customizable shortcuts
Create better table editing experience
Add embedded content support

Search and Navigation

Implement full-text search
Add advanced filtering options
Create quick navigation system
Build bookmark management

6. Security and Privacy

Data Protection

Implement end-to-end encryption
Add password protection for documents
Create secure sharing mechanism
Build audit logging system

Technical Debt and Infrastructure
Ongoing Improvements

Regular dependency updates
Code quality monitoring
Performance benchmark automation
Documentation maintenance

Testing Infrastructure

Expand unit test coverage
Add integration test suites
Implement performance testing
Create automated UI testing

Success Metrics
Performance Targets

50% reduction in load time for large documents
30% improvement in memory usage
Sub-second search response time
99.9% sync reliability

Quality Metrics

90% test coverage
< 1% crash rate
< 2 second response time for all operations
Zero data loss incidents

Implementation Considerations
Resource Allocation

3 teams of 4-6 developers each
Dedicated QA team
DevOps support
Technical documentation team

Dependencies

Rust core library updates
Flutter framework compatibility
SQLite optimization tools
Encryption library integration

Risk Mitigation

Regular security audits
Performance monitoring
Beta testing program
Staged rollout strategy

Review and Adjustment Points
Monthly Reviews

Progress tracking
Resource allocation assessment
Priority adjustment
Timeline validation

Quarterly Assessments

Feature completion audit
Performance metric review
User feedback analysis
Resource planning update