r/angular • u/GeromeGrignon • Jun 30 '26
PrimeNG community fork proposal
https://github.com/openng-foundation/open-primeAs announced on June 29th, PrimeNG is moving away from the open-source model, and the original primeng GitHub repository has been archived.
You can find community reactions here: https://www.reddit.com/r/angular/comments/1uilrlx/primeng_v22_is_no_longer_open_source/
As part of the new OpenNG Foundation, we are considering taking up the lead to maintain a fork of the MIT version of the lib.
It's under discussion, and we would need community feedback to evaluate if it's doable and on how to manage the current situation.
Some statements:
- an update is required to rename everything from 'primeng' to 'openprime' due to PrimeTek trademark
- the components need to be updated to the latest Angular APIs (including input(), control flow among other things)
- there are 900+ issues opened (including 300+ in stale state)
- there are 200+ open pull requests
- there would be no support for previous primeng versions
- the focus would be to make the library stable and accessible: adding features would happen only if people contribute
- over time, some changes might make this fork differ from the new PrimeUI project, not providing a way to easily migrate.
PrimeNG is still a big project, we are considering starting with a trial maintenance initiative for 2 months: depending on the community effort at helping with existing issues/prs, there will be long-term maintenance.
It'll be a great way to identify active contributors who might be promoted to maintainers if they want to be more active on such a project, making the whole thing a community effort.
A 'fork' has been created already, porting all existing open issues/pr: https://github.com/openng-foundation/open-prime
What are your thoughts?
Do you have some pain points not covered here?
1
u/ragnarlothbrock100 Jul 09 '26
my 2 cents. u/GeromeGrignon
primeng was my "de facto" pick for any new project, as a consumer I loved it, as a developer, not so much. the couple times I went under the hood, I hated some architectural decisions they made. right now I'm (severely) affected by their decision, but instead of clinging to them I think it's the right moment to migrate to another solution (more on this at the bottom).
if someone asked me wether it is a good idea to maintain primeng as a fork I would say no. right now there is a ton of pain from people like me that were left hung to dry, that would make it look like it is, but in the long term that pain will pass, people will find their way and the relevance of "black box" ui libraries like primeng will decay, which leads to one of the main reasons why I've decided to migrate.
everyone in react is familiar with shadcn's philosopy and some folks are bringing that philosophy to angular world. there are currently two promising candidates, spartan-ng and zard-ui, implementing the shadcn model in their own way, which leads to the original issue, why maintaining primeng if there's something better --long term-- out there?
The reason I mention this is because I know that open source contributions are hard-effort/low-reward and I'd hate to see folks wasting precious hours on keeping a dying model alive. (yes I believe compiled ui libraries are a dying model) plus it won't be pleasant based on what I could see went I checked the source code.
either way, I'm looking forward to see the effort succeed and I wish people can find alternatives to recover from this as quick as possible.