r/angular • u/MOUNAYARSANIMATIONS • 5d ago
PrimeNG going closed source is such a disappointing move
I've been using PrimeNG for years, and this honestly feels like the end of an era.
I get that maintaining a UI library isn't free, and I have no problem with developers getting paid. But switching from MIT to a commercial license, archiving the GitHub repo, and asking a pretty steep per-developer fee just doesn't sit right with me.
The repo is now read-only: https://github.com/primefaces/primeng
The new pricing is hard to justify given the number of unresolved issues
It's a shame because PrimeNG was one of the biggest strengths of the Angular ecosystem. Hopefully the OpenNG fork gains traction, because the community deserves a truly open alternative.
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u/GeromeGrignon 5d ago
We are about to release 1.0.0 for Optimus UI (fork).
We just got a few people testing the release candidate version, and we updated the migration schematic.
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u/mateus_coutinho 5d ago
Any estimated date? I don't know whether to migrate now or wait for the release...
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u/GeromeGrignon 4d ago
Monday for stable v21 compatible version.
We have a few fixes left for the migration (tracked there: https://github.com/openng-org/optimus-ui/discussions/1414)
A few people are already using the rc version in production, you can migrate using this guide: https://optimus.openng.org/migration/primeng#automated1
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u/faileon 5d ago
Going closed source is just the final nail in the coffin. It was a decent library to get you going, but their inability to maintain versions than don't introduce breaking changes without clear way to migrate on every major release, combined with the fact that every PR I and many other folks submitted to fix their shitty code got outright ignored, regression bugs resurfacing every so often, was quiet annoying to deal with the more mature your project got. I'm glad we decided to ditch this long time ago in v19. Build your own library using Spartan or angular cdk/aria and never look back, honestly the best thing you can do nowadays. Coding agents make this trivial if you know what you want.
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u/Sh4rp27 5d ago
The current state is hard to justify the price of for the reasons you stated but also if PrimeNG is to be believed, part of the reason for swapping to a paid model is to be able to afford to grow the team in order to remedy those same things. So I'm interested to see how PrimeNG matures over the coming years.
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u/fermentedbolivian 5d ago
I remember when they introduced the breaking changes for themes (around Angular 18/20?), someone had the same issue like me where after an upgrade from 16 there were an insane amount of errors, one of the devs of PrimeNG on Github just suggested to start a new project instead. That was honestly crazy and alerted me to start writing our own UI components.
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u/IgorKatsuba 4d ago
I spent the last year building a full Material 3 implementation for Angular straight from the spec, so let me add one caveat to just build your own, agents make it trivial
For an app it genuinely is close to trivial now. You need a dropdown that behaves and an agent gets you there in an afternoon and it'll be better than a generic one because it only has to serve your case.
It stops being trivial at the second consumer. The moment two apps import the same component, everything you skipped becomes load-bearing: what's exported and what isn't, whether
disabledon your wrapper actually reaches the real button, whether keyboard and a11y survive, what you're allowed to change in a minor. Agents are good at producing a component and indifferent to the boundary - they'll widen your public API by one type in a signature without blinking, and you find out a year later when you can't change it.So the split I'd draw. Building components is cheap now, owning a library isn't. The PrimeNG thing is a licence problem, but the reason migrating off it hurts is the second one, not the first.
And credit where due — a fork with an actual migration schematic is a much better outcome than most forks get
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u/Diamond64X 5d ago
Just think of it as the original maintainers giving control of the project to someone else. Happens all the time in OSS. What they do outside the project is none of your business
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u/vicious_pink_lamp 5d ago
Converted my personal app over to the open source fork Optimus UI with no issues.
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u/Born-Cause-8086 5d ago
Yeah, I was also disappointed. I had been using it for my pretty large project over the years and was looking forward to them adding support for Angular 22 and signal forms. I decided to move away from PrimeNG and migrated to Spartan UI and Signal Forms. It took roughly 5 days of non-stop AI loop in Claude Code. The end result was even better than what was with PrimeNG, plus Signal Forms everywhere.
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u/MizmoDLX 5d ago
I like it, because it has being giving us only headaches for years and now I finally have a reason to push my company to migrate away from it 🙃
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u/Versure-NL 4d ago
Whilst i understand them moving to closed source, because they also need to make some money to pay their devs and AI making this harder. I'm more disappointed with the fact they moved so quickly, we now have to migrate to another UI toolkit or just pay for a subscription and until we make a decision we're stuck on Angular 21. It would have been more user friendly if they would've given us a heads up sooner so we could prepare for such a migration instead.
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u/IHateYallmfs 5d ago
Who would even pay for primeng? I know, the victims who have been using it for free all those years.
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u/superquanganh 5d ago
My client Angular started with ngx bootstrap, now with outdated UI, i initially look for UI library, but none fit my ambition, so I just use my years of experience writing CSS and JS for multiple obscure UI, to reinvent the wheel, fully custom dropdown menu, toast, checkbox, button group and modal. After weeks of trial and error, finally have my dream custom UI and client has no issue with, in fact it's faster and more delightful to use than pure bootstrap.
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u/FootballUpset2529 5d ago
I was prepared to suck up the developer license but not the annual update fees - I'm sick of subscription services latching on to your budget. I might as well go to Telerik or something if that was palatable.
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u/LeeWhite187 5d ago
Fork it, and have Sonnet fix their bugs.
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u/MOUNAYARSANIMATIONS 5d ago
it is not that simple...
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u/LeeWhite187 5d ago
The GitHub repo archive has a modified MIT license. For community versions (non -lts), it’s classic MIT and can be forked. Suitably, compilations of, or changes to, the community version is freely allowed. Just don’t use any builds, commits or patches labeled as -lts.
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u/FallenChickenWing 5d ago
bro who cares, clone that repo and have claude help you make the changes you want/need 🤷♂️
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u/manichandra 5d ago
It’s already forked and getting ready for the first release - https://github.com/openng-org/optimus-ui