tmaiaroto
commented
8 years ago Actually, conflict for passover, can't make it =(
Closed tmaiaroto closed 8 years ago
tmaiaroto
commented
8 years ago Actually, conflict for passover, can't make it =(
Hi all!
If more talks are needed, I'd love to talk a little bit about an open-source project I've been working on and more importantly the strategy/architecture behind it.
Many people look to OSS for budget concerns, but the other part of the equation there is hosting costs. Costs to the end user and costs associated with developing the project itself. Another big barrier rests with on-boarding new developers.
I'm in the midst of re-architecting one of my open-source projects (http://www.socialharvest.io) to utilize new services, such as AWS Lambda (or Microsoft Azure Cloud Functions of course), to help reduce both these barriers for both end users and contributors.
The end result will slash costs for an end user from $500/mo.+ (for a retail SaaS) or $35/mo. (for a self host open-source solution) to now about $5/mo. or less! The same strategies can benefit developers, communities, and startups building new solutions and projects too. As a developer my hosting bill kept ballooning up over the years, but now it's shrinking.
Second to cost, it also lowers the entrance barrier for new contributors too. All that's needed to get started is an AWS (or Azure) account. Since the project will deploy everything automatically, the developer need not setup your typical local dev environment with web server, database, etc. They don't even need Docker either for that matter. There's a lot less setup and configuration for newcomers to the project.
While there is always configuration under the hood, it's now not everyone's problem and the barrier is incredibly low. On-boarding developers to an open-source project is, and has always been, a HUGE challenge. In my experience (being a core contributor to some popular projects and frameworks over the years) I've seen a ton of people simply give up because they got caught up on just the initial setup steps (and documentation can play a role here too).
I've been involved in OSS for years. Mostly active in the PHP community, but now getting more into Golang. I speak, I blog, and consult. If there's anything I can share that might help someone, I'd be happy to.