Introduction to Innovative Open Source Tools

Hey everyone, welcome back to my blog. In this article, I will explore some of the most innovative and practical open source tools I’ve found in 2023. We will delve into a self-hosted passwordless authentication platform, a low code backend generator using GraphQL or REST, and an automation platform with a lot of integrations. In addition, I will showcase tools that run machine learning models directly in PostgreSQL, and round out with a collaborative platform for machine learning models and datasets. This article is perfect for those who interested in self-hosting, machine learning, and discovering helpful tools handy for your app and website development. Now let’s demonstrate you the most Innovative and useful open source tools. These are the tools that I use every day to create amazing apps automate tests run machine learning models and more. The best part is they're all self-hosted which means you have full control over your data and privacy, let's check them out the first.

What makes for a good Open-Source Projects?

Although the term “Open-Source” is very general and can apply to a wide range of services, there are the few key features that self-hosting projects should have.

1. It saves you time: As I’ve mentioned, developers have an unending list of tasks to complete, so these tool saves us the time in great deal.

2. Good documentation: The development, and automation is a very complicated process, and some tools are too complex to use. I can accept this, and I can take a terrible UI and, in some cases, a bad UX, but if the proper documentation is missing, I will be not using these tools. Open-source projects generally have highly detailed documentation.

3. Integrates well with other Platforms: Most developers rely on certain workflows to complete their daily tasks. With different programming languages, version control systems, continuous integration challenges & solutions, and many more. It’s critical when deciding on an open source self-hosting projects, you need to consider its integrations and how it will fit in your custom workflow - and improve it!

4. Good community: Sometimes you may get puzzled or run into some issues using the new open source project. A greatly helpful community is a frequent answer to all your problems. On top of that, a good community can prompt a development tool forward, creating a surplus of themes, plugins, and more, with it.

5. Regular updated and releases: There are some open source projects out there that are simply not well maintained. Also, when requesting new features to your specific needs or reporting a bug, you need to be confident that the maintainers will be always around to push a new release.

Exploring a Passwordless Authentication Platform

1). Hanko a Passwordless Authentication Platform

Support the Hanko GitHub Repository

The first project I’m going to share with you is Hanko. Hanko is a passwordless authentication platform that you can Self host. Hanko lets you integrate both social and passwordless login into any web application with just a few lines of code. You can use pass Keys, pass codes, security keys, mobile app Biometrics, and even classic OAuth. You can see it supports a bunch of Oath providers. Everyone love the fact that it provides customizable UI components that the users can change the design of to match their current website. And these UI components can integrate with the most popular UI Frameworks.

This way, you can get started very quickly and have an authentication system in no time. Passwords are outdated insecure and inconvenient, and I believe passwordless is the way of the future. As I just want to reach out for something more lightweight, something simpler to integrate into my projects, and Hanko fits that description perfectly.

2). Directus A Low Code Backend Generator

The next project A Low Code Backend Generator we want to share is Directus. It is a low code GraphQL or rest backend generator. The main idea is that it allows you to create and manage your data model with an intuitive, no code interface. And after you have the data model set up, it provides you a fully featured API that you can connect to any frontend framework you like. The dashboard itself is built with Vue.js and can use a bunch of SQL databases including Postgres and SQLite.

Support the Directus GitHub Repository

This combination of Technologies is actually my favorite stack at the moment. I think Directus is a great solution for anyone who wants to build data reach apps with a flexible and scalable backend. One of the most popular use cases for something like this is a headless CMS I used it as a CMS for some of my project but also as a backend for a simple e-commerce web store, but you can build almost any type of backend with this low code platform.

3). Self-Hosted Automation Platform n8n.

I think it's pronounced n-eight-n, a self-hosted automation platform with a huge number of Integrations. N8n lets you create workflows and automate tasks using a visual interface, and connect different apps and services together. It's like your self-hosted better version of if this than that. You can use JavaScript and its intuitive UI to build a complex automation with any app and data source. It perceives the automations you create in a Postgres or SQLite data database love to see that.

Support the n8n GitHub Repository

You know if I can pick Postgres for something, I will. The amount of Integrations this platform supports is astonishing, just take a look at the list. It's like basically any service you can ever imagine well is probably on this list. Let's say I want to create a post on LinkedIn and also create a post on Reddit, now I will have an automation workflow that triggers the social media post. As you can see, these tools applications are vast. At some point I integrated a financial API with the Google Sheets to create a financial tracking spreadsheet all with this platform. And the best of all, you can self Host this, no knowing charges by number of executions or arbitrary limits or any of that nonsense.

4). Running Machine Learning Models in PostgresML

Support the PostgresML GitHub Repository

The next project I want to share with you is PostgresML. A tool that lets you run machine learning models directly in Postgres. PostgresML is a complete MLOps platform in a Postgres extension. It supports different algorithm for text classification generation summarization. And it also integrates with hugging face and similar platforms. You can find a large language model with your own data without it ever leaving your Postgres database, which is awesome. I think PostgresML is a great solution for anyone who wants to combine the power of machine learning and PostgreSQL.

5). Making Machine Learning Accessible with SuperDuperDB

Support the SuperDuperDB GitHub Repository

Next up is a similar project, it's called SuperDuperDB. It's a new project that aims to make machine Learning Easy and accessible for anyone who uses a database. This is quite similar to PostgresML, at least their goals are, it allows you to create train and deploy machine learning models directly in your existing database. On a positive note, I want to thank you for taking your time to read this article. I hope you've enjoyed it and maybe even discover something new, if you did, please give it a thumbs up and subscribe to my newsletter for more articles like this. And let me know in the comments which open source project was your favorite. And why, or maybe you discovered different tools and projects that you would like to share, I would love to hear from you thanks again for reading, and I'll see you in my next article.

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