Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) is a testament to the power of collaboration, community and in many cases solidarity. It allows us to build upon the efforts and improvements of others, following the principle of standing on the shoulders of giants hackers.

It’s deeply ingrained in our DNA as a team, to always find ways of giving back to this amazing ecosystem. While the notion of contributing sounds simple, executing it consistently, effectively and fairly is one of the main challenges we have faced. We aimed to find a way of doing this that is sustainable, scalable, and equitable for everyone involved, while staying committed to remaining a small by-design team.

The main challenge FLOSS devs are facing

Understanding the importance of any such initiative requires recognizing and understanding the challenge(s) free libre open source software maintainers face today. We thing we have just enough experience to brainstorm and use our know-how to find the ideal way to give back.

But what is the challenge? FLOSS developers often juggle numerous responsibilities with limited resources, making it difficult to sustain their projects and push the boundaries to get more improvements of their project. One of these challenges is the deployment of newly-written code in a test and production environment in an automated way. This often ends up as less time focused on writing code, and more time learning & debugging Sysadmin/DevOps skills & problems. To make it worse? Each project uses a different combination of programming languages and dependencies, so each setup needs to be customized.

So, how can we support these critically essential FLOSS projects as part of our fight against BigTech?

Well, we now hav a solid plan to support open source developers by simplifying and automating some of the most tedious aspects of software maintenance. This initiative, we have ‘branded’ as Besa, comes at a special time for us as we celebrated our five-year anniversary at LinuxDay Torino. All the experience we have gathered during these years and lots of insights in relation to the struggles that open source devs are facing, we’ve identified a way to support FLOSS projects in a meaningful and impactful way. Or at least we hope so.

How does Besa project work?

As we continue to refine this solution (main work is almost done), our goal is to meet developers where they are. Here’s how we plan to move forward:

1. Lowering the Barrier to Entry: Developers can define the packaging for their software using Dockerfile & Docker-Compose template, making the process as accessible as possible. We will also help develeopers who need to get this done but cannot currently invest their time on it.
2. Automating the Tedious Tasks: Once the code is pushed, the complex behind-the-scenes work of packaging it into a container image and running it in a cloud environment—is handled automatically.
3. Infrastructure as Code, Version Control and Transparency: Every resource needed for this solution to work is declared as code, from Kubernetes clusters to managed databases, ensuring a clear history of changes and actions within the environment, as well as the opportunity of providing your own API key for supported providers.
4. Dynamic Environments with GitLab: Each Merge Request or branch that’s opened creates a corresponding deployment with that code, making it easier for non-technical contributors to test the end-result. This also sets the stage for automated browser testing using tools like Cypress or Selenium.
5. Open Source to the core: Our solution is built entirely out of a combination of open source tools like GitLab (community edition), Ansible, OpenTofu, Kompose and Kubernetes.

Join Us

Right now we are still finalizing the operational details of this initiative, aiming to provide the best possible way support to FLOSS projects. Our goal is to announce the first partnerships during Q1 or Q2 2025 if there is interest in this. If you’re interested in getting our support earlier, or you have valuable feedback or ideas, please contact us. We will follow up after an internal review of our available resources. Unfortunately we have imited bandwidth and at the moment can’t support as many initiatives as we would want to.

There is a lot of progress, but we are not yet, and will be sharing more details soon, so keep an eye on our blog posts. Until things are finalized, let’s continue to build on the shoulders of giants that shared their knowledge with us and improve our FLOSS technologies even more.

FAQs

Below are some initial FAQs, but we will be publishing more details on docs.cloud68.co.

Can I deploy this on my own GitLab? Yes, the framework is designed to be versatile and adaptable to various setups, including your own GitLab instance.

What about GitHub? We’re preferential towards focusing our solution on top of GitLab, due to GitHub’s proprietary, BigTech-owned nature. We do however, understand the role that GitHub has (unfortuntely) taken within the software development sphere, and wouldn’t want to impose on developers what they choose as their VCS. For the time, utilizing Pull Mirroring (available through GitLab Solutions for Open Source Projects) will allow you to use the CI ecosystem of GitLab while still remaining on GitHub. We are also open to working on GitHub support depending on demand.

What if I need more help initially? We understand that starting with a new system can be challenging. Therefore, we will offer a specific number of pro bono working hours for each project to ensure you can experience the benefits of the new setup as soon as possible.

Do I get this automatically if I have a FLOSS project? Currently, we are prioritizing smaller projects with limited resources but significant impact. We have a list of projects we feel close to and believe would greatly benefit from this support. We would love to support as many projects as possible, but at the same time be realistic about what a small team like ours can offer at this stage.