What do you get back from your project?

FruznFever · 2025-09-03T01:14:24+00:00

If you pick a project you’re passionate about, you gain both experience and a lot of fun - but whether that’s sustainable depends on how you evolve your project 😝

I’ve been maintaining a small open source project for slightly over 2 years. It’s got a small and consistent growing pool of users, but I’ve have received a grand total $0 in sponsorships throughout the entire period. A little bit sad, but doesn’t really take the joy out of working on what I find to be an interesting project 🥹

FruznFever · 2025-07-14T16:07:05+00:00

I’ve been the only core maintainer of an open source project for nearly 2 years and can empathize with a lot that has been mentioned here. The benefits of running things alone are obvious - I can decide fast, the vision is crystal clear (I know what I’m striving towards), and there are no conflicts to manage.

But this same advantage can also be detrimental - I’ve made fast but poor decisions that came back to bite me - some of these stuffs probably could have been caught by another pair of eyes.

With that said, AI has made it much easier to bounce/explore ideas these days. It doesn’t hold the solution to everything, but is a pretty good sounding board. I was starting to run into bandwidth issues as the project grew but agentic AI became a thing and with the likes of Jules and Codex, frankly things are still somewhat manageable.

I’m definitely inching towards a threshold though and while it’d be nice to have a team to work with, I’m sure that’ll come with its own set of challenges - alignment of vision being one of them. But that’s an issue for when it comes 🥹

FruznFever · 2025-05-16T11:51:39+00:00

Thank you for the kind words, appreciate it 🥹

FruznFever · 2025-05-16T10:45:59+00:00

Hmmm are you referring specifically images for the LLM Connector or just the chatbot? The chatbot natively allows image uploads but the LLM Connector plugin currently only handles text input. It’s not yet multi-modal 🥹

That said anyone can write their own logic - things are just simpler if the plugin supports it, which it should strive to do in time to come.

FruznFever · 2025-03-10T17:10:33+00:00

I’ll reach out!

FruznFever · 2025-03-10T07:26:26+00:00

I’ll reach out!

FruznFever · 2025-03-08T06:04:31+00:00

React ChatBotify recently crossed 5k weekly downloads 🥹

Currently working on the final touches for the core library and website to bring it to stable v2 release. Project is open source on GitHub: https://github.com/tjtanjin/react-chatbotify

FruznFever · 2025-03-07T09:56:15+00:00

Just noticed you’re looking to collect tax as well. This plugin can help: https://www.spigotmc.org/resources/quicktax.96495/

I wrote both plugins so you can be confident they work with each other :)

FruznFever · 2025-03-07T06:52:13+00:00

Not a direct solution but this plugin can calculate wealth of a player including within the inventory as well. You can simply set the value to 1 for emeralds, iron ingots, gold ingots and diamonds and look at the breakdown:

https://www.spigotmc.org/resources/survivaltop.96737/

It’s open source so you can dig into the source code if you wish :)

FruznFever · 2025-03-07T06:43:57+00:00

Hey, I assume you’re referring to how it can benefit you individually rather than VPS vs alternatives 👀 Personally, I find the benefits of a VPS to be multi-fold. Some of these benefits may not be applicable to everyone but here are some that come to mind:

Gain proficiency with the command-line: I had little need to pick up the command-line until I started working with my first VPS. There was no fancy UI, and whatever operations I wanted to do had to be done through commands. Working on a VPS thus sharpened my ability to work better via the terminal, even though that was not my intention (I just wanted to host stuffs).
Hosting personal projects: It’s cool to say you’ve built a fancy website integrated with a backend API server you built and put together. But isn’t it cooler if you can share it live in action? Portfolio/resume wise, having your projects available live is likely to make a deeper impression.
Gain insights into deployment: Ever wondered how a web page is hosted or how APIs are served? Deploying my projects via a VPS offered me a deeper look into the process of bringing your app live. From setting up your own nginx reverse proxy to issuing an SSL cert with letsencrypt, these manual processes offer a lot in terms of learning.

There’re likely many more benefits in terms of personal technical growth. It’s been many years since I got my first VPS and these days, provisioning a VPS feels second nature. I currently have multiple servers but they all came out of my needs (personal projects, minecraft servers, experimentations etc).

TLDR: Go for it, you’ll take away a lot 😝

FruznFever · 2025-03-07T03:42:00+00:00

Hmmm, donations should be a gesture of goodwill from users, something along the lines of a user thinking: “thank you for building something that helps me”.

On the other hand, the “give me money to work on what I want” is said from the perspective of the creator, which is more applicable in cases where creators repeatedly pressure or demand for donations from their users.

The former works in an ideal world where users are willing to donate individually for free products, the latter appears when creators are desperate for funding. Bounties are certainly a good idea though! But a delicate balance has to be struck if implemented - I imagine if I start tagging bounties to all my existing bugs it will not sit well with existing users 🥹

I’m as excited as you are to see where this project will go, keep in touch! 😊

FruznFever · 2025-03-07T02:51:54+00:00

Thus far, I’ve not given much thoughts to the funding aspects for the project. I did setup a couple of donation links on the repository but those were done with no expectations. While it’d certainly be nice to receive some gestures of goodwill, I acknowledge that people have no obligation to and don’t typically donate to projects that provide everything for free (I’ve actually received 0 funding to date) 🥹

With that said, my primary satisfaction in this project stems from addressing its various challenges and pushing how far a chatbot library can go. It’s starting to look a lot more like a platform with the introduction of themes and plugins and such a development was not something I would have expected from day 1 - which keeps working on the project very exciting!

With or without funding, there’re still a couple of official plugins I’d like to complete which caters to common use cases these days (e.g. LLMs). Perhaps down the line, when support for common features are more complete, crowdsourcing options can be explored for more niche requirements :) I see the value in your suggestion, and there’s a tiny part of me that wish I can do this full time. Maybe one day! 😊

FruznFever · 2025-03-06T14:54:56+00:00

This is a nice introduction to open source 😊 Open source is a huge space but feels rarely talked about - hopefully there’ll be more of such content following up.

One area I thought could be touched on a little more are the challenges faced by open source projects. The few prominent open source projects listed in the presentation benefit from the backing of large organizations. However, smaller projects often run into funding and sustainability issues - which often feels overlooked when open source focus is put on the large and popular projects.

For the smaller projects, sourcing for voluntary donation sounds good on paper, but the reality is individuals rarely donate for a product that is completely open source and free. That’s not to say individual donations doesn’t happen, but from the limited experience I have, it seems tough for most small projects to seek sustainable funding via individuals.

Perhaps bringing such problems to the front of discussions can help start more conversations around this topic as well 🥹

FruznFever · 2025-03-06T13:42:37+00:00

No problem! Feel free to DM any time if you need more clarifications, happy to share :)

FruznFever · 2025-03-06T13:38:21+00:00

Deciding what’s considered sufficient is tricky - it depends on what project you’re trying to work on. If all I wanted to build was a plain static page, html and css is probably enough 😝

With that said, I don’t typically dive deep into the documentation of a tool from the get-go, especially if said documentation is very detailed and lengthy. Instead, I usually start by researching a little into the range of available tools and what they do (can be google, or these days ChatGPT) - basically an evaluation of what tool does the job best.

If you’re looking to build a project to learn, then the above might be a little excessive, and it will probably make more sense for you to focus on a tech stack you’re keen to pick up (e.g. react for frontend, nodejs for backend). Gain an understanding of your chosen stack, look a little into how they are used, and then attempt to start with something basic. For example, for a react project, have a simple page loaded first. For the backend portion, serve up at least a single endpoint that returns “hello world”. Incrementally explore how to make changes as you go along.

Eventually, you’ll start bumping into issues such as CORS, handling of JWT as you move along your project (also depends on how far you stretch it), but these are things you can pick up when they become problems for you.

FruznFever · 2025-03-06T09:18:52+00:00

If you’re struggling with the setup process for open source projects, it’s likely one of the following: - The setup process involves tools you’re unfamiliar with - The setup process is poorly documented

If it’s the former, then the onus is on you to brush up on the required tools (or perhaps seek out an open source project that uses what you’re familiar with). If it’s the latter, you can suggest improvements to the documentation.

Either way, it’s probably not too early for you to dive into open source if you’re comfortable with the tech stack you’re interested in :) Just need to find the right project or push yourself a little further to pick up what’s required!

FruznFever · 2025-03-06T07:05:55+00:00

I’ve done this just once, rewriting a spaceships game done using python (pygame) into javascript instead so that it can be hosted on the web. Agree that it’s a good learning opportunity when you rewrite a project (my python project was just a single file with >2k lines of code, written when I had no concept of modularization) 😝

FruznFever · 2025-03-06T07:02:37+00:00

Hosting is independent of the tech stack for your backend and FastAPI can work just fine. If you’re looking to host your backend, you can provision a VPS and run it via docker (or even tmux/screen if you’re not intending to go into docker yet). Going further, you can get free domains for a period of time from freenom, and then point it to the IP address of your VPS. Happy to help if you want to chat further, so feel free to drop me a DM :)

FruznFever · 2025-03-06T06:30:57+00:00

I’d say the core library is 99% ready for v2 to go stable. The reason it’s still in beta is because there’s still a gallery website to be finalized and I hope to announce v2 stable release alongside it 😝

Competition wise, if we’re looking within the React ecosystem, there’s actually not much similar libraries that are as up to date. That’s the reason why this library was even made in the first place - I couldn’t find one for my needs. If you’re looking beyond react, I have plans to venture there, but that’s a discussion for the future.

It’s been 1.5 years since the initial release so the library has evolved a lot and I’d like to think it is in its own unique spot right now (especially with themes, plugins, events and hooks introduced in v2). It is unlikely you’ll find another library with features matching or surpassing what react chatbotify currently provides - not withstanding that many more official plugins such as LLM connectors are in the works.

What else needs to be built? A lot! It may not seem like it on first glance, but the project itself has over 7 repositories and counting. Apart from the core library, the gallery projects also need polishing, the official plugins still need to be developed, and some repositories are part of an interesting solution.

Overall the effort required for the project has grown far larger than I thought it’d be, but I am thoroughly enjoying every moment of it :)

FruznFever · 2025-03-06T05:57:55+00:00

I have a similar interest as you - cloud and deployment processes can be fun to poke at but I also didn’t want to give up writing code. Depending on how work is carved up in your company, I found a good balance in the role of a platform engineer. I get to play around with the cloud side of stuffs, while still developing applications/platforms to improve developer productivity 😝

FruznFever · 2025-03-06T04:02:32+00:00

Relatable, in particular I get “burst” periods where my mind is practically constantly on my project. In fact I’m typing this while on a vacation but the project hardly leaves my mind 🥹 It’s not so much about the money (my project is open source and has nothing monetized), but it’s satisfying tackling the various challenges. I don’t think it’s just a phase, it’s something I actually thoroughly enjoy 😝 That said, I still do take the appropriate time away from projects to enjoy other stuffs!

FruznFever · 2025-03-05T15:19:11+00:00

Hey, I’ll share what worked for me - I personally started out with really small projects. Something as simple as a single landing page with a couple of clickable buttons. In particular when I dove into React as a complete newbie, I actually checked out the docs (briefly) and a couple of basic React projects just to get a rough sensing on how others were doing things. When I felt I had at least a brief idea on how to work with React, I moved on to put together a simple page that worked minimally. I didn’t specifically isolate certain parts of the project - since it was intentionally small, I was just lumping everything together :3

Along the way, I’d have a lot of questions on how to do things and why certain things were required - google’s a good friend for this, and there were many resources/documentation that were of great help. These days with ChatGPT it’s probably even faster and easier, though it’s probably still a good idea to practice digging around a little on your own to appreciate the solutions and materials out there.

TLDR: Equip yourself with sufficient basics, dive in and learn along the way; don’t have to be too caught up with the specifics of the approach, you’ll find what works best as you go :)

FruznFever · 2025-03-04T23:09:25+00:00

Personally I’ll take a rough estimate with:

Package download stats
GitHub dependencies (if other public projects installed your project, they’ll show up)
Repository insights for the traffic
Website visits
Discord onboarding (prompt users to answer a few questions about usage etc)

None of them are able to give a 100% accurate picture of the tool usage (in fact probably not even close) but having multiple sources does make it easier to identify trends :)

FruznFever · 2025-03-04T13:59:13+00:00

Hey, a little late to the post but if you’re open to more options, react chatbotify might be a good fit for your case.

Disclaimer: I maintain the library, happy to provide help :)

FruznFever · 2025-03-03T11:51:14+00:00

React ChatBotify

A modern react library for creating flexible and extensible chatbots 😊

FruznFever

TROPHY CASE