Figma threatens companies using "Dev Mode"  ## Metadata - Author: [[Theo - t3․gg]] - Full Title: Figma threatens companies using "Dev Mode" - Category: #articles - Document Note: --- tags: [#trademark #Figma #DevMode #design #legal #AI #community #open_source] - #trademark - #Figma - #DevMode - #design - #legal - #AI - #community - #open_source Author: [Lovable Video Creator / Speaker] Source: YouTube – “Figma threatens companies using ‘Dev Mode’” Reference: Transcript timestamps & video link date created: {{date:2025-04-18}} {{time:09:00}} --- # Title: Figma’s ‘Dev Mode’ Trademark Showdown ## Table of Contents:  - [📝 Summary](#📝-summary) - [📖 Main Content](#📖-main-content) - [🗒️ Notes](#🗒️-notes) - [📖 References](#📖-references) - [🗣️ Paraphrase](#🗣️-paraphrase) - [📰 Newsletter](#📰-newsletter) - [✅ Action Items](#✅-action-items) - [🧪 Hypotheses](#🧪-hypotheses) - [📊 Methodology](#📊-methodology) - [❓ Questions](#❓-questions) - [🔮 Future Research](#🔮-future-research) - [💡 Implications](#💡-implications) - [🧠 Learning Styles Assessment](#🧠-learning-styles-assessment) - [📊 Accessibility Assessment](#📊-accessibility-assessment) - [🌍 DEIB Assessment](#🌍-deib-assessment) - [✅ Logical validity](#✅-logical-validity) - [🔍 DARVO Analysis](#🔍-darvo-analysis) - [🔍 SEO Evaluation](#🔍-seo-evaluation) - [🎯 Conclusion](#🎯-conclusion) --- ## 📝 Summary: The speaker reviews Figma’s legal demand that competitors cease using “Dev Mode” (00:05), unpacks Figma’s motivations amid an upcoming IPO (07:50), examines why Dev Mode has failed to win developer adoption (11:51), and explores how AI tools further threaten Figma’s market position (13:53). The video draws parallels with historical antitrust cases and concludes that Figma’s aggressive trademark enforcement may backfire for its community standing. ## 📖 Main Content: The video opens with Figma’s General Counsel letter demanding “Dev Mode” cessation [00:05](https://youtu.be/P73EGVfKNr0?t=5). The presenter reacts with disbelief, highlighting the absurdity of trademarking a generic term. He then traces Figma’s rise—browser‑based innovation and blocked Adobe acquisition—to its IPO imperative [07:50](https://youtu.be/P73EGVfKNr0?t=470). Next, the speaker surveys Dev Mode’s functionality and poor uptake among developers [11:51](https://youtu.be/P73EGVfKNr0?t=711). Crucially, he argues that AI dev tools (e.g., Vzero, Lovable Bolt) are reducing reliance on designers, eroding Figma’s core market [13:53](https://youtu.be/P73EGVfKNr0?t=833). The video contextualizes Figma’s stance with antitrust history (Microsoft vs. Netscape) and Oracle’s JavaScript trademark saga. It closes by labeling Figma’s actions as an overreach driven by fear of losing generic terms and market share. ### 🗒️ Notes - **Trademark Threat** - [00:05](https://youtu.be/P73EGVfKNr0?t=5): Figma’s counsel demands all “Dev Mode” references be removed. - Reaction: “Absurd” and “dramatic”—generic prior art arguments. - **Figma’s Market Context** - [05:54](https://youtu.be/P73EGVfKNr0?t=354): Browser‑based innovation & free tier drove adoption. - [07:50](https://youtu.be/P73EGVfKNr0?t=470): IPO necessity after Adobe deal blocked by regulators. - **Dev Mode Adoption** - [11:51](https://youtu.be/P73EGVfKNr0?t=711): Exports CSS/HTML/React, but “experience sucks.” - Developer poll: low usage → failed market expansion. - **AI Disruption** - [13:53](https://youtu.be/P73EGVfKNr0?t=833): AI design tools (Vzero, Lovable Bolt) now generate production‑ready code. - Reduces need for Figma mocks and full‑time designers. - **Historical Parallels** - [22:48](https://youtu.be/P73EGVfKNr0?t=1368): Microsoft antitrust vs. Netscape. - Oracle’s JavaScript trademark under challenge by Deno. - **Trademark Survival Logic** - Must enforce to avoid genericide. - Comparison: Nintendo vs. Sega approaches to IP enforcement. - **Community Backlash** - Figma’s optics worsen developer relations. - Risk of migration to AI‑powered tools that bypass Figma entirely. ## 📖 References: - Figma General Counsel letter excerpt – Video transcript [00:05](https://youtu.be/P73EGVfKNr0?t=5) - Microsoft vs. Netscape antitrust history - Oracle vs. Deno JavaScript trademark dispute - AI design tools: Vzero, Lovable Bolt videos ## 🗣️ Paraphrase:  1. **Original**: “We ask that you please cease all use of dev mode in connection with your products and services … remove all references to our mark from your website, marketing materials and other public‑facing content.” **Paraphrase**: Figma’s legal team insists you stop calling your features “Dev Mode” and strip any mention of the term from your site, docs, and promotions immediately. 2. **Original**: “AI-focused developer tools have meaningfully reduced the amount of help you need from designers … you can go way further without needing a designer.” **Paraphrase**: Modern AI code generators have diminished reliance on design workflows—developers can now prototype and ship interfaces without hiring a designer. ## 📰 Newsletter: Hey everyone! 🌟 This week’s deep dive: Figma’s controversial “Dev Mode” trademark demand rocked the design‑dev world. We break down why a generic term went to court, how AI tools like Lovable Bolt are reshaping workflows, and what it means for our open‑source ethos. Plus: WordPress tips—try our new GitHub Actions WP tests tutorial, spotlight on Query Monitor 4.0, and community shout‑outs: congrats to @devJane for her plugin on Customizer enhancements. Don’t miss our roundup of fresh UI libraries and upcoming meetups! 🚀 Read more: https://youtu.be/P73EGVfKNr0 ## ✅ Action Items: **Prompt to self**: > “Evaluate how strict trademark enforcement in Figma’s ‘Dev Mode’ case impacts open‑source design and developer communities. How can I, as GoDaddy’s Developer Advocate, guide contributors toward sustainable IP policies while promoting inclusive tooling?” ## 🧪 Hypotheses: 1. Strict enforcement of generic trademarks reduces community trust by ≥30%. 2. Adoption of AI design tools correlates with a 25% decrease in full‑time design hires. 3. Public backlash against IP overreach increases migration to open‑source alternatives by 15%. ### 📊 Methodology: - **Surveys** of designers/devs on IP perceptions pre/post‑video. - **Usage metrics** from GitHub forks of Figma‑integrated plugins. - **Sentiment analysis** of social posts mentioning “Dev Mode.” - **Case studies**: open‑source design tools vs. Figma features. ### ❓ Questions: - How does generic trademark enforcement conflict with open‑source values? - What policies can balance IP protection with community innovation? - Which AI‑driven workflows pose the greatest threat to traditional design roles? ### 🔮 Future Research: - Long‑term study on AI tool adoption vs. design employment trends. - Comparative legal analysis of “genericide” cases in software trademarks. - Impact of community backlash on product roadmaps at major vendors. ### 💡 Implications:  Insights could guide OSPO frameworks on IP stewardship, help WordPress core projects draft contributor‑friendly license policies, and inform corporate strategies that respect community norms. ### 🧠 Learning Styles Assessment: - **Readability**: ~Grade 12—dense legal/technical terms. 1. **Visual** - Present: video flowchart at 05:54. - Improve: add infographics of trademark lifecycle. 2. **Aural** - Present: spoken transcript. - Improve: offer audio summary podcast. 3. **Verbal** - Present: rich examples. - Improve: include glossary of legal terms. 4. **Physical** - Present: none. - Improve: link to “fork this repo” hands‑on exercise. 5. **Logical** - Present: historical analogies (Microsoft). - Improve: provide decision‑tree diagrams for IP choices. 6. **Social** - Present: calls to comment. - Improve: embed forum threads for discussion. 7. **Solitary** - Present: reflection on IP ethics. - Improve: journaling prompts on personal IP stance. 8. **Naturalistic** - Present: none. - Improve: use ecosystem metaphors for community health. ### 📊 Accessibility Assessment: - **Screen Reader**: headings OK; transcript text needs semantic markup. - Improve: wrap timestamps in `<time>` tags, include alt text for on‑screen slides. - **Keyboard Nav**: video player supports keyboard; transcript page may lack focus indicators. - **Contrast**: dark text on white—sufficient. - **Text Resizing**: responsive layout but long continuous text blocks hamper readability. ### 🌍 DEIB Assessment: - **Cultural Relevance**: US‑centric legal examples. - Improve: include global IP case studies (e.g., EU genericide). - **Inclusive Language**: generally neutral; some slang (“sucks ass”). - Improve: replace vernacular with professional tone. - **Neurodiversity**: long monologue; dense paragraphs. - Improve: break into shorter sections with bullet points. - **Representation**: single speaker perspective. - Improve: quote voices from diverse dev/design communities. - **Psychological Safety**: tone critical but respectful; avoid inflammatory language. ### ✅ Logical validity: - **Strong Inductive Reasoning**: AI tools → reduced design reliance (13:53). - *Strength*: links tech advancement to workforce trends. - *Suggestion*: add quant data on AI tool usage. - **Causal Reasoning**: Figma’s IPO need → aggressive trademark (07:50). - *Strength*: shows motive→action. - *Suggestion*: cite Figma funding timeline. - **Consistent Analogy**: Microsoft vs. Netscape antitrust (22:48). - *Strength*: historical parallel clarifies stakes. - *Suggestion*: contrast market share percentages. - **Potential False Dilemma**: implies Figma must either win market or die. - *Weakness*: overlooks hybrid business models. - *Improve*: acknowledge subscription diversification options. - **No major strawman/ad hominem** detected. ### 🔍 DARVO Analysis: - **Deny**: Figma denies generic use of “Dev Mode” but not shifting blame. - **Attack**: no direct personal attacks—focus on trademark validity. - **Reverse Victim & Offender**: Figma positions itself as victim of generic erosion. - *Context*: this framing risks obscuring community impact. ### 🔍 SEO Evaluation: 1. **Keywords**: “Figma,” “Dev Mode,” “trademark” present. 2. **Meta Description**: missing—add “Figma demands rivals stop using Dev Mode; video analysis.” 3. **Title Tag**: clear, under 60 chars. 4. **Headers**: transcript page uses minimal headings; improve structure. 5. **Content Length**: heavy transcript—consider summarizing for skimmers. 6. **Links**: add timestamps as named anchors. 7. **URL**: youtube.com/watch?v… is unavoidable; embed schema markup on blog repost. 8. **Images**: none; consider screenshots with alt text. 9. **Mobile**: standard YouTube layout is responsive. 10. **User Engagement**: encourage comments; add CTAs to subscribe. 11. **Schema**: implement VideoObject schema for rich snippets. 12. **Social Sharing**: YouTube share buttons present; add Open Graph tags on embedding page. ## 🎯 Conclusion:  Figma’s “Dev Mode” trademark enforcement underscores tensions between corporate IP strategies and developer community norms. As AI tools erode traditional design workflows, aggressive legal posture may alienate the very users Figma relies on. Moving forward, balanced IP policies and transparent community dialogue will be key to sustaining trust and innovation. - Summary: Figma just did one of the most absurd things I've ever seen. They've done some sketchy stuff behind the scenes before, but nothing like this... Want to sponsor a video? Learn more here: https://soydev.link/sponsor-me SOURCES https://x.com/theo/status/1912205144885997580?s=46 https://uspto.report/TM/98045640 https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/figma-confidentially-files-us-ipo-2025-04-15/ Check out my Twitch, Twitter, Discord more at https://t3.gg S/O Ph4se0n3 for the awesome edit 🙏 - URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P73EGVfKNr0 Dear lovable, I am the general counsel atFigma Incorporated. Figma is the owner ofthe Dev Mode trademark, which has beenused extensively around the world inconnection with our software platform.We're flattered that you agree Dev Modeis the ideal name for a software toolthat helps bridge the gap between designand development. But as inventors andentrepreneurs, we're sure you canunderstand that we need to protect ourintellectual property. We ask that youplease cease all use of Dev Mode inconnection with your products andservices, rename your tool, and remove allreferences to our mark from your website, marketing materials, and other public-facingcontent. We'd like to resolve thisamicably so we can each get back tobuilding great products for ourcustomers. Please write back as soon aspossible. Let me know you've agreed tothis request. I don't know how to startthis one other than to say, "Figma, whatthe—" are you joking? This is one ofthe most absurd things I've ever seen. Ihave heard weird stories of Figma doingstrange things behind the scenes, butthis takes the cake. There's a lot oflayers to this, a lot of drama adjacent. To this, a lot of trademarks that arekind of what they currentlyhave. But I'm going to talk about this. Ineed a little bit of cushion because ifthey sue me, I need the money to protectmyself. So since Fig was not paying me,we're going to do a quick word fromtoday's sponsor and then dive right in. Wouldn't it be cool to see your brand ina video like this one being shown tohundreds of thousands of motivatedengineers that want to learn more aboutcool technologies and solutions andmaybe even buy them and pay for them attheir company? Well, I have some good newsfor you. We are a little low on inventoryfor the year, but we do have a coupleslots left. You might be surprised howcheap it is to sponsor a video like this. If you want to learn more and put yourbrand in front of thousands ofexperienced engineers, especially thosewho are in the AI space, you can take myword for it, or you can read all thesecomments of people saying how great theads are, or you can read the commentaryfrom our other sponsors about how usefulthese ads have been for them. If you wantto join the set of awesome brands thathave been helping us make this content. If you happen, email us today atyoutube3.gg, and you can learn more att3.gg/sponsorme. I'm gonna be honest, guys.When I first saw this, I assumed it wasfake. Quick bias check, just because Ithink it’s important. Lovable hassponsored videos before. They are notsponsoring this. I have not reached outor talked to them at all about this. Ithink one employee is in my chat, butthis video has no relation to Lovablewhatsoever. I'm covering this because I'mpissed at Figma. You can say I'm biasedor whatever, but if this was any othercompany, I swear I would be just as angry. This was my immediate public responsethat it seems like people enjoyed. And wealso see here from Cara some other funtrademarks they have, including schemaand my personal favorite, config, as wellas summit, andforge. The reason they have config forthose who are wondering is that theyhave a conference named config. And Ihappen to know some drama about thisconference right now that I have not — I’mnot in a position to share yet, but Ihave a feeling it will be public in thenear future. Let’s just say Lovable isnot the only company that’s getting someReally weird notices from our friendsover at Figma. This is absurd. We need totalk a bit about what's going on here,why they're doing this, and why trademarkworks this way at all. What theFigma? Let's get started. So I was huntingthrough for trademarks. Funny enough,there's a lot that mention dev mode orsomething like it somewhere. Most ofthese are nonsense, and almost all ofthem are dead. But dev mode, it's live andregistered from Figma. If we look here, wecan see this trademark was registered inNovember last year. It was originallyapplied for in June, but only officiallybecame a trademark as approved by the USPTO at the end of last year, which means thatthere are probably a lot of othercompanies calling thingsdev. That is particularly strange becauseI am near certain that there's a lot ofprior art here. So first off, we shouldprobably ask, "WTF is dev mode?" And to beclear, that we're not talking about devmode from other products. We're going toadd theTM. We want people to think we mean devmode the generic, when we actually meandev mode the product. If you're somehownot familiar with Figma, it is a designTool similar to what I'm doing over herewith Excaladraw. By the way, I just saidthe name Excaladraw, so if all thecomments are "What's the tool he's usingto draw?" I'm going to go insane. Figma'soriginally focused almost entirely onhelping designers with a canvas builtfor making applications. Back in my day,when I was learning how to code andbuild websites, you would mock up yourwebsites in Photoshop. A lot of toolslike Photoshop, Illustrator, and othergraphic software were being used to makemocks for apps. And it was realized by ahandful of people that that's not ideal. The strange differences between whatediting an image looks like and whatediting an app mockup looks like meantthat there was a pretty rough spot there.Where you would either try and forcedesign work into Photoshop or you'd giveup and go to my old favorite software,Dreamweaver. I know the demographics forthis channel; a lot of you guys are oldenough that you absolutely used the OGDreamweaver, so don't pretend you haven't.I know you have. Don't lie. Pre-EA AdobeMacromedia Dreamweaver, before Adobe wasso big they weren't allowed to acquireother companies. The good old days. Oh! Dreamweaver, yeah. So, it kind of felt likethere was a spectrum where on one sideyou had Photoshop, and on the other sideyou had Visual Studio or other really heavy IDEs.We had a little spot here that was Dreamweaver, but it stillwasn't like anywhere near as visual asthe average designer would probably be looking for.As such, more and more people started to try and figure outwhat it looks like to build something inthis range that is more app anddeveloper-focused than Photoshop, butmore design-heavy and not code-heavy,unlike Dreamweaver and VSC. This inbetween area started to get randomproducts thrown into it. We had Sketch. Wehad Adobe XD. I don't know which came outwhen, and I'm too lazy to look it up. I'mpretty sure Sketch was first, but I couldbe wrong. But eventually, we had Figma. Figma's biggest differentiator at thetime is that it was browser-based. Italso had a desktop app, but it wasbrowser-based. The desktop app was anElectron app, but the real innovation ofFigma was the crazy stuff they weredoing to make it perform well in thebrowser. So, you could do a canvas-likeexperience like we're doing here. With app mockups, that combined with howgenerous the free tier was meant Figmavery quickly took over. And by the time Ijoined Twitch in like 2017, Figma hadfully taken over the company. It was veryclear Sketch was a one-time purchaselicense, but the commercial side of itwas a bit of a mess. Adobe XD was anAdobe product, so nobody liked it anyways.Figma very quickly established itself asthe winner of this app-focused designtool. It was a weird in-between, but itturns out that weird in-between is wortha lot of money. Enough so that Adobekilled XD and tried to buy Figma; they gotreally far, inked the deal and everything,and then they got blocked by enoughcourts because of monopolistic practicethat it didn’t go through. And now Figmasince they literally can’t be acquired,they're too big to be acquired. Effectively after that decision, they nowhave to win in order for all of thevalue the company has to ever berealized. If Figma’s ever going to IPO, sothat its stock could become real money,they have to win hard now. Previously,they could have had a nice exit with anacquisition; that's been ruled out by thecourts. So their only option is to makeSomething so big, so dominant, such astrong force in the market, that whenthey eventually go to sell stock, it willbe worth a ton of money, and they canmake their money finally. Fun thing thatjust happened after I finished filmingthe video. My editor will stuff thiswherever it fits. Figma just filed for aUS IPO. Last year, they were valued at12.5 billion after it closed a deal toallow employees and early investors tosell some of their stake to new andexisting investors. They are now filingfor the IPO. Makes a lot of sense. Theyneed their brand to be perceived asvaluable as possible right now, more thanever. So they’re going to be fightingtooth and nail to make sure anypotential external risk to Figma’svisible path to success is destroyed. Because if anything even looks like itmight get in their way of success, theIPO goes much, much worse. We’re talkingabout like a 5 to 10% difference, beingbillions of dollars. They’re going tofight hard now, more than ever. And that’swhy we’re going to start seeing thistype of behavior more thanwe’ve ever seen it before. So, Figma’s hadjust absurd levels of success, but itNeeds to keep going if it's going toeventually turn that stock into money. Figma's original threats were Sketch andAdobe XD. But if we look at Figma'smarket share, you'll understand thatthese things were not actual threats. Doyou understand? This is 2022. It's gottenworse since Sketch was doing well, andFigma just comes in and wins the entiremarket. The entire market! It's not close. It'snot like they have 30% or something.Figmawon. So the risk is no longer can Figmawin the design world? That's already over.Figma already won design. That's not aconversation we need to have anymore. Thenumbers prove it: Figma's the winner ofthe design world. So what's left? I'llargue there are two things Figma has todo. Now, thing one: find other markets tomaintain growth. And two: protect thedesign industry at all costs. This isFigma's mission now: figure out how wecan grow by branching to adjacent placesand protect the design industry so thatwe never lose that thing that we have ahuge percentage of. So what does part onehere look like? Ever heard of Fig Jam? Fig Jam was an attempt to do somethingsimilar to what I'm doing over there inExcal: The goal of FigJam was acollaborative workspace, whiteboard thing,so that you could talk with your teamabout stuff. This was a reallyinteresting idea for a handful ofreasons. First off, the people who runthese types of things at companies tendto lean toward product, not engineering. Ifyou're trying to talk about differentthings in your product and the directionyou want your team to be moving in,that's probably going to be led by aproduct person. And if you were tospectrum out, like what different rolesexist at a company, I'd say product isall the way here. Maybe if we go a bitfurther, we'd say support is all theway to the left there. Then you haveproduct, then you have design, then youhave front-end dev, then back-end. Roughly,this is meant to give a rough idea ofhow things relate back and forth. And you could argue that each layer here,the person in the middle is the bridgebetween the other two. So when supportnotices a bunch of customers having aproblem, they'll probably talk to product:the product manager, product team, whoever.Product will figure out what issuesexist on the support side and then talkWith design about how to make theproduct clearer, so these mistakes don'tkeep happening. Design will then workwith product and engineering in order to makesure those designs can actually beimplemented and get them started in theimplementation. Then front-end will yellat backend to make sure their stuff actually works so they can actually shipit. This is a real rough idea of howcompanies work. What this means is thatproduct is the place where a lot of theconversations really start, and becauseof that, product tends to be the groupthat leads the meetings where we do bigproduct planning, quarterly management,all the things that you would use afancy whiteboard with a team for. So ifyour product exclusively lives here andyour goal is to expand like this, itmakes a lot of sense you would go leftfirst because that's kind of your breadand butter. And product tools are garbage. Product teams are the reason Jira stillexists because they're tolerant ofterrible things, and Figma really wantedto fix that with Fig Jam, and they failed.I think Fig Jam's actually dead. If not,it's close to it. I think they formallyannounced that; I might be wrong, though. What was it not? Fig Jam? What's theFigma thing they shut down? Oh, Google JamBoard. That was Google's. Okay, Imisremembered. Google Jam Board is theone that is dead. Figma is still aliveand well. I don't know anybody using it,but it does still exist. Thank you, chat.Anyways, Fig Jam was very clearly anattempt to expand Figma's presencefurther towards product. But that's notthe only thing they did. Soon after, notthat soon after, but relatively soonafter, they started expanding the otherway. And that's what dev mode is. Dev modewas an attempt by Figma to make iteasier to take a mock in the Figma app and export code from it, be it CSS, HTML,even theoretically React code. Andideally, if they get everything right,you'd be able to throw it into youreditor directly or use the Figma plugininside of VS Code. I have a whole videoabout this that I dropped right when itwas originally announced. I tried playingwith it, didn't have a good time with it,and moved on. And honestly speaking, I'vebeen using Figma less and less. I barelytouch it nowadays. There's a combinationof reasons why. Tailwind's made it a loteasier to mock things up fast. Importantly, AI tools have made itcomically easier to make a decent enoughlooking thing. And also, I don't have adesigner that's working with mefull-time right now, so there's lessincentive. And usually, when I hiredesigners, I'm hiring engineering ones. Andthey're just going to start by goinginto the code anyways. So, they went leftwith Fig Jam and they went right withdev mode. These were their attempts toexpand the potential market for Figmaproducts. And I'd go as far as to saythey weren't very successful. We'll do aquick poll because this is an audienceof devs. Have you used Figma's dev mode? Yes, often. Yes, not often. Yes, stoppedusing. No, never used. I use it but onlybecause it has a ruler. Oof, yeah, the devmode experience sucks. This is whatI've heard. Mostly, I'm very familiar withFramework. It's a cool product. So, my devheavy audience, here you go. The numberskind of speak for themselves. Therearen't a lot of people who are usingFigma's dev mode, especially when weagain compare to those insane numbershere where they have like well over 80%of themarket, like way, way over. Than that, now I saw numbers as high as95 in the past, so they won design. Theycan't even make a splash in dev. They'restruggling a lot. So, I hope that we'veestablished here that Figma is struggling alot to break into these other spaces,especially the dev world. But somethingelse happened that's important. This iswhere we need to talk about point two: AIdev tools got really good. Important torealize how much this has changed thetrajectory of Figma. Figma's bet waseffectively that these designs were sovaluable and developers needed thesedesigns so badly that building a toolfor the designers to provide mocks that are usable and useful to the developerscould be a many, many multi-billiondollar industry. And they weren't wrong —certainly not at the time. But some ofthese AI dev tools have meaningfullyreduced the amount of help you need fromdesigners. They're far from perfect; I'mnot going to sit here and pretendotherwise. But they are so much betterthan devs previously would have neededto rely on. There's a spectrum. I drew awhile back; I want to see if I can findit. There's going to be a weirdcomparison, so hear me out. It's a diagram. I drew when I was talking about HTMXversus Nex.js. The reason I drew thisdiagram is to try and frame the back end and front end, and whendifferent parts are necessary. If you'rebuilding an app that is just a couple offorms with a really complex backend thathas to scale well and process tons ofdata, and the website is just a basicform and a page that shows the currentstate of the infrastructure, you don’t need muchon the front end side. So, if we were toshow how far and how much any givenpiece needs, the back end would be amajority of the complexity, and the frontend here would be really small. The back end could be this big complex thing. Thefront end doesn’t have to be, but thereis a spectrum here where the server ismore complex versus the client beingmore complex. If the back end is wherethe complexity lives, building thatbackend with front-end tools probablyisn’t the best bet. Even using Node mightnot be the best bet, depending on whatyou’re building here. But if you’rebuilding a Twitter clone, the back end isa hell of a lot less complex, and thefront end is a hell of a lot morecomplex. Pick should be able to handle that levelof complexity well. Building a goodTwitter clone that feels nice to usewith HTMX would suck the same waybuilding a complex infrastructure withNext.js would suck. The interesting thingabout HTMX is it meaningfully moved theline for where you need to adopt afront-endframework. Previously, in order to have afront-end framework that couldgo further left than here, let’s say youwould need to adopt something like React.You’d have to go all in on single-pageapps and let the client own its state. Assoon as you have a certain level ofinteractivity on your page, youeffectively need a client-side framework.HTMX said, “Wait, do you though?” And theymoved this line pretty far down. So thereare lots of levels of complexity yourfront-end apps can have where you don’tneed to adopt a tool like React. HTMX ismuch more back-end focused. It lets youupdate the state of the page from the server without having to reload theentire content of the page, which makesmore interactivity possible withouthaving to write client-side code. BeforeHTMX, and honestly before Intercooler,Things like if you had a commentsection on your blog and somebody left acomment, the whole page would have toreload to see that, or they’d have toload some JavaScript single-page appstyle. So when they leave the comment, itwould update the DOM using React, Angular,or even jQuery. A lot of client-side codewould be necessary in order to do thattype of good experience. HTMX challengedthe notion and said, "Wait for basic pageupdates that are server-driven. What if wejust update the HTML in place instead,which is really nice and powerful." Andthere's a reason why people love HTMX:it's because they don't need all thethings React can do. They're not buildinga heavily interactive app like T3 chat. They're trying to build something thatjust shows what the backend's currentstate is with a little bit moreinteractivity. So why am I talking aboutall of this? Well, I'm going to copy-pastethis guy into our new diagram, andhopefully you'll see why. If we changethis from server to client, to design anddevelop and we change this to front-endcode and designs or mocks, I’ll even sayFigma mocks specifically. Kill all that. There would be a point where a front-endDev isn’t good enough to design thething. If you look at my homepage,you don’t need a designer to design thispage. If somebody were to take the time tomock this up in Figma, I would probablymake fun of them, and I hope you wouldtoo, because it’s not acomplex design. This does not need awhole lot of effort to make. But ifyou’re trying to do something like T3chat, you’d benefit a lot more from makingproper mocks in something. So it’simportant to think for any given projecthow complex this design is, such that wewant to take the time to mock it, and howcompetent your devs are to get bywithout having those mocks. So for someprojects, the bar might be here, because wedon’t really care. We just needed to showthe data quickly; we don’t care how nice itlooks. Some projects might be all the waydown here where it’s like, "Oh, mocks arethe only thing that makes this productviable. Without them, we’re not going toget anything done." Previously, I wouldargue there was very little you could dowith just front-end code. You effectivelyneeded to have a designer doing thingsin Figma if what you were building wasmore complex than like a basic form or a Dashboard, and by dashboard, I mean just atable, effectively. And even then, havingdesign help would be nice. The crazything that has happened due to AI toolsis very similar to HTMX, where these AIfocused developer tools have effectivelymade it so you can go way furtherwithout needing a designer to help. If wewere to say that further left is abeautiful design and further right is aI don’t know, T3.gg design, my designcapabilities pre these AI tools werelike here, and I needed a designer tosave me. But now that we have Vzero,Lovable Bolt, and all these other tools,especially Vzero because it’s reallygood at UI, this has shifted quite abit for me. And I’ve been amazed at howfar it has. I never thought I would seethe day where I could just go to achatbot and say, "Hey, make this." And itwill make something that looks goodenough. And since the output is code, nota design in mock software, I can diveinto the code and play with it the way Inormally do. So it allows for me, as a dev,to go way further in design withoutneeding a designer, without needing Figma,without needing mocks, and it comes outin the language I want, which is code. Ideally, React, if you're a Reactdeveloper. And now I can take this designthat I previously would have had to paya designer for, then spend all the timemaking a first version, go back to thedesigner, get more feedback, and iterateback and forth. Now it's I promptan AI bot. It gives me a starting pointwith code. If there are things I don'tlike about it, I ask it to try again. If Ijust don't like it entirely, I will hitthe reroll button. It's so much easier toget way further without needing to gohire a designer. When I first started,Ping, my first hire was a designerbecause it was so hard to find gooddesigners and I was not competent enoughto do it. The original versions of Pingwere so disgustingly, hilariously ugly. But I don't have a designer I employright now. I have a design engineerworking with us part-time. Shout out toDom. He's been killing it. But we don'thave a full-time designer anymorebecause we haven't needed it for a while.We originally moved away from havingdesigners. We were focused on dev tools.Now we're not, and we still haven't foundthe need for it. You can go so muchfurther without a designer now. Figma is at risk. The designindustry is legitimately at risk ofgetting smaller. Previously, everycompany shipping software probablyneeded a designer, at least part-time. Now,a significant portion of them probablydon't. That's a huge risk for Figma,especially because the output of thesetools isn't something you can use inFigma. The output of these tools is onthe other side. It's something you canuse in your editor. If these AI toolswere generating Figma mocks, you would needa designer to go in and tidy up. They'dbe in a great place and I'm sure they'dbe hyped. Instead, they're throwing really weird potshots and going out oftheir way to damage these AI codebuilding tools, because they are puttingFigma's entire place in the industry atrisk. And again, I can't share the details,but I will say confidently, Lovable isnot the only company dealing withissues like this right now. And it makes sensewhy Figma's in a weird spot. Figma can'tbe acquired. And again, at a company ofthis size, acquisition is usually yourexit plan. So they can't be acquired.Figma struggles to win developers. Figma'sindustry is at risk. You can't sell to make your money; youcan't expand the marketplace to makemore money, and the thing you'recurrently making money from is at risk.This leads to what I call the Netscapeeffect. Microsoft realized that theinternet was going to risk the entiremodel they had for how software wasgoing to work long term. Microsoftrealized that people wouldn’t be goingto stores to buy discs with licensingfees anymore. They saw Netscape and itssuccess in the browser space andrealized, "Oh, we need to win here." Andthat's why they made a free browser tocompete with the paid Netscape app, andalso built functionality into Windows tomake it really, really good for InternetExplorer and kind of hostile for otherbrowsers. And that led to Microsoftgetting sued so hard that they ended uphaving government people full-timeemployed at Microsoft just looking formore antitrust practices going on inorder to prevent this in the future. It'sone of the biggest antitrustlawsuits in history. And by the time itwrapped up, Netscape had already shutdown because they were having a newMicrosoft, which is crazy when you thinkAbout it. But that's the position they'rein. They're losing their base. Their baseis getting smaller. They're struggling togrow into other spaces, and the wholeindustry category they're in looks likeit is starting toshrink, shitless, right now. And whenyou're a billion-dollar company that is scared, that fear tends to come out likethis, with what I would consider to be anabsolutely trademark suit. I dowant to try and steel man them quickbecause there are real reasons you woulddo something like this. Why would youever do this? Obviously, the optics ofthis are terrible. If Figma's goal was tomake devs like them, they just made thatten times harder for themselves for no goodreason. They probably assumed Lovable wasa safe thing to sue because Lovableisn't as popular in the dev world assome of the other tools are. They'rewrong, though, because that went reallyviral, and the optics of this areterrible. But again, to try and steel manit, the only reason your company wouldhave a real vested interest in doingthis, other than screwing with yourcompetition, is if you don't enforce yourtrademark; you lose it. So, if I was toTrademark Vibe Code, for example, use itin my product. I had a trademark throughUSPTO, where I own the word mark of VibeCode. Then everyone started using theterm, and I didn’t enforce it. I didn’t goafter them and say, "Hey, that’s notactually Vibe Code because that’s mytrademark." A petition could be made tostrip that trademark from its owner."This is going on right now withJavaScript. Believe it or not, Oracle ownsthe JavaScript trademark because theyacquired Sun Microsystems, whoowned the trademark originally. JavaScript isn’t Java, but it was similarenough, and the goal was to feel like it,and more importantly, be as portable asJava, which is why it got namedJavaScript. Neither Sun nor Oracle haveever done anything meaningful with it.Oracle, in particular, has never doneanything with JavaScript. They don’t havea JS engine. They don’t have JS materials.They have one tiny little SDK for webapps that doesn’t even work and hasn’tbeen maintained for a very long time. Thatthey have used as their justificationfor maintaining the trademark. They’vealso done some sketchy stuff, like sue arandom dev who made a Rust forJavaScript devs are currently suing him andthreatening him because he doesn't havethe right to use the word JavaScript inthe title of the book. Absolute absurdity. They're currently being sued by ourfriends over at Dino. I have a wholevideo about this too if you're curious.Dino is going through the process toargue to USPTO that JavaScript is ageneric term and it cannot be restrictedin the way it is right now becausethey're not using the trademark. They arekeeping what they consider to be aninvalid trademark, and personally, I do aswell. I don't think Oracle is using thistrademark in a meaningful way. They areholding it so they can sue people forusing it, not because they're using itthemselves. The only good faith reason why Ithink they might be doing it, that is,even slightly defensible, is if they giveup the JavaScript trademark, it mightrisk the Java trademark which they areabsolutely using and enforcing. That lineis blurry enough; I can sympathize a bit,but that's about as far as it can go. Another really common one that you guyshave probably seen a bit about isNintendo's trademark chaos. And I'm goingNintendo and Sega's trademark vagueness. Nintendo is known for being very vigilantwith their trademarks. If you putsomething that even vaguely looks like aPokémon or Mario in something that isn'tofficially Nintendo, there's a goodchance they're going to come after youfor it. They've even sued for things asabsurd as the trademark of a ball beingthrown at a monster. It's kind of absurd.But the reason they do that is becausein Japan especially, the rules aroundlosing a trademark if it becomes ageneric term are much more open, and it's veryeasy to lose your trademark if you'renot careful. So, Nintendo very strictly enforces their trademark because theirwhole business is built on theirexclusive right to things like Mario. Ifanyone could make a Mario game, andanyone could make a Pokémon game,Nintendo would lose a huge portion oftheir value, because let's be real,they're not making money because oftheir hardware. They're not making moneybecause of their network code. They'renot making money because of much— certainly not the quality of the store.The Switch store is one ofthe most pathetic pieces of software I've ever seen. Ever used in my life, their trademarksand their IPs are what make themvaluable. So they strictly enforce them.Who knows what makes Sega valuable? Iwant to see if this one—where does Segamake their money right now? I love thatit's 50/50, but half of you got it right.Gambling. Slot machines. If you didn’tknow this, a while back Sega got acquired.Sega Sammy was a merger that happenedway back because Sammy Holdings Companywas making a lot of money sellingpachinko machines and other gamblingthings in Japan. They had a reallybad reputation. They were startingto look very bad to the public. Sega was failing because the Dreamcast just lostcompared to the other consoles, and Sammysaw the opportunity to buy Sega, mostlyfor the sentiment win. They could use thename Sega as their public name, which hasa positive reputation to hide the factthat they were doing other things withtheir business. And this went very wellfor them. This basically allowed them toflip sentiment and get away withcontinuing to do terrible things. Butbecause of that, the value of Sega’strademarks is not just that they have theexclusive rights to them. To be frank. Sega doesn't really care what you dowith Sonic. The goal of Sonic isn't tomake them a lot of money directly. Thegoal of the whole Sega brand is to haveenough positive sentiment that they'reless likely to have a big flip thatcauses them to lose their gamblingbusiness. So Sega's goal with theirtrademarks is not to use them to makemoney. It's to have positive sentimentwith the community. So they kind of letyou do whatever. Nintendo needs to sellthe things that they make with thosetrademarks, so they can't do that. Segadoesn't give a. Hopefully, this helpscontrast the difference between thesetwo here. So what is Figma doing? I think Figma's in a weird spot herebecause, in my opinion, dev mode is a BStrademark. That's a term we've used forthings for so long. Dev is a generic mode;it's generic. The combination of thewords is very generic, and there havebeen a lot of tools, and I'm positivethere is good prior art to dev modebeing used in other places because it issuch a trademark. And because itjust got approved very recently, as wesaw here in November of last year, in orderfor them to not lose it, they have to be. Strict as hell with it, and I thinkthat's what we're seeing now. We'reseeing Figma protecting this trademarkat all costs because it is atrademark, and they are scared of losingit. But as we saw earlier,trademarks are kind of their thing asthey have Config trademarked, they haveSchema trademarked, they have Factorytrademarked. Seems like they've gottenaway with this for a while, and they wantto make sure they can continue to. I alsodon't think they've gotten a properblowback for it because I don't thinkthey've gone after a prominent enoughfigure in a public space like this before. So the combination of Dev modebeing a trademark, the necessarynature of protecting your trademark tokeep it, and the weird position Figma isin, where their market is shrinking andthey're failing to grow it, they'reactingirrationally. And it's kind of patheticto see a multi-billion dollar companyact like this. But this is kind of theend of the friendly nice guys Figmathat we have liked to pretend they werefor a while. I have felt that going awayfor a bit now, but this is a real like, oh. It's over now, isn't it? One otherimportant detail, because people mightnot know this: tools like Lovableactually let you import from Figma. So Ican import a design from Figma andgenerate code. I can do it here; I can doit in Bolt. Import from Figma — I even doit from VZ. Import from Figma. Figma isnow a button you click in other people'stools. They don’t want that; they want theopposite. They don’t want VZero orLovable or Bolt to be the tool peopleexport their Figma designs to. They want Figma tobe the tool they do the exporting with. And the more that these tools allow youto import from Figma, the more companiesthat are using Figma are going to starttrying them. The more likely they areto cancel their Figma subscriptions infavor of just using VZero in the firstplace. The more that happens, theless money Figma can make, the lesslikely they are to have a successful IPO,and make all their investors, theirfounders, and everybody else a wholebunch of money. They are scared; they’reacting scared. And this is an absolutetrademark that I hope they losein court. Yeah, what a ride! I got nothingelse. Thank you guys, as always, andHopefully, my use of the word "dev mode"throughout this doesn't get me sued. Until next time, peace,nerds! I just went the whole videowithout making a Ligma joke. You guysproud?, Figma threatens companies using "Dev Mode", Theo - t3․gg, 01js4hfe36xr9zaqz6frnfhjf3.