DeutschModern web development and software development in general for that matter wouldn’t be possible without FOSS: free open source software. Whether it’s web frameworks such as Ruby on Rails, frontend frameworks like AngularJS or enterprise toolkits as for instance Spring, open source software is the solid foundation most modern software is built upon.
It’s quite likely the technology-fuelled growth we’ve seen for the last decades wouldn’t have been possible if it hadn’t been for open source software. So, while saying that open source software is one of most profound, seminal and world-changing ideas in recent history might sound a bit grandiose, it’s also true. Every single piece of software-based technology we use today in one way or another is built on or profits from open source software.
This is why I’ve always been an avid proponent of open-sourcing software, even in commercial contexts, where this might seem counter-intuitive at first. So, putting my money where my mouth is, today I’m releasing some of my project code as open source software: Freshcard and MemoEasy both are former startup products that didn’t turn out to be quite as commercially successful as anticipated by my co-founders and me. Freshcard was a new, modern way of dealing with paper business cards and contact management in business settings. MemoEasy was an appointment reminder SaaS for SMBs and service-based businesses that allowed those businesses to send automatic appointment reminders to their clients via SMS or email.
As both of those projects are now defunct I consider it good citizenship to release their source code under the Apache Software License for other developers and businesses to learn from. You won’t be able to use this software as some kind of white label solution to quickly churn out a similar product of your own but it should get you started and give you an overview of useful tools and techniques and how to make those work together to create similar products.
So, without further ado, the Freshcard backend code is available at https://github.com/BjoernKW/Freshcard (Java / Spring server) and https://github.com/BjoernKW/FreshcardUI (JavaScript / AngularJS user interface). MemoEasy (a Ruby on Rails app) is available at https://github.com/BjoernKW/MemoEasy