Ten years ago, when we were considering forking Spree to create Solidus, we had no idea what the future would hold. We weren’t even sure if forking was the right decision. Today, I’m sure we made the right call. I’m proud to announce that as of this week Solidus has been downloaded more than 3 million times on RubyGems.org!
Leading up to the fork, the Spree community had been struggling with the direction of the project. The biggest issue was with the technical direction of the project. Upgrading from version to version was extremely difficult due to the number of breaking changes in each release. This caused stores to forgo upgrades, disincentivizing them from contributing back to the platform. Less contributions made upgrading less desireable. We needed to break this feedback loop.
There were also rumours that the company behind Spree was stepping back. Shortly after we forked the project we learned those rumours were true. Spree Commerce got acquired by First Data and stepped back from the project, leaving a vacuum.
Solidus was started with a community-first philosophy. As an open-source project, we needed to do everything we could to help organizations using the platform leverage the benefits of open-source software. We need to stop the vicious cycle started by Spree and turn it into a virtuous cycle.
We also needed to make sure that the project was sustainable. We did this by carefully considering and documenting the migration path for existing Spree stores. This was tricky (due to the aforementioned fragmented community), but it was ultimately successful. A huge portion of the existing community moved from Spree to Solidus.
Funding is also part of sustainability. Spree had corporate backing, but we had seen how easily that can disappear. Instead, we chose to fund the platform through OpenCollective. Businesses that benefit from Solidus voluntarily contribute financially to the project and through our governance structure we ensure that the funds are used to support the project. This allows us to hire maintainers, fund development, and pay for conferences.
It was amazing to see how much of the community moved from Spree to Solidus. Forks can cause huge rifts, but it was clear in the beginning that Solidus was the place to be. While a new team did take over the Spree project, it languished for months while Solidus was being actively developed.
Even stores that didn’t have the immediate capacity to make the jump to Solidus kept up with the project. They did prep work to make their eventual transitions easier and migrated once they were ready.
Our policy of making upgrades as smooth as possible paid off. The majority of stores we work with are either running the latest version of Solidus or are only a minor version behind. When we take on existing stores as clients, they are often running very recent version. Gone are the days of stores maintaining their own forks Spree and applying security patches manually.
Our strategy for making upgrades easy (deprecation warnings and configurable classes) has not just helped the community move forward together, but has added a myriad of new extension points to the platform. Solidus has always been the most customizable ecommerce platform out there, but this strategy continues to make it more and more flexible as time goes on.
We’ve also invested in new ways to extend the platform. The Solidus Starter Frontend completely changed how new stores are built on the platform, paving the way for a renaissance for the Solidus frontend. The previous architecture made it difficult for us to ship new frontend features without impacting existing stores. The Starter Frontend allowed us to completely modernize the default storefront without breaking a single existing store.
Alongside the Starter Frontend, we also launched the beta version of our new admin interface. It replaces the legacy admin with a friendlier, more user-friendly experience that’s vastly more extensible. Tons of stores benefit from being able to add their own customizations and workflows to Solidus’s admin. The new system makes that easier that ever by leveraging reusable components and modern JavaScript tooling.
Wrapping up the work on the new admin is our main focus, but there’s plenty of other work going on. We’ve seen some improvements to how we handle VAT, performance improvements, and there’s a work-in-progress effort to isolate Solidus’s core order logic from the database, opening up all kinds of new possibilities, especially for subscription businesses.
Solidus is and remains the most customizable ecommerce platform out there. Whether you’re building a DTC store, a B2B platform, or a marketplace, Solidus provides the flexibility and building blocks to rapidly achieve your goals. It has been a pleasure working on and with Solidus over the past 10 years. I can’t wait to see what the next 10 years hold for the platform.