An important milestone in LittlevGL's life

Announcements
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Hi LittlevGL developers,

LittlevGL has reached an important milestone. The user base of the library is rapidly growing and we need to adapt to the changes.

To sustainably continue what we began, I’ll create a company to work on LittlevGL in full time. One of my friends, a graphics designer, will also join the company.

I’m sure that having a company will open new doors and we will get great partners to make LittlevGL more available for you and new users too. :rocket:

To successfully operate as a company, we will need to make a revenue. The goal is to keep LittlevGL free with MIT license and make money with:

  • paid support (fast response with consultation, bugfixes)
  • UI development service (design and develop your UI)
  • selling boards with displays. (reference boards for LittlevGL)
  • develop and sell tools and utilities

Some time is still required to make ready the agreements, create the company and finish other administrative things. The schedule looks like:

  1. Release v6.1 at the end of November.
  2. Work on v7.0 . Visually improve styles, themes, and widget in v7.0
  3. Release v7.0 (date TBD).
  4. Start paid support service.
  5. Create a new website, demos, videos, and tutorials.

Name change
We were considering to change LittlevGL’s name to a more attractive one. (LittleV is my nickname translated to English, therefore, it’s not best for marketing :slight_smile: )

Suggestions are very welcome. Bonus points if the lv abbreviation still makes sense. :wink:

9 Likes
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CONGRATS!

I sincerely hope this is wildly successful beyond your greatest dreams!

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Dear Gabor
I wish you, your company and the community of lvgl the best.
Congratulation bro :slight_smile: :+1:
By the way, In my opinion lvgl is good enough. Keep going.

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Congrats. lvgl is my proposal for name. And lv still makes sense. Wish you all the best.

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Congrats!
Name suggestions:

  • lgl
  • egl (Embedded GL), pronouced Eagle (not be be confused w/ Eagle CAD)
  • tgl (Tiny GL) “Teagle”
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Congratulations and good luck!

Keeping lvgl code open and MIT is an excellent choice!
It is the biggest differentiator between lvgl and other commercial libraries and a big plus for lvgl.
You will have a growing community, backing you and supporting you thanks to this decision.

Are you sure about changing the name now?

LittlevGL (or lvgl) is currently your brand name, and there are probably thousands of users who’ve heard (or read) that name at some place, many of them took a look at the library (and asked themselves what’s the deal with that name “LittlevGL”? Is it related to OpenGL? wait, no it’s not…)

I agree that the original choice for the library name is not the best.
But changing it now, at this point in time, when you already have 2.6K GitHub stars - has a price because you will have to build a new brand name from zero.

One more thing. An advice.

I think that you should work seriously on advertising and spreading the word about lvgl, among commercial embedded companies but also in the Makers community.
Remember that commercial companies are very much affected by the Makers community especially in the Embedded and IOT areas. For example, many of those “makers” eventually end up working for those commercial companies and affect their decisions and preferences.

When people talk on different forums in the internet about lvgl or about graphics on embedded devices in general - you should be there, and tell them about lvgl.

This is not the case today.

I’ll give you an example. Take a look at this short thread:
https://forums.adafruit.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=154403

Adafruit administrator is saying:

Re: Building a GUI, anyone used LittlevGL

by adafruit_support_mike on Wed Jul 24, 2019 1:26 pm

    I’m afraid we don’t know anything about that one, but maybe someone from the community has tried it.

No one answered him. Since July.

You should have some way of finding such discussions in the internet and participate in them.
Important leaders in the embedded Makers community must know about lvgl. Adafruit is one of them.
Maybe you could set up a meeting with them (even online, no need to fly to the US for that), and tell them about lvgl, “sell” them lvgl, so that next time whey could tell everyone what an excellent library it is. Maybe you could even find ways to collaborate with them.

Talk to Adafruit, Spakfun, Seeed Studio, Arduino and others to get to the Makers community.
Of course, you should also try to collaborate with the big companies like Microchip, NXP, TI etc. but that’s a different effort, probably much harder.

1 Like
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All the best on your venture and many thanks for the effort you have put in so far.

How about embedGL as a name.

Paul

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i hope you stick with littlevgl. maybe shorten it to lilvgl. :smiley:

Good luck to the team!

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My usual method for finding those is to search on Google for littlevgl and scan through the results that aren’t from littlevgl.com or GitHub. But I usually don’t comment on them.

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Congratulations! This is a great step, and I hope it works out well for you!

Everyone in my office asked me what it meant, and my answer was always “I have no clue.” This is a cool story, and from my perspective I think it’s a positive. It makes this whole thing feel more personal - like it’s more of a piece of you (aside from the countless hours I know you spend on it).

Just my two cents!

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Thank you very much for your encouragement and ideas so far. :slight_smile:

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That’s true. It’s a kind of partnership and getting partners in some form is definitely among the goals.

Time to time I also search littlevgl excluding littlevgl.com and GitHub, however I missed this one. How did you search for it? Or just browsed the forum directly?

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Not only commercial companies.
My emphasis above was on the Makers community.

I don’t really remember. I was searching for something and found it by chance.

My point was that Adafruit administrator (or anyone else on that community) never heard of lvgl.
To fix this, I suggest you make the initiative and not wait for them to post that they never heard of lvgl (and then find that post on google. Or not).

Instead, actively talk to Adafruit, Spakfun, Seeed Studio, Arduino and others who set the tone on the Makers community, and tell them about lvgl.
Press releases on Hackaday and the like are also a way to spread the word.

My suggestion is - don’t constrain your efforts to commercial companies.
Exposure on the Makers community would also be very beneficial for lvgl.

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Got it, thanks! :+1:

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I think lvgl is a good name. In China, there are already some big companies using lvgl, such as Alios things 3.0 of Alibaba and IDF framework of espressif. Of course, there are also some fans in the forum or social media to introduce the UI.

Take a look at one of the websites

https://whycan.cn/t_1350.html

Open source software still needs other profits to develop better.

Among them, the customized development board is a very good choice. It can be customized from different fields, such as wearing, industrial control, furniture, etc.

It is also very important to promote business.

1 Like
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If anyone interested in the full story:
My full name is Kiss-Vámosi (family name) Gábor (first name). In Hungary, the order is the opposite.
“Kiss-Vámosi” is for short “Kiss-V.” And “Kiss” means “Little” in Hungarian. So Little + V = Littlev :slight_smile:

For fun, one of my friends told me “hey, littlev” when we started to learn English.

So that’s the mysterious story of the name :slight_smile:

10 Likes
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Hi, to keep LVGL:
“Light Versatile Graphic Library”
“Light Visual Graphic Library”

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They sound good, thanks! :+1:

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I always thought LittleVGL was Little Video Graphics Library…

Little = Size of the code
Video because handles screens
Graphics because my mind jumps to VGA being Video Graphics Array
Library as this is a great lib!

2 Likes