ITFest 2014, Seminar on Free & OSS in HK How Open Source / Open Technology Could Help On Your Project? A talk brief to talk about how to use open source or open technology to help on start a new project. How to choose technology, and what should people to concern on.

1. How Opensource / Open
Technology could help on
your Project / Startup
wanleung - 19th Oct 2013
updated - 1st Mar 2014,12th Apr 2014

2. This talk is for Who?
• Newbie in the Open source world
• Startups
• For those who want to start a new
software project
!
• For those who want to work into the
software development field.

3. This talk is for Who?
For those, Who think writing Software is
just a piece of cake,
!
something like just clicking a button,
!
a Facebook clone or Whatsapp clone will
be come out
in 60 seconds =P
(joking)

4. About Me
● Vice-Chairman of the HKLUG
● Vice-President of HKCOTA
● Over 10 years experience on Linux
● Experience on Backend services,
website, web API development
● Experience on virtualization and Cloud
Farm building
● http://about.me/wanleung
!

5. About Me
● Co-founder of LinkOmnia
● http://www.linkomnia.com
● Providing services on Consultancy and
Customized Products
● Strengths on Cloud Computing and Big
Data

6. What is Open Source?
In production and development, open
source as a development model promotes
!
a) universal access via free license to a
product's design or blueprint, and
!
b) universal redistribution of that design or
blueprint, including subsequent
improvements to it by anyone.

7. Why use Opensource?
● Free Licenses (MIT, Apache, LGPL...)
● Cost effective
● existing solutions / similar solutions -
need not to reinvent the wheel
● Have Rights to modify and fit into the
business models / the requirement of
the clients.
● Helps are all over the world

8. What can we use?
Database:
• (SQL) PostgreSQL, MySQL...
• (NoSQL) Redis, Cassandra,
MongoDB...
• (Graph DB) neo4j, Rexster…
!
File base:
SQLite, BDB...

9. What can we use?
Common Web / API Frameworks:
• Dancer, Catalyst... (Perl)
• Django, Grok, Pylons, TurboGears...
(Python)
• Kohana, cakephp… (Php)
• Revel, go-restful... (Go lang)
• Ruby on Rails (Ruby)
• mojito, blueprint (node.js)

10. What can we use?
• Nginx, Apache, Tomcat (webserver,
reverse proxy)
• haproxy, pound (reverse proxy)
• squid (web proxy)
• ImageMagick, GIMP, OpenCV...(Image
Processing)
• RabbitMQ, ActiveMQ (Message
Queue)
• Postfix, exim (Mail Server), dovecot

11. What can we use?
• LibreOffice, KOffice, Abiwords,
Numeric(Office Tools)
• VSFTPD, ProFTPD (FTP Server)
!
Bootstrap (CSS), jQuery (Javascript),
Prototype (Javascript)
Git, JMeter…
!
And More, and more...

12. What can we use?
Arduino, Raspberry Pi… (open hardware)
!
AeroQuad (Multicoptor open source
project)
!
RepRap (open 3D Printing)…
!
And More, and more...

16. What can we use?
• Google is your good friend
• Github is your good friend
• Forums are also your good friends
• Join the local Open source
communities
!
Please Don’t hesitate to ask questions
And
Please Don’t hesitate to answer questions

17. How to use them Right?
What is the aim of the project?
What is the scope of the project?
How many time or stages to commit?
How many users you want to support on
each stage?

18. How to use them Right?
Does the product need servers?
Does the servers need high-availability?
How important of the data?
How frequent of the data update?
How frequent of the data request?
How large of the data set?
What is the relations between each data?
How many dimensions?

19. How to use them Right?
Think about the behaviour of the user.
!
How many request and update on the
user on each time using?
!
Does the user accept the down time?
How long?

20. How to use them Right?
The user has to see the update
“Instantly”.
The other users also have to see the
update “Instantly”.
What is the meaning of “Instantly/Now/
Present”?
Does the user accept delay?
!
What will happen if the user saw an Error

21. How to use them Right?
Those questions you have to ask yourself
before you start your project.
Software is not totally virtual, Software is
also limited by the physical hardwares.
!
Different Answers will affect the use of
technology, tools, design, UX,
Development Time & Cost.

22. How to use them Right?
Security is Important. Do it first. It is hard
to change afterward.
Hacking is everywhere.
Don’t think small site won’t get attack.
Beware SQL injection, API/CGI injection
!
Use the Right security method, especially
in Password store and Password
Recovering.

23. How to use them Right?
System Design: Think Large
But execute in small scope first.
!
!
Large system = many components
= complicate
= Time
= Money

24. How to use them Right?
Think Large = Prepared how to scale up
!
Start in small scope = few components
= Less code
= Less bug
= easy to fix

25. How to use them Right?
Less is More
!
Get feedback from users and change
much easier.
!
Time == Money

26. How to use them Right?
Database is not just a Data bin.
A good data structure
= better organise
= better indexing
= better performance
= faster
Repacation == High availability
Backup == Data Recovery

27. How to use them Right?
Web server:
Concurrency User
Connection Pool
Proxy
Cache
Message Queue
Deployment tools
Monitoring tools

28. How to use them Right?

29. How to use them Right?
Source Code Version Controlling
- Git, SVN, CVS…
!
- Use branch on development
- Use branch on Testing
- Use Tag for Production
!
- Any Bug Fixing, use branch and merge

30. How to use them Right?
Example

31. How to use them Right?
• Google is your good friend
• Github is your good friend
• Forums are also your good friends
• Join the local Open source
communities
!
Please Don’t hesitate to ask questions
And
Please Don’t hesitate to answer questions

32. Q & A
Thanks.