When Your Legacy Comes Home: Frappe's Gift to Plone
Armin Stross-Radschinski - November 2025
Sometimes the best gifts arrive without warning, carrying stories you didn't know were being written.
The Mystery Donation
During this year's Plone Foundation annual meeting, Martin Peeters mentioned something unusual: Frappe, a company most of us had never heard of, had donated $1,000 to the Plone Foundation. No context. No explanation. Just... gratitude, seemingly out of nowhere.
For most organizations, this might have been filed away as "nice surprise, moving on." But I couldn't let it go. Where did this come from? Why Plone? Who is Frappe?
Following the Thread
Through my involvement with the German ERPNext community, I knew Frappe as a pure open source application-building framework written in Python. Created by Rushabh Mehta and his team, Frappe powers ERPNext, their flagship ERP application. Think of it like Plone built on Zope — a specialized application running on a powerful framework beneath it.
But the connection went deeper than I imagined.
I found an related blog post from Frappe titled "Giving Back to Our Dependencies." [1] In it, their CTO Ankush explained their first significant act of giving back after finally achieving profitability. They set aside $15,000 to donate to the open source projects that made their success possible.
And there, in their list of recipients, was the reason for their donation to Plone:
"Plone - Project that built Zope which powered the first version of Framework and RestrictedPython that still powers server scripts."
Twenty years of impact, returning as gratitude.
The Philosophy Behind the Gift
What struck me most wasn't just the donation — it was the thoughtfulness behind it. Frappe didn't algorithmically spray money across their dependency tree. They set up an internal nomination system, prioritizing important dependencies and non-commercial projects that needed support most.
This wasn't corporate philanthropy. This was a love letter to the open source ecosystem.
Rushabh Mehta has been thinking about open source sustainability for years. Back in 2017, he wrote about the tension between commercial success and open source purity [2], reflecting on different community models from Wordpress to Krita. He observed how society runs on commerce, not love, yet pure open source "asks its community to value love over money, but it does not show you a way to sustain your livelihood."
Eight years later, Frappe found their answer: succeed with 100% open source, then give back to those who made it possible.
The Zope Connection: A Legacy That Won't Quit
For those outside our community, here's why this matters:
Zope wasn't just another framework. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Zope was pioneering concepts that would become standard in web development. It was built in Python when Python itself was still finding its footing. Guido van Rossum, Python's creator, worked within our Zope community. In very real ways, Zope helped save and shape Python into what it became.
Plone, built on Zope in 2001, took these innovations further — creating one of the first truly powerful, enterprise-ready content management systems in the open source world.
Fast forward to 2025: Frappe still uses RestrictedPython, a Zope component, in their production systems. Their first framework version ran on Zope itself. The foundation we built over two decades ago is still enabling new businesses, new innovations, new communities to thrive.
This is what good open source does. It doesn't just solve today's problems—it becomes infrastructure for tomorrow's solutions.
What This Means for Plone
This donation isn't significant because of the dollar amount. It's significant because of what it represents:
Proof of impact. When you invest years into building solid, principled open source software, you create value that echoes across decades. Somewhere right now, someone is building something amazing on technology you helped create.
Validation of our approach. Plone and Zope chose the hard road—deeply thoughtful architecture, strong principles, genuine open source commitment. We didn't chase trends. We built foundations. And foundations last.
A reminder of interconnection. The Python ecosystem you use today was shaped by Zope. The AI models revolutionizing technology run on Python. The web frameworks powering modern businesses learned from our innovations. We're all connected in ways we rarely stop to acknowledge.
The strength of community. Frappe didn't just use our code—they honored the people behind it. They understood that open source isn't free as in "costs nothing," it's free as in "freedom," maintained by humans who deserve recognition and support.
A Thank You, and a Challenge
To Frappe, Rushabh, and the entire Frappe team: Thank you. Not just for the donation, but for embodying the spirit of open source reciprocity. You've shown that commercial success and open source principles aren't opposites — they can fuel each other. Your commitment to 100% open source in an era of open-core compromises is inspiring. You've proven that giving back isn't just good karma — it's good business.
To our Plone community: This is why what we do matters. We're not just maintaining a CMS. We're part of a lineage of innovation that stretches from Zope's early days through Python's growth to modern frameworks like Frappe and beyond. Every contribution you make, every bug you fix, every feature you build — it ripples outward in ways you may never see.
To businesses evaluating Plone: This story is your assurance. When you choose Plone, you're not just choosing software — you're choosing a community with a 20+ year track record of stability, innovation, and impact. You're choosing technology built on principles that last. You're investing in foundations that will support not just your needs today, but the innovations you haven't imagined yet.
To the broader open source world: We need more Frappes. We need more organizations that, when they succeed, look back at the shoulders they stood on and say thank you — not just with words, but with support. Open source sustainability isn't solved by any single business model. It's solved by ecosystem thinking, by recognizing that we all depend on each other.
The Circle Continues
Frappe's donation comes full circle, but the story doesn't end here. Somewhere, someone is building on Plone right now. In five years, ten years, twenty years, maybe they'll be the ones giving back, telling the story of how Plone made their success possible.
This is the long game of open source. Plant trees whose shade you may never sit in. Build foundations others will build empires upon. Give freely, and trust that the gift will circle back — maybe not to you, but to someone who needs it just as much.
Thank you, Frappe, for reminding us why we do this work.
And thank you to every person who has ever committed code to Zope, to Plone, to RestrictedPython, to Python itself — your legacy is alive and working in ways you might never know.
About the Plone Foundation: The Plone Foundation is a 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to supporting the Plone community and ecosystem. If Frappe's story inspires you, consider supporting the projects that support you. Every contribution, whether code, documentation, community support, or financial backing, strengthens the foundations we all build upon.
Links
[1] Giving Back to Our Dependencies | Frappe Blog
url:: https://frappe.io/blog/engineering/giving-back-to-our-dependencies
archived:: https://web.archive.org/web/20250814110423/https://frappe.io/blog/engineering/giving-back-to-our-dependencies
zotero Plone (web link): Giving Back to Our Dependencies | Frappe Blog
[2] Thoughts on Open Source Communities | by Rushabh Mehta | Frappé Blog 2017
url:: https://frappe.io/blog/open-source/thoughts-on-open-source-communities
zotero Plone (web link): Thoughts on Open Source Communities | by Rushabh Mehta | Frappé Blog 2017