#23 Open Source Low-Code BudiBase

In this episode, we have a discussion with Mike Shanks, CEO of BudiBase, and our CEO, Tiago Neves  about the interesting world of open source Low-Code.  Have a listen as they discuss the importance of open-source low code platform and how  it  impacts the industry! 

Transcript

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Mario Cunha: 0:21

Hello, and welcome to a new entry of the high tech low code podcast. On this episode, we are going to talk about the open source local platform buddy base. And to help us with that, today, we have the company of Michael shanks and Jack Nash. Mike is the CEO and co founder of polybags. Mike, thank you very much for joining us on this podcast. How are you doing?

Michael Shanks: 0:40

Doing well, today? Thank you.

Mario Cunha: 0:42

Could you tell us a bit about yourself so that audience could get to know you a bit more?

Michael Shanks: 0:47

Yeah, sure. So yeah, I am the CEO and co founder of buddy bass. I live in Belfast in Northern Ireland, and I've been here most of my life. So yeah, I mean, I, I studied physics at university, and which was, you know, I do recommend that for anyone wanting to follow a particular career path, but it was interesting, all the same, and a good background. And then I moved into software development, or pretty much been a software development developer for about 15 years, up until very recently, which my life has been taken over by, by CEO Judy's so having been doing so much software development recently. And but that my background is in engineering. And that's, that's where I bring a lot of, sort of the development practices into the local space.

Mario Cunha: 1:40

Alright, thank you for that. Now, finally, geography. How are you doing?

Tiago Neves: 1:44

Hey, man, doing great. And looking forward for another episode of the fire podcasts? We've been having great guests. And today, I believe so we're in for another good episode again, with Mike.

Mario Cunha: 1:59

I believe so too. But actually, before I start anything, I just need to ask how do you go from physics to software development?

Michael Shanks: 2:07

Good question. I actually did a lot of software development when I was a child like or when I was sitting in my teens. So I did have a bought some background in software development. But just going into university, I decided that this was the next was super, super interesting. I've always been interested in physics, still follow it, and love it. But ultimately, you have to pick something vocational, you have to do have a career unless you want to do the research. And so yeah, again, just going back to my love of software engineering as a younger person. And that's that's how I get back into it again. So yeah, all right. All right.

Mario Cunha: 2:51

Okay. Again, thank you both for joining us. But they I would like to start by asking Mike, if he could tell us about buddy bass. What are his origins?

Michael Shanks: 3:02

Sure, yeah. I mean, we I've been working on both EPS since really since 2019. And but we went full time project on in about January 2020. But, yeah, I come from an engineering background. And I spent a lot of time working inside inside larger companies. I've always worked at startups, but it's often embedded in larger companies. And, and what I, what I always tend to find was, we were building like, very easy applications, like even just adding fields to forms. Just just some very simple tasks, but yet, very time consuming. Even the simple tasks are very time consuming. And I find myself repeating the same things over and over again. And the people, we were working with paying us a lot of money for tasks that are frankly, boring for developer on simple. And it was it was a lot of wasted effort. And even back then, like I'm still No, I like there's a huge, huge need for custom software and the world. And such a huge shortage of developers. And we're not actually even training people fast enough to keep up with this, this need. And so, yeah, it was many years ago that the idea came to me that you know, I and this is even before I knew anything about low code, or even you the word that that existed. And I just thought there must be an easier way of doing this and must be platforms out there. So coming in when I decided to start this and I'm really you take the first steps into developing a product to make development easier. And I started to say the web platforms out there already for this, but one thing that really struck me was that there were no open source options. Not at all. And that, for me, like, as a developer, we take open source for granted. It's always there. And everything's built on open source everything, it's, it's, that's like that for a reason. And, for me, anytime anyone needs to build software, I feel like they should I own that software, okay, they should be able to have ownership of that of the software that they build for themselves. And that's only possible if you built if you build with open source, because you have the freedom to take and use that the code that you're that you're about to take code from other places and build it into your application, build it into your software. So for me, the fact that there were new open source Lugu platforms out there, it was, it was quite a shock, because I don't think they're, I don't think there's actually a viable future and local, without open source. And I believe that the those tools would be only the things used by the companies with the deepest pockets, really, unless, unless it's open source. And I believe that's the only way we can like we can really push the whole world forward. And term in terms of local is with an open source platform. And so yeah, I mean, we talk about often people, when they think of open source, they think of free. And then of course, free is, of course free of cost. And to begin with. But the most important thing about open source is the freedom aspect of it, the freedom to take the platform and do what you want with it. And the fact that you don't have to, you don't have to come and ask us to use our software, you don't have to ask your legal team if you can use it. Because it's an accepted open source licence, you don't have to ask your procurement team if you can buy it, because you can just use it here. And that's something we take for granted. And an open source all the time, the fact that whenever we're building, even even just as developers, if I want to build an application today, I can pick a database such as Postgres, for example. I can just take it, I can use it, don't have to ask anybody. And that's the most important thing about open sources, that freedom aspect. And again, that's where that's where this adoption of open source, this, this is where it spreads, this is hard spreads. And the fact that you can, you can just like I say, you can take it and use it. I often compare us to a platform called WordPress, I, WordPress is a very popular open source website builder. And the interesting thing about web or web or WordPress, WordPress is that it's not necessarily the best website builder builder out there. There are lots of more modern, and some would say better platforms. But it's still extremely present pervasive, and it's still used. So widespread. And one of the reasons for that is, because it's such a vast plugin ecosystem, it's got a plug in for everything is the right thing. And, and the other thing is you can go, you can walk down your street, where you live. And there's probably a WordPress developer there. Okay, they can build a website for you. It's this ecosystem that's around WordPress, that makes it super powerful. And that ecosystem is only possible because it's open source, because people can take it, build off the top of it, they can take it, they can use it for whatever they want. They can they can build a business on building plugins, there are $10 million businesses, you built off the back of WordPress plugins, you know, you can make a career for yourself being a WordPress consultant. Okay, and that's, and they don't, they don't have to ask WordPress for permission. And so that's really the power of open source. It's the ecosystem and it's the community around it. And and that's really what is missing in this in the space of glue code in general. Okay. All right. So yeah, that was a lot of very long winded way of saying Open Source is awesome.

Mario Cunha: 9:50

But that's what we like. We like to hear heartfelt answers.

Michael Shanks: 9:53

Yeah. So yeah, no, I so that was that was the big thing. We But last year, we saw what was missing in the space is an open source, an open source competitor, an open source option. And you are our other thesis on this. There are a lot there are lots of angles you can take with with low code. But we, we like to talk about buddy bass being used by any developer as well. And when we say any developer, we really mean developers of any skill, and even even the word developer foxes is a very, very broad term, you can have a back end developer who hates writing front end code hates writing user interfaces. And you can have a front end developer equally hits writing, web API's and connecting to do business. Or you can just have, quote, unquote, a junior developer, who's just less experienced doesn't know how to put the whole thing together. And so there are such a broad range of, of that meaning the term developer, and we see ourselves as a platform for any developer. What that actually comes to me. And in terms of how we build the platform, is that if you are a front end developer, you should be able to use buddy base to build a back end visually. So you don't need to know back end development to build a back end. Similarly, if you're a back end developer, you don't need to know front end coding to build the front end. Okay, so we have a visual platform where you can put a full stack web application together without needing to write code. Okay. But also, any developer means full stack developers and developers with lots of experience. So that means we need to provide those those coding options. So those escape hatches, as we like to call them. So again, if you're, if you're a front end developer, you want to be able to write a bit of CSS somewhere, your back end developer, you need to connect to SQL databases and rest API's, because you know how, and that's your superpower you should be able to do. Okay, so there are levels to this platform, whereby you can create everything without code. When you need code, you can add us. And then down the line, we haven't done this piece yet. But certainly this year, we entered out the ability for people to like, fully write like, they're entirely new front end components entirely new back end integrations like this is full Pru code, as some people would call it. Just import Phil, Phil bits of code into the platform. So the whole idea and this is a really lovely developer experience experience for building web apps visually, and backed up by the flexibility and extensibility of code. And that a proper full experience developer can write so Yeah, buddy this for for developers, but for any developers, as well, we, as our take on this

Mario Cunha: 13:23

slogan, they're nice slogan,

Michael Shanks: 13:25

I guess is just not our officials. Look, Alexei. Oh, it's

Mario Cunha: 13:28

the official slogan. No, it's

Michael Shanks: 13:30

not. It's not official.

Mario Cunha: 13:31

Which one? Is it? Your official slogan?

Michael Shanks: 13:35

Well, our official slogan is a build web apps and minutes. It's just a simple one there. So yeah. But yeah, that's her before any developer. All

Mario Cunha: 13:48

right. So at the moment, how can someone get started and initiate their database journey?

Michael Shanks: 13:55

Yeah, I mean, so again, depending on who you are, you'll find this in different ways. But you know, the traditional way is just find a website builder. vs.com, people will find us there. And we've got a few different options of how you can really get started. First of all, we have our own SAS platform. So you can go to our website, you're linked directly to your own SAS platform, you sign in you, you know, start building apps through the web web builder, like it's all there, you don't have to do anything. You don't have to stand any infrastructure up yourself, that's fine. Um, but of course, being open source, it's like super important that we have a really good self postable product. And so you should be able to also take buddy bass installed in your own your own AWS account your own Azure account, or wherever you wish. And you can stand it all up and not run us and again, don't have to ask us just take it and use it. Go ahead. So there's three different paths there, I'm sorry, the southwest at Bethel, this should add you for for, for anyone with data security concerns, especially like they, they've got a SQL database or something on their own infrastructure that they can hold open to the public. They have to keep it internal, you know that it's selfish is always going to be really important for that. But of course, with the cloud, the SAS option, super fast to get started, and even even if you just want to try it out, and you maybe want to sell books later, still recommend just using the SAS platform to begin with, because you it's few minutes, and you're in. So yeah, there's there's a really the sea options, like a lot of people will find us through our GitHub, and just instal this directly with through our documentation, they never even have to sign up through a website or anything like that. So you don't even again, you don't have to tell us if you're using it. Just take it. And yeah, so those are primarily the two ways website and on GitHub.

Mario Cunha: 16:02

Okay. Okay. For, for example, for someone starting to use base, is there any certification paths that you have prepared or are preparing for in the future?

Michael Shanks: 16:15

Yeah, we don't have this at the moment. So this is definitely something we will tackle over over the next year or so. And we don't have a certification path there at the moment. For for context on this, like we, we've gone, we went to version one in November of last year, so we're okay, we're still still pretty new. To be fair, it took us it took us basically 20 months to get there. So they took us almost two years to get to version one. And that's just because of the size of the products. And but yeah, no, so so we are quite, it's quite a new platform in terms of you know, how long we've been in version one. And we're in the process now of really building that, that education piece, just just docs and tutorials. And then once we've got really solid platform of education, there is well we'll start to build off the top of that with training training programmes, which a lot of large companies ask for us, ask us just to provide that training. And then after that, that is then when we think about certifications and things like that. So yeah, a few few steps to get there. But yeah, definitely on the radar next few years.

Tiago Neves: 17:28

In that case, Mike, I was speaking, what do you see? The main challenges being in terms of that learning curve, then of many ways?

Michael Shanks: 17:40

The mentor on? Yeah, I mean, I think that I think getting, getting to grips with Hi, we put together that design sections are is our biggest challenge at the moment like, Okay, well, again, depends which background you're coming from. I would say a lot of the people who come here come to come to us have existing data already. So they have some kind of SQL database or some data somewhere else. So they do have some the off, there's often more familiarity around the data side for people and connecting to data. And putting that design the sorry, the the front end part together is often the biggest hurdle people people find. So yeah, I'd say that's, that's the biggest hurdle people's people, you know, struggle with to get into grips with this. And that's definitely something we're looking out over the next three to six months to really improve the experience of just getting people to move faster through that user interface side of things. Yeah, so but like I say, once you once you get it. You get it.

Tiago Neves: 18:56

Yeah, at the end. Forgive me. So if I'm just getting in the way of any other question, Marie, but I was just thinking in terms of this learning curve, I'm I certain that the community out there is also a good support for anyone wanting to learn, right?

Michael Shanks: 19:15

For sure. Yeah, that's right. So yeah, our GitHub, we use a platform called GitHub discussions, which is essentially our online forum. And we we support this directly, the US the company, but also we have some fantastic community effort in there that people will yo people who we've supported and want to give back, come on and answer questions and unhealed people, right. So yeah, I mean, there's there's always that we tend to respond to questions faster than some people's priority support plans. And but that's just the nature of having a large community and global community that there's always people there to chip in and they do and that again, is one of the power that powerful things about open source.

Mario Cunha: 20:03

That's actually good point, it touches the next touch our next question. So first to reach them, we go to our to the GitHub discussion board, right? That's right community has

Michael Shanks: 20:14

Yeah, yeah, that's right. So it's, yeah, our GitHub discussions. And again, it's just a it's a typical online forum. It's it's a q&a format. But you know, we take any questions from, from how do I do this to, you know, can you build this feature for me? And we will answer, whatever in there. And we're generally a very transparent company as well. So

Mario Cunha: 20:38

that's actually a good point. For example, imagine me I want to start with Buddy bass. How do I start go about and learn it?

Michael Shanks: 20:45

Yeah. Oh, yeah. So I mean, we do have a whole documentation side of things. So you will go on, follow our Doc's follow tutorials. And that's, you know, that's where we would recommend starting, but by all means, if you're struggling, that's or even if you just want to say, Hello, come on, comments out, it's coming post a question post. So post your thoughts on GitHub discussions. And we like, we, especially people, welcome people come in, and given their feedback on their experiences, you know, that's, that's, again, one of the one of the things we have gained most about open source is like, even before, like, even way back before we were in alpha stages, where product was changing massively. We were getting people coming along and trying to build stuff with it. And sometimes been successful, sometimes not, but always giving back, giving back feedback, and telling us what they thought, reporting bugs? No, it's just because we were given software for free to people. And often we get that, that value back from them. And all sorts of forms unconscious code contributions, as well. So yeah, really? Oh, that's great. Yeah, I mean, it's funny, we don't, we do actively encourage code contributions in general, because, because the team, our team is working full time on developing the product, we tend to move a lot faster than community contributions. But, you know, every now and then someone will, will drive by and fix a bug or, you know, the main and it's, it's fantastic. And it's so good. But, uh, yeah, so everyone's getting value here together and getting us

Tiago Neves: 22:30

Did you see the the contribution events, having shaped somehow also the product where you are today?

Michael Shanks: 22:42

Um, for sure, I think one of the most important contributions we had early on was, was single sign on. And Single Sign On is where, you know, you would often see if you log in into website pop up, like sign in with Google or sign in with Microsoft. So that's essentially single sign on. I know a lot of a lot of companies, a lot of open source projects, or commercial open source products, they would often use single sign on as a gateway into the paid features of the product. Like you can use it, they say, you can use the open source product, but if you want single sign on, you have to pay us. And now someone, one of our community members built it. So we accepted it. So it's a maybe maybe that would have been a paid feature. I'm of the I'm of the belief that I would never have been. But uh, yes, that's that's certainly a way in which the community can can ship or can ship our products. And on the other hand, we are as the company that that owns the you owns the code that owns the vast majority of the contributions, and we are the gatekeepers, and we do code review everything that comes in, and we still make the decisions and what gets accepted and what's not, and what doesn't. But yes, the community has a big say, in that as well.

Mario Cunha: 24:07

This is the part where I will need you to explain to taking to account that it is an open source based product. What can you tell me about the licence? How would it work? Yeah,

Michael Shanks: 24:19

so we use a licence called GPL. version three. There are a lot of open source licences out there. GPL three is one of the most common but to your to be quite broad by the GPL is what's known as a copyleft licence. And I did say that right? So it's not copyright. It's called me and what what Kobe laughed means is that if you if you make changes to our code base, and then you are obliged to also make those changes use open source. And also if you use any of our code in your own product, and your product also has to be open source, okay? Now anything that you build with Buddy base, you will that the licence that doesn't apply there, if you build something as buddies, it's closed source, it's yours, you can use it, that's fine. But yeah, copyleft licences have this this clause whereby if you link to our code directly, like you use the code, or you change the code that you also have to make that code open source. And one of the one of the reasons are actually the main reasons for this, I actually recommend this as a licence to, to a lot of open source projects. But one of the reasons for this is because it protect provides us with protection. So it means if a company comes along, and they decide, right, I, this is open source, I'm going to close this source off, and I'm going to create a competitor to Balbus, then they're not licenced to do so. Because as soon as they make a change to the code, and whether it's their own branding or anything, they have to make that open source as well. And they can do that they can go off and do that, and they can still be a competitor. But any changes they make, we also benefit from because, you know, if they've, they've done a really good feature, we can pull it into our code base as well. So there's no advantage to be gained from someone forking the project. Essentially. If it's really, really customed to them, that's fine. There's no reason why they shouldn't. We don't we don't have to take that change. But we're happy for them for them to make the change. But yeah, so that copyleft licences probably provide protection against that. If you take another example of another licence, for example, MIT, just probably the most loose licence, the most permissive licence out there, it's about it's about 10 lines, basically says you can do whatever you like, just don't to us, is basically what it says. No, if, if we were if we were MIT licenced, then somebody could just take our entire code base, do what they want to close it off, sell it, and rebranded. And yeah, and those actually compete with us. And that's, and that's not what we want.

Mario Cunha: 27:32

Right. Thanks for definition. It's quite interesting. Which leads me to my next question, what comes next for database?

Michael Shanks: 27:42

Yeah, so I mean, are one thing I shouldn't lead with this, in fact, but, uh, you know, our mission as a company, is to create the world's largest ecosystem for business applications. Okay. So right now, we're building that core platform, all the things that you can do with believers, you can build a study base. Now, I talked earlier by that ecosystem, and it's our ecosystem, which, which really makes us defensible, makes us a, you know, a business that can't be replicated. It's the ability, you know, it's the ability for people to build millions of plugins off the top. Because there's millions of plugins, there's millions of integrations components is really, really what people can, you know, other companies, other software cannot replicate. And that's huge community is what can't be replicated. And so yeah, we're, it's really building this ecosystem on top, we've got a really solid core platform at the moment. But allowing people to extend it right there and integrations, write their own components, but also write their own full application templates. And so again, but but it was a full stack. So we want people to come along, build, you know, a CRM for podcasting. Okay. They can put that on a marketplace somewhere, maybe with marketplace that we will host in the future, potentially. And other people can just one click deploy their CRM, podcasting, CRM template, and they have a they have software for for, you know, podcasting CRM. Yeah. It's, it's, again, providing this ecosystem of applications like full applications is what, you know, what can really change the face of software in general? If you think about, you know, the amount of SaaS platforms out there that are there. They're essentially vertical slices of an industry. So a CRM specific to certain industry or you know, even a holiday of prove a lap. Okay, there are SAS platforms out there that you pay, you pay a monthly subscription for. But in a world where you've got, you know, 1000s and 1000s of these templates, like full web app templates for Buddy base, if you already pay a licence to buddy base on our cloud platform, or you're just self hosting for free yourself, you can just pull the you don't need to, you don't need to buy another subscription subscription, you've got an you've got a full web application template right there that you can pull in and use. And it's ready to go. So that is somewhere, we as part of our ecosystem, that is where we will go. And again, just enabling people to just build out any kind of application, any kind of new business application on top of buddy this with any integration, any components, just expanding that ecosystem. That's, that's where we're at. That's how we grew. Right?

Mario Cunha: 31:06

All right, check anything you would like to head ask?

Tiago Neves: 31:10

Yes, I don't want to bring other names to the picture. But you know, Mike, so people always kind of try to see so where does Buddy best fit? And so how, how, how does this compare to basically so similar? Or other low codes, at least solutions out there? What do you think are the best fits? Not specifically? What does it compare with? But what do you see by the best fitting in the bigger picture of logos?

Michael Shanks: 31:45

Yeah, I mean, it like if you search for search for no good today, you'll get a huge a huge array of software, right. But if you narrow that down to building web applications, then that that narrows the field considerably, like you're not building a chatbot. It's not a local chatbot builder, builder. Okay. So you narrow the field down to web application builders, okay. Then if you think about, it's a full stack builder. So you can build them a tire on an entire application on buddy base alone without having to go anywhere else. It also connects really well with existing data sources. So sequel and unrest. And so when you when you start, and yeah, and also layering on top, the extensibility, the flexibility aspect. So again, it's it's for developers to develop on top and then build build web apps, then again, narrowing the fields of things that that you can and can't do with or that you can do with DBS. And so, yeah, and then if you finally are open source on top of that, then you'll find that there's no one else. So. So it's a Saturday. It's a matrix of features of Orinda. And it's the it's for developers, it's for any developers, it's full stack web apps, and it's open source. Okay.

Mario Cunha: 33:16

Okay. Oh, guys, I guess that that we end today's episode. Thank you very much, Mike in tech for your company. We'd also like to send a big thank you to everyone who is listening and hope you can join us on our next episode of high tech local podcast, where as always, we'll talk about more topics of the tech universe. See you soon. Thanks, Mike. You guys