Thank you for your elaborate response! Which I think has some interesting handholds and points to further elaborate. I don’t want to veer too much off-topic though on this particular thread. Some thoughts though…
I agree, though given your explicit mention of FOSS I don’t know if “ownership” is the best way of phrasing. As you know in FOSS community people care that what they volunteer for and spend time on, becomes available to the Commons to the benefit of all, and is assured to stay part of the Commons…
In that sense it is likely most beneficial to all if you don’t see Penpot as the ‘inner circle’ where the product vision and project’s direction ‘sits in a treasure chest’, and then have the outer circle be the Community around that. Rather envision Penpot as being one constituent part of a budding Ecosystem that weaves its strands together to become a rich and beautiful cloth. This small shift in thinking is like a culture and mindset thing, but is also very strategical and with that can come… a very powerful approach.
Yes, and it is great that the investors give that much slack to first allow Penpot to establish a firm position. But somewhere down the line ROI is expected, and everyone knows that. To win Trust in FOSS circles it is crucial that this is not only fully acknowledged, but also that you are indicating (on an ongoing basis) where you expect to get that ROI from. Like “we intend to offer subscription plans for hosted Penpot and aim for the larger enterprises that have huge UX designs and demand support from our technical staff and consultants. Furthermore we will also facilitate large-scale and tailored in-house Penpot deployments”. Something along these lines.
We know what these are. And they are indeed big. There are people who say “Software has eaten the world”, and then I’d like to correct them and say “Yes, but it is more accurate to say that Open Source software has eaten the world”. This is a lotta OSS, and a smaller part FOSS. The FOSS folks are right to be suspicious of any kind of corporate and commercial developments. They have seen their hard work been monetized like crazy so many times with nothing but a “Thank you very much!” in return, while they still struggle to keep the chimney smoking.
But I am a strong believer there’s sustainable business around FOSS development. And that we are living in times with problems all around us that clearly have Hypercapitalism as their root cause. People start seeing that it is an inherently flawed system, as its failures are becoming very apparent. This creates the favourable conditions for these more sustainable models to thrive. And once again I think tackling those as collaborative ecosystems is key.
In Q4 I will dedicate more time to launching a new initiative called Social Coding Movement and Strategic Ecosystem Alliances will be a key concept. Btw, instead of all the biz-like names, we’ll align more to FOSS culture and values and call them Software Guilds. The first guild we are planning happen to be Penpot adopters already 
(this is part of the reason for me to react here, as the folks here share my concerns). This Guild encompasses the young ecosystem involved in Code Forge federation (intent on breaking the dominance of Github and creating a more level and open playing field):
Now, what would be absolutely fabulous was if Penpot really liked the philosophy of all these concepts I just introduced and would really ponder how “really become part of a new free & open source ecosystem” might fit neatly in there.
And finally, to raise the attractiveness of that thought pattern up a notch and referring to your expressed personal dream of really uniting designers AND developers I would like to explicitly mention that Social Coding is not only all about that unification and in a more holistic manner (considering everyone’s role, to foster diversity and inclusion), but that it will consider the entire Free Software Development Lifecycle (FSDL) - from earliest conception to end-of-life - in search of best-practices and tools that can help streamline work processes.
Furthermore the Social Coding Movement with its focus on evolving the Fediverse’s alternative social networking environment will explore the somewhat forgotten field of SX or social experience design. When contrasted to current practices of UX we consider SX to be the more holistic approach.
As for opportunity:
Nowhere else there’s greater need for closer UX / Developer interaction than in FOSS.
So where is there a better place to explore exciting and creative innovations that will position Penpot and its ecosystem prominently within the FSDL (or any other SDL for that matter)? 
Don’t worry… me too as you can witness 
let’s TL;DR this as:
Let us start to imagine a Guild design …
(Image: " Komona market" by David Revoy, license CC-BY)
