Behind the Scenes: My First Weeks with ReactVision
Sharing my thoughts on running ReactVision, an open-source project for building AR apps with React Native, two weeks in.
Last week, Morrow announced that it had acquired ReactVision, a collection of open-source tools dedicated to making AR development easier and more accessible to React Native developers. We actually officially took over ReactVision the week before we announced anything, and before that, Morrow had already been involved with the project in various ways.
How We Got Here
First, let’s rewind to how we got here. Towards the end of last year, many users of the ViroReact library began to worry that the project was dying and would soon be unsupported. At the start of this year, I started receiving emails from concerned users—even though we weren’t the owners at the time, our previous involvement meant people naturally reached out, wondering if we could do something about it.
As it turns out, we were already working on a solution. In early January, Eduardo and I made a plan for Morrow to take over ReactVision and pay him to maintain it full-time. While it took a few weeks to finalise everything, Eduardo didn’t waste any time. He dove in and began addressing issues head-on, which quickly renewed interest in the project. You only have to look at the rising NPM installs to see the community’s engagement reawakening even before our first major update.
So, two weeks in, how’s it going?
The Current Landscape
Overall, things are looking up. There’s a real buzz in the community and an undeniable sense of optimism that has energised me about the future of ReactVision. The support and enthusiasm from the wider community have been incredible fuel for our ongoing efforts.
That said, we’re still finding our feet. For instance, you might have noticed that our GitHub release versioning and NPM versioning are currently out of sync. We’ve been so focused on shipping out updates that some of our standard processes have slipped a bit. Rest assured, we’re on it and expect everything to be in line by our next update, which should roll out within the next week.
The Realities of Open Source
Running an open-source project isn’t always glamorous—it can be a thankless task. I already knew this from our other OSS projects at Morrow, and ReactVision, being our largest undertaking so far, is no exception, and expectations can sometimes run sky-high. While we prioritise fixing the most widely reported issues, every now and then, a unique, niche problem pops up that might not affect most users. We will always try and fix every issue, but when you’re operating with a small team, you need to prioritise the bigger issues and feature requests, which can leave some users frustrated. I get it—I’ve been that frustrated developer in the past.
The truth is, Morrow’s resources are limited, and while we’re moving as fast as we can, it can be disheartening when the urgency isn’t fully understood by everyone. The challenge for me is accepting that while we might not fix every niche issue overnight, we remain committed to tackling the big problems, rolling out new features, and improving the overall project steadily.
Looking Ahead
When it comes to development resources, we’re investing more than ever into ReactVision. Still, I know that this effort alone won’t fully realise our vision. I know we need to be able to generate revenue from this project to enable us to put more resources into it. In the short term, our plan for revenue generation is to offer paid support, helping teams integrate and build with ReactVision more smoothly. Down the line, I’d love to explore building a paid version or offering premium tools on top of ReactVision, though whether this happens under Morrow or through a new entity within the OddVentures family is still up in the air.
In Conclusion
Things are definitely moving in the right direction, and I’m personally really enjoying the challenge. There’s still a long way to go, but I’m excited about the space we’re in and the role we’re playing in it. I can’t wait to see where we take ReactVision next.
Stay tuned for more updates, and thanks for being a part of this journey!
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