Building Open Source & Business

My journey as a developer started with attending events like PyCon during the early days of my career. It was early 2015-16.

These gatherings were invaluable, allowing me to learn from experienced developers, exchange ideas, and shape my understanding of the tech world. Such events helped me grow, build connections, and understand the importance of open-source contributions.

Recently, I had the opportunity to attend the 5-year celebration of FOSS United, where I met Kailash Nadh, the CTO of Zerodha. As someone who began with FOSS, worked as a developer for a decade, and eventually started my own company, Productlogz, I wanted to explore ways to give back to the community that helped me so much.

Kailash shared a simple but valuable piece of advice:

Build an open-source tool that benefits both Productlogz and the FOSS community. Then, promote it at these meetups.

This struck a chord with me. Often, the best strategies are the simplest—contributing to open source not only benefits the community but also builds trust, credibility, and visibility for our own work. It’s a way of growing together.

Besides the insightful conversations, I had a great time catching up with friends, enjoying some good food, and learning about various FOSS chapters across India. Seeing how dedicated people are to spreading awareness about free and open-source software was truly inspiring.

Now, my challenge is to identify and build an open-source tool that can serve both Productlogz users and the larger FOSS ecosystem. If you have any ideas, I’d love to hear them!

If you’re a developer or entrepreneur, here’s a simple takeaway—attend these meetups. You’ll leave with new ideas, great connections, and maybe even a bit of free marketing advice from industry veterans!

During the event, I also came across Ente—a really cool project. It’s an end-to-end encrypted photo backup and sync solution, unlike Google Photos. It’s truly multiplatform, unlike iCloud Photos, and fully open-source, making it a great alternative for privacy-conscious users looking for a reliable photo storage solution.