March 15, 2022 • 33 mins
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!
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Episode Transcript
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Mario Cunha (00:21):
Hello, and welcome to a new entry of the high tech
low code podcast. On thisepisode, we are going to talk
about the open source localplatform buddy base. And to help
us with that, today, we have thecompany of Michael shanks and
Jack Nash. Mike is the CEO andco founder of polybags. Mike,
thank you very much for joiningus on this podcast. How are you
doing?
Michael Shanks (00:40):
Doing well, today? Thank you.
Mario Cunha (00:42):
Could you tell us a bit about yourself so that
audience could get to know you abit more?
Michael Shanks (00:47):
Yeah, sure. So yeah, I am the CEO and co
founder of buddy bass. I live inBelfast in Northern Ireland, and
I've been here most of my life.
So yeah, I mean, I, I studiedphysics at university, and which
was, you know, I do recommendthat for anyone wanting to
follow a particular career path,but it was interesting, all the
(01:08):
same, and a good background. Andthen I moved into software
development, or pretty much beena software development developer
for about 15 years, up untilvery recently, which my life has
been taken over by, by CEOJudy's so having been doing so
much software developmentrecently. And but that my
background is in engineering.
(01:32):
And that's, that's where I bringa lot of, sort of the
development practices into thelocal space.
Mario Cunha (01:40):
Alright, thank you for that. Now, finally,
geography. How are you doing?
Tiago Neves (01:44):
Hey, man, doing great. And looking forward for
another episode of the firepodcasts? We've been having
great guests. And today, Ibelieve so we're in for another
good episode again, with Mike.
Mario Cunha (01:59):
I believe so too.
But actually, before I startanything, I just need to ask how
do you go from physics tosoftware development?
Michael Shanks (02:07):
Good question. I actually did a lot of software
development when I was a childlike or when I was sitting in my
teens. So I did have a boughtsome background in software
development. But just going intouniversity, I decided that this
was the next was super, superinteresting. I've always been
interested in physics, stillfollow it, and love it. But
(02:31):
ultimately, you have to picksomething vocational, you have
to do have a career unless youwant to do the research. And so
yeah, again, just going back tomy love of software engineering
as a younger person. And that'sthat's how I get back into it
again. So yeah, all right. Allright.
Mario Cunha (02:51):
Okay. Again, thank you both for joining us. But
they I would like to start byasking Mike, if he could tell us
about buddy bass. What are hisorigins?
Michael Shanks (03:02):
Sure, yeah. I mean, we I've been working on
both EPS since really since2019. And but we went full time
project on in about January2020. But, yeah, I come from an
engineering background. And Ispent a lot of time working
(03:23):
inside inside larger companies.
I've always worked at startups,but it's often embedded in
larger companies. And, and whatI, what I always tend to find
was, we were building like, veryeasy applications, like even
just adding fields to forms.
Just just some very simpletasks, but yet, very time
(03:45):
consuming. Even the simple tasksare very time consuming. And I
find myself repeating the samethings over and over again. And
the people, we were working withpaying us a lot of money for
tasks that are frankly, boringfor developer on simple. And it
(04:05):
was it was a lot of wastedeffort. And even back then, like
I'm still No, I like there's ahuge, huge need for custom
software and the world. And sucha huge shortage of developers.
And we're not actually eventraining people fast enough to
keep up with this, this need.
And so, yeah, it was many yearsago that the idea came to me
(04:29):
that you know, I and this iseven before I knew anything
about low code, or even you theword that that existed. And I
just thought there must be aneasier way of doing this and
must be platforms out there. Socoming in when I decided to
start this and I'm really youtake the first steps into
developing a product to makedevelopment easier. And I
(04:53):
started to say the web platformsout there already for this, but
one thing that really struck mewas that there were no open
source options. Not at all. Andthat, for me, like, as a
developer, we take open sourcefor granted. It's always there.
(05:16):
And everything's built on opensource everything, it's, it's,
that's like that for a reason.
And, for me, anytime anyoneneeds to build software, I feel
like they should I own thatsoftware, okay, they should be
(05:38):
able to have ownership of thatof the software that they build
for themselves. And that's onlypossible if you built if you
build with open source, becauseyou have the freedom to take and
use that the code that you'rethat you're about to take code
from other places and build itinto your application, build it
(05:58):
into your software. So for me,the fact that there were new
open source Lugu platforms outthere, it was, it was quite a
shock, because I don't thinkthey're, I don't think there's
actually a viable future andlocal, without open source. And
I believe that the those toolswould be only the things used by
(06:23):
the companies with the deepestpockets, really, unless, unless
it's open source. And I believethat's the only way we can like
we can really push the wholeworld forward. And term in terms
of local is with an open sourceplatform. And so yeah, I mean,
we talk about often people, whenthey think of open source, they
(06:46):
think of free. And then ofcourse, free is, of course free
of cost. And to begin with. Butthe most important thing about
open source is the freedomaspect of it, the freedom to
take the platform and do whatyou want with it. And the fact
(07:07):
that you don't have to, youdon't have to come and ask us to
use our software, you don't haveto ask your legal team if you
can use it. Because it's anaccepted open source licence,
you don't have to ask yourprocurement team if you can buy
it, because you can just use ithere. And that's something we
take for granted. And an opensource all the time, the fact
(07:28):
that whenever we're building,even even just as developers, if
I want to build an applicationtoday, I can pick a database
such as Postgres, for example. Ican just take it, I can use it,
don't have to ask anybody. Andthat's the most important thing
about open sources, that freedomaspect. And again, that's where
(07:51):
that's where this adoption ofopen source, this, this is where
it spreads, this is hardspreads. And the fact that you
can,you can just like I say, you can
take it and use it. I oftencompare us to a platform called
WordPress, I, WordPress is avery popular open source website
builder. And the interestingthing about web or web or
(08:15):
WordPress, WordPress is thatit's not necessarily the best
website builder builder outthere. There are lots of more
modern, and some would saybetter platforms. But it's still
extremely present pervasive, andit's still used. So widespread.
And one of the reasons for thatis, because it's such a vast
(08:36):
plugin ecosystem, it's got aplug in for everything is the
right thing. And, and the otherthing is you can go, you can
walk down your street, where youlive. And there's probably a
WordPress developer there. Okay,they can build a website for
you. It's this ecosystem that'saround WordPress, that makes it
super powerful. And thatecosystem is only possible
(08:59):
because it's open source,because people can take it,
build off the top of it, theycan take it, they can use it for
whatever they want. They canthey can build a business on
building plugins, there are $10million businesses, you built
off the back of WordPressplugins, you know, you can make
a career for yourself being aWordPress consultant. Okay, and
(09:20):
that's, and they don't, theydon't have to ask WordPress for
permission. And so that's reallythe power of open source. It's
the ecosystem and it's thecommunity around it. And and
that's really what is missing inthis in the space of glue code
in general. Okay. All right. Soyeah, that was a lot of very
(09:44):
long winded way of saying OpenSource is awesome.
Mario Cunha (09:50):
But that's what we like. We like to hear heartfelt
answers.
Michael Shanks (09:53):
Yeah. So yeah, no, I so that was that was the
big thing. We But last year, wesaw what was missing in the
space is an open source, an opensource competitor, an open
source option. And you are ourother thesis on this. There are
a lot there are lots of anglesyou can take with with low code.
(10:16):
But we, we like to talk aboutbuddy bass being used by any
developer as well. And when wesay any developer, we really
mean developers of any skill,and even even the word developer
foxes is a very, very broadterm, you can have a back end
(10:36):
developer who hates writingfront end code hates writing
user interfaces. And you canhave a front end developer
equally hits writing, web API'sand connecting to do business.
Or you can just have, quote,unquote, a junior developer,
who's just less experienceddoesn't know how to put the
whole thing together. And sothere are such a broad range of,
(11:01):
of that meaning the termdeveloper, and we see ourselves
as a platform for any developer.
What that actually comes to me.
And in terms of how we build theplatform, is that if you are a
front end developer, you shouldbe able to use buddy base to
(11:24):
build a back end visually. Soyou don't need to know back end
development to build a back end.
Similarly, if you're a back enddeveloper, you don't need to
know front end coding to buildthe front end. Okay, so we have
a visual platform where you canput a full stack web application
together without needing towrite code. Okay. But also, any
(11:47):
developer means full stackdevelopers and developers with
lots of experience. So thatmeans we need to provide those
those coding options. So thoseescape 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 abit of CSS somewhere, your back
(12:08):
end developer, you need toconnect to SQL databases and
rest API's, because you knowhow, and that's your superpower
you should be able to do. Okay,so there are levels to this
platform, whereby you can createeverything without code. When
you need code, you can add us.
(12:29):
And then down the line, wehaven't done this piece yet. But
certainly this year, we enteredout the ability for people to
like, fully write like, they'reentirely new front end
components entirely new back endintegrations like this is full
Pru code, as some people wouldcall it. Just import Phil, Phil
(12:50):
bits of code into the platform.
So the whole idea and this is areally lovely developer
experience experience forbuilding web apps visually, and
backed up by the flexibility andextensibility of code. And that
a proper full experiencedeveloper can write so Yeah,
(13:12):
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 asimple one there. So yeah. But
yeah, that's her before anydeveloper. All
Mario Cunha (13:48):
right. So at the moment, how can someone get
started and initiate theirdatabase journey?
Michael Shanks (13:55):
Yeah, I mean, so again, depending on who you are,
you'll find this in differentways. But you know, the
traditional way is just find awebsite builder. vs.com, people
will find us there. And we'vegot a few different options of
how you can really get started.
First of all, we have our ownSAS platform. So you can go to
(14:16):
our website, you're linkeddirectly to your own SAS
platform, you sign in you, youknow, start building apps
through the web web builder,like it's all there, you don't
have to do anything. You don'thave to stand any infrastructure
up yourself, that's fine. Um,but of course, being open
source, it's like superimportant that we have a really
(14:37):
good self postable product. Andso you should be able to also
take buddy bass installed inyour own your own AWS account
your own Azure account, orwherever you wish. And you can
stand it all up and not run usand again, don't have to ask us
just take it and use it. Goahead. So there's three
(14:59):
different paths there, I'msorry, the southwest at Bethel,
this should add you for for, foranyone with data security
concerns, especially like they,they've got a SQL database or
something on their owninfrastructure that they can
hold open to the public. Theyhave to keep it internal, you
know that it's selfish is alwaysgoing to be really important for
(15:19):
that. But of course, with thecloud, the SAS option, super
fast to get started, and eveneven if you just want to try it
out, and you maybe want to sellbooks later, still recommend
just using the SAS platform tobegin 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 peoplewill find us through our GitHub,
(15:41):
and just instal this directlywith through our documentation,
they never even have to sign upthrough a website or anything
like that. So you don't evenagain, you don't have to tell us
if you're using it. Just takeit. And yeah, so those are
primarily the two ways websiteand on GitHub.
Mario Cunha (16:02):
Okay. Okay. For, for example, for someone
starting to use base, is thereany certification paths that you
have prepared or are preparingfor in the future?
Michael Shanks (16:15):
Yeah, we don't have this at the moment. So this
is definitely something we willtackle over over the next year
or so. And we don't have acertification path there at the
moment. For for context on this,like we, we've gone, we went to
version one in November of lastyear, so we're okay, we're still
still pretty new. To be fair, ittook us it took us basically 20
(16:39):
months to get there. So theytook us almost two years to get
to version one. And that's justbecause of the size of the
products. And but yeah, no, soso we are quite, it's quite a
new platform in terms of youknow, how long we've been in
version one. And we're in theprocess now of really building
that, that education piece, justjust docs and tutorials. And
(17:03):
then once we've got really solidplatform of education, there is
well we'll start to build offthe top of that with training
training programmes, which a lotof large companies ask for us,
ask us just to provide thattraining. And then after that,
that is then when we think aboutcertifications and things like
that. So yeah, a few few stepsto get there. But yeah,
(17:25):
definitely on the radar next fewyears.
Tiago Neves (17:28):
In that case, Mike, I was speaking, what do you see?
The main challenges being interms of that learning curve,
then of many ways?
Michael Shanks (17:40):
The mentor on?
Yeah, I mean, I think that Ithink getting, getting to grips
with Hi, we put together thatdesign sections are is our
biggest challenge at the momentlike, Okay, well, again, depends
which background you're comingfrom. I would say a lot of the
people who come here come tocome to us have existing data
(18:01):
already. So they have some kindof SQL database or some data
somewhere else. So they do havesome the off, there's often more
familiarity around the data sidefor people and connecting to
data. And putting that designthe sorry, the the front end
(18:22):
part together is often thebiggest 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 definitelysomething we're looking out over
the next three to six months toreally improve the experience of
just getting people to movefaster through that user
(18:43):
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 justgetting in the way of any other
question, Marie, but I was justthinking in terms of this
learning curve, I'm I certainthat the community out there is
also a good support for anyonewanting to learn, right?
Michael Shanks (19:15):
For sure. Yeah, that's right. So yeah, our
GitHub, we use a platform calledGitHub discussions, which is
essentially our online forum.
And we we support this directly,the US the company, but also we
have some fantastic communityeffort in there that people will
yo people who we've supportedand want to give back, come on
and answer questions andunhealed people, right. So yeah,
(19:37):
I mean, there's there's alwaysthat we tend to respond to
questions faster than somepeople's priority support plans.
And but that's just the natureof having a large community and
global community that there'salways people there to chip in
and they do and that again, isone of the power that powerful
(19:58):
things about open source.
Mario Cunha (20:03):
That's actually good point, it touches the next
touch our next question. Sofirst to reach them, we go to
our to the GitHub discussionboard, 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&aformat. But you know, we take
any questions from, from how doI do this to, you know, can you
build this feature for me? Andwe will answer, whatever in
(20:35):
there. And we're generally avery transparent company as
well. So
Mario Cunha (20:38):
that's actually a good point. For example, imagine
me I want to start with Buddybass. How do I start go about
and learn it?
Michael Shanks (20:45):
Yeah. Oh, yeah.
So I mean, we do have a wholedocumentation side of things. So
you will go on, follow our Doc'sfollow tutorials. And that's,
you know, that's where we wouldrecommend starting, but by all
means, if you're struggling,that's or even if you just want
to say, Hello, come on, commentsout, it's coming post a question
post. So post your thoughts onGitHub discussions. And we like,
(21:05):
we, especially people, welcomepeople come in, and given their
feedback on their experiences,you know, that's, that's, again,
one of the one of the things wehave gained most about open
source is like, even before,like, even way back before we
were in alpha stages, whereproduct was changing massively.
(21:25):
We were getting people comingalong and trying to build stuff
with it. And sometimes beensuccessful, sometimes not, but
always giving back, giving backfeedback, and telling us what
they thought, reporting bugs?
No, it's just because we weregiven software for free to
people. And often we get that,that value back from them. And
(21:50):
all sorts of forms unconsciouscode contributions, as well. So
yeah, really? Oh, that's great.
Yeah, I mean, it's funny, wedon't, we do actively encourage
code contributions in general,because, because the team, our
team is working full time ondeveloping the product, we tend
(22:11):
to move a lot faster thancommunity contributions. But,
you know, every now and thensomeone will, will drive by and
fix a bug or, you know, the mainand it's, it's fantastic. And
it's so good. But, uh, yeah, soeveryone's getting value here
together and getting us
Tiago Neves (22:30):
Did you see the the contribution events, having
shaped somehow also the productwhere you are today?
Michael Shanks (22:42):
Um, for sure, I think one of the most important
contributions we had early onwas, was single sign on. And
Single Sign On is where, youknow, you would often see if you
log in into website pop up, likesign in with Google or sign in
with Microsoft. So that'sessentially single sign on. I
(23:03):
know a lot of a lot ofcompanies, a lot of open source
projects, or commercial opensource products, they would
often use single sign on as agateway into the paid features
of the product. Like you can useit, they say, you can use the
open source product, but if youwant single sign on, you have to
pay us. And now someone, one ofour community members built it.
(23:29):
So we accepted it. So it's amaybe maybe that would have been
a paid feature. I'm of the I'mof the belief that I would never
have been. But uh, yes, that'sthat's certainly a way in which
the community can can ship orcan ship our products. And on
the other hand, we are as thecompany that that owns the you
(23:50):
owns the code that owns the vastmajority of the contributions,
and we are the gatekeepers, andwe do code review everything
that comes in, and we still makethe decisions and what gets
accepted and what's not, andwhat doesn't. But yes, the
community has a big say, in thatas well.
Mario Cunha (24:07):
This is the part where I will need you to explain
to taking to account that it isan open source based product.
What can you tell me about thelicence? How would it work?
Yeah,
Michael Shanks (24:19):
so we use a licence called GPL. version
three. There are a lot of opensource licences out there. GPL
three is one of the most commonbut to your to be quite broad by
the GPL is what's known as acopyleft licence. And I did say
(24:42):
that right? So it's notcopyright. It's called me and
what what Kobe laughed means isthat if you if you make changes
to our code base, and then youare obliged to also make those
changes use open source. Andalso if you use any of our code
(25:04):
in your own product, and yourproduct also has to be open
source, okay? Now anything thatyou build with Buddy base, you
will that the licence thatdoesn't apply there, if you
build something as buddies, it'sclosed source, it's yours, you
can use it, that's fine. Butyeah, copyleft licences have
this this clause whereby if youlink to our code directly, like
(25:26):
you use the code, or you changethe code that you also have to
make that code open source. Andone of the one of the reasons
are actually the main reasonsfor this, I actually recommend
this as a licence to, to a lotof open source projects. But one
of the reasons for this isbecause it protect provides us
(25:47):
with protection. So it means ifa company comes along, and they
decide, right, I, this is opensource, I'm going to close this
source off, and I'm going tocreate a competitor to Balbus,
then they're not licenced to doso. Because as soon as they make
(26:09):
a change to the code, andwhether it's their own branding
or anything, they have to makethat open source as well. And
they can do that they can go offand do that, and they can still
be a competitor. But any changesthey make, we also benefit from
because, you know, if they've,they've done a really good
feature, we can pull it into ourcode base as well. So there's no
(26:29):
advantage to be gained fromsomeone forking the project.
Essentially. If it's really,really customed to them, that's
fine. There's no reason why theyshouldn't. We don't we don't
have to take that change. Butwe're happy for them for them to
make the change. But yeah, sothat copyleft licences probably
(26:53):
provide protection against that.
If you take another example ofanother licence, for example,
MIT, just probably the mostloose licence, the most
permissive licence out there,it's about it's about 10 lines,
basically says you can dowhatever you like, just don't to
us, is basically what it says.
(27:14):
No, if, if we were if we wereMIT licenced, then somebody
could just take our entire codebase, do what they want to close
it off, sell it, and rebranded.
And yeah, and those actuallycompete 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 tomy 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, youknow, our mission as a company,
is to create the world's largestecosystem for business
applications. Okay. So rightnow, we're building that core
platform, all the things thatyou can do with believers, you
(28:02):
can build a study base. Now, Italked earlier by that
ecosystem, and it's ourecosystem, 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 ofplugins off the top. Because
(28:24):
there's millions of plugins,there's millions of integrations
components is really, reallywhat people can, you know, other
companies, other software cannotreplicate. And that's huge
community is what can't bereplicated. And so yeah, we're,
it's really building thisecosystem on top, we've got a
really solid core platform atthe moment. But allowing people
(28:45):
to extend it right there andintegrations, write their own
components, but also write theirown full application templates.
And so again, but but it was afull stack. So we want people to
come along, build, you know, aCRM for podcasting. Okay. They
(29:09):
can put that on a marketplacesomewhere, maybe with
marketplace that we will host inthe future, potentially. And
other people can just one clickdeploy their CRM, podcasting,
CRM template, and they have athey have software for for, you
know, podcasting CRM. Yeah.
It's, it's, again, providingthis ecosystem of applications
(29:31):
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'reessentially vertical slices of
(29:53):
an industry. So a CRM specificto certain industry or you know,
even a holiday of prove a lap.
Okay, there are SAS platformsout there that you pay, you pay
a monthly subscription for. Butin a world where you've got, you
know, 1000s and 1000s of thesetemplates, like full web app
(30:14):
templates for Buddy base, if youalready pay a licence to buddy
base on our cloud platform, oryou're just self hosting for
free yourself, you can just pullthe you don't need to, you don't
need to buy another subscriptionsubscription, you've got an
you've got a full webapplication template right there
that you can pull in and use.
(30:36):
And it's ready to go. So that issomewhere, we as part of our
ecosystem, that is where we willgo. And again, just enabling
people to just build out anykind of application, any kind of
new business application on topof buddy this with any
(30:57):
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, sopeople always kind of try to see
so where does Buddy best fit?
And so how, how, how does thiscompare to basically so similar?
Or other low codes, at leastsolutions out there? What do you
(31:30):
think are the best fits? Notspecifically? What does it
compare with? But what do yousee 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 ahuge a huge array of software,
right. But if you narrow thatdown to building web
applications, then that thatnarrows the field considerably,
like you're not building achatbot. It's not a local
(32:06):
chatbot builder, builder. Okay.
So you narrow the field down toweb application builders, okay.
Then if you think about, it's afull stack builder. So you can
build them a tire on an entireapplication on buddy base alone
without having to go anywhereelse. It also connects really
well with existing data sources.
So sequel and unrest. And sowhen you when you start, and
(32:32):
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 buildbuild web apps, then again,
narrowing the fields of thingsthat that you can and can't do
with or that you can do withDBS. And so, yeah, and then if
(32:55):
you finally are open source ontop of that, then you'll find
that there's no one else. So. Soit's a Saturday. It's a matrix
of features of Orinda. And it'sthe it's for developers, it's
for any developers, it's fullstack 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 bigthank you to everyone who is
listening and hope you can joinus on our next episode of high
tech local podcast, where asalways, we'll talk about more
topics of the tech universe. Seeyou soon. Thanks, Mike. You guys
Hello, and welcome to a new entry of the high tech
low code podcast. On thisepisode, we are going to talk
about the open source localplatform buddy base. And to help
us with that, today, we have thecompany of Michael shanks and
Jack Nash. Mike is the CEO andco founder of polybags. Mike,
thank you very much for joiningus on this podcast. How are you
doing?
Michael Shanks (00:40):
Doing well, today? Thank you.
Mario Cunha (00:42):
Could you tell us a bit about yourself so that
audience could get to know you abit more?
Michael Shanks (00:47):
Yeah, sure. So yeah, I am the CEO and co
founder of buddy bass. I live inBelfast in Northern Ireland, and
I've been here most of my life.
So yeah, I mean, I, I studiedphysics at university, and which
was, you know, I do recommendthat for anyone wanting to
follow a particular career path,but it was interesting, all the
(01:08):
same, and a good background. Andthen I moved into software
development, or pretty much beena software development developer
for about 15 years, up untilvery recently, which my life has
been taken over by, by CEOJudy's so having been doing so
much software developmentrecently. And but that my
background is in engineering.
(01:32):
And that's, that's where I bringa lot of, sort of the
development practices into thelocal space.
Mario Cunha (01:40):
Alright, thank you for that. Now, finally,
geography. How are you doing?
Tiago Neves (01:44):
Hey, man, doing great. And looking forward for
another episode of the firepodcasts? We've been having
great guests. And today, Ibelieve so we're in for another
good episode again, with Mike.
Mario Cunha (01:59):
I believe so too.
But actually, before I startanything, I just need to ask how
do you go from physics tosoftware development?
Michael Shanks (02:07):
Good question. I actually did a lot of software
development when I was a childlike or when I was sitting in my
teens. So I did have a boughtsome background in software
development. But just going intouniversity, I decided that this
was the next was super, superinteresting. I've always been
interested in physics, stillfollow it, and love it. But
(02:31):
ultimately, you have to picksomething vocational, you have
to do have a career unless youwant to do the research. And so
yeah, again, just going back tomy love of software engineering
as a younger person. And that'sthat's how I get back into it
again. So yeah, all right. Allright.
Mario Cunha (02:51):
Okay. Again, thank you both for joining us. But
they I would like to start byasking Mike, if he could tell us
about buddy bass. What are hisorigins?
Michael Shanks (03:02):
Sure, yeah. I mean, we I've been working on
both EPS since really since2019. And but we went full time
project on in about January2020. But, yeah, I come from an
engineering background. And Ispent a lot of time working
(03:23):
inside inside larger companies.
I've always worked at startups,but it's often embedded in
larger companies. And, and whatI, what I always tend to find
was, we were building like, veryeasy applications, like even
just adding fields to forms.
Just just some very simpletasks, but yet, very time
(03:45):
consuming. Even the simple tasksare very time consuming. And I
find myself repeating the samethings over and over again. And
the people, we were working withpaying us a lot of money for
tasks that are frankly, boringfor developer on simple. And it
(04:05):
was it was a lot of wastedeffort. And even back then, like
I'm still No, I like there's ahuge, huge need for custom
software and the world. And sucha huge shortage of developers.
And we're not actually eventraining people fast enough to
keep up with this, this need.
And so, yeah, it was many yearsago that the idea came to me
(04:29):
that you know, I and this iseven before I knew anything
about low code, or even you theword that that existed. And I
just thought there must be aneasier way of doing this and
must be platforms out there. Socoming in when I decided to
start this and I'm really youtake the first steps into
developing a product to makedevelopment easier. And I
(04:53):
started to say the web platformsout there already for this, but
one thing that really struck mewas that there were no open
source options. Not at all. Andthat, for me, like, as a
developer, we take open sourcefor granted. It's always there.
(05:16):
And everything's built on opensource everything, it's, it's,
that's like that for a reason.
And, for me, anytime anyoneneeds to build software, I feel
like they should I own thatsoftware, okay, they should be
(05:38):
able to have ownership of thatof the software that they build
for themselves. And that's onlypossible if you built if you
build with open source, becauseyou have the freedom to take and
use that the code that you'rethat you're about to take code
from other places and build itinto your application, build it
(05:58):
into your software. So for me,the fact that there were new
open source Lugu platforms outthere, it was, it was quite a
shock, because I don't thinkthey're, I don't think there's
actually a viable future andlocal, without open source. And
I believe that the those toolswould be only the things used by
(06:23):
the companies with the deepestpockets, really, unless, unless
it's open source. And I believethat's the only way we can like
we can really push the wholeworld forward. And term in terms
of local is with an open sourceplatform. And so yeah, I mean,
we talk about often people, whenthey think of open source, they
(06:46):
think of free. And then ofcourse, free is, of course free
of cost. And to begin with. Butthe most important thing about
open source is the freedomaspect of it, the freedom to
take the platform and do whatyou want with it. And the fact
(07:07):
that you don't have to, youdon't have to come and ask us to
use our software, you don't haveto ask your legal team if you
can use it. Because it's anaccepted open source licence,
you don't have to ask yourprocurement team if you can buy
it, because you can just use ithere. And that's something we
take for granted. And an opensource all the time, the fact
(07:28):
that whenever we're building,even even just as developers, if
I want to build an applicationtoday, I can pick a database
such as Postgres, for example. Ican just take it, I can use it,
don't have to ask anybody. Andthat's the most important thing
about open sources, that freedomaspect. And again, that's where
(07:51):
that's where this adoption ofopen source, this, this is where
it spreads, this is hardspreads. And the fact that you
can,you can just like I say, you can
take it and use it. I oftencompare us to a platform called
WordPress, I, WordPress is avery popular open source website
builder. And the interestingthing about web or web or
(08:15):
WordPress, WordPress is thatit's not necessarily the best
website builder builder outthere. There are lots of more
modern, and some would saybetter platforms. But it's still
extremely present pervasive, andit's still used. So widespread.
And one of the reasons for thatis, because it's such a vast
(08:36):
plugin ecosystem, it's got aplug in for everything is the
right thing. And, and the otherthing is you can go, you can
walk down your street, where youlive. And there's probably a
WordPress developer there. Okay,they can build a website for
you. It's this ecosystem that'saround WordPress, that makes it
super powerful. And thatecosystem is only possible
(08:59):
because it's open source,because people can take it,
build off the top of it, theycan take it, they can use it for
whatever they want. They canthey can build a business on
building plugins, there are $10million businesses, you built
off the back of WordPressplugins, you know, you can make
a career for yourself being aWordPress consultant. Okay, and
(09:20):
that's, and they don't, theydon't have to ask WordPress for
permission. And so that's reallythe power of open source. It's
the ecosystem and it's thecommunity around it. And and
that's really what is missing inthis in the space of glue code
in general. Okay. All right. Soyeah, that was a lot of very
(09:44):
long winded way of saying OpenSource is awesome.
Mario Cunha (09:50):
But that's what we like. We like to hear heartfelt
answers.
Michael Shanks (09:53):
Yeah. So yeah, no, I so that was that was the
big thing. We But last year, wesaw what was missing in the
space is an open source, an opensource competitor, an open
source option. And you are ourother thesis on this. There are
a lot there are lots of anglesyou can take with with low code.
(10:16):
But we, we like to talk aboutbuddy bass being used by any
developer as well. And when wesay any developer, we really
mean developers of any skill,and even even the word developer
foxes is a very, very broadterm, you can have a back end
(10:36):
developer who hates writingfront end code hates writing
user interfaces. And you canhave a front end developer
equally hits writing, web API'sand connecting to do business.
Or you can just have, quote,unquote, a junior developer,
who's just less experienceddoesn't know how to put the
whole thing together. And sothere are such a broad range of,
(11:01):
of that meaning the termdeveloper, and we see ourselves
as a platform for any developer.
What that actually comes to me.
And in terms of how we build theplatform, is that if you are a
front end developer, you shouldbe able to use buddy base to
(11:24):
build a back end visually. Soyou don't need to know back end
development to build a back end.
Similarly, if you're a back enddeveloper, you don't need to
know front end coding to buildthe front end. Okay, so we have
a visual platform where you canput a full stack web application
together without needing towrite code. Okay. But also, any
(11:47):
developer means full stackdevelopers and developers with
lots of experience. So thatmeans we need to provide those
those coding options. So thoseescape 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 abit of CSS somewhere, your back
(12:08):
end developer, you need toconnect to SQL databases and
rest API's, because you knowhow, and that's your superpower
you should be able to do. Okay,so there are levels to this
platform, whereby you can createeverything without code. When
you need code, you can add us.
(12:29):
And then down the line, wehaven't done this piece yet. But
certainly this year, we enteredout the ability for people to
like, fully write like, they'reentirely new front end
components entirely new back endintegrations like this is full
Pru code, as some people wouldcall it. Just import Phil, Phil
(12:50):
bits of code into the platform.
So the whole idea and this is areally lovely developer
experience experience forbuilding web apps visually, and
backed up by the flexibility andextensibility of code. And that
a proper full experiencedeveloper can write so Yeah,
(13:12):
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 asimple one there. So yeah. But
yeah, that's her before anydeveloper. All
Mario Cunha (13:48):
right. So at the moment, how can someone get
started and initiate theirdatabase journey?
Michael Shanks (13:55):
Yeah, I mean, so again, depending on who you are,
you'll find this in differentways. But you know, the
traditional way is just find awebsite builder. vs.com, people
will find us there. And we'vegot a few different options of
how you can really get started.
First of all, we have our ownSAS platform. So you can go to
(14:16):
our website, you're linkeddirectly to your own SAS
platform, you sign in you, youknow, start building apps
through the web web builder,like it's all there, you don't
have to do anything. You don'thave to stand any infrastructure
up yourself, that's fine. Um,but of course, being open
source, it's like superimportant that we have a really
(14:37):
good self postable product. Andso you should be able to also
take buddy bass installed inyour own your own AWS account
your own Azure account, orwherever you wish. And you can
stand it all up and not run usand again, don't have to ask us
just take it and use it. Goahead. So there's three
(14:59):
different paths there, I'msorry, the southwest at Bethel,
this should add you for for, foranyone with data security
concerns, especially like they,they've got a SQL database or
something on their owninfrastructure that they can
hold open to the public. Theyhave to keep it internal, you
know that it's selfish is alwaysgoing to be really important for
(15:19):
that. But of course, with thecloud, the SAS option, super
fast to get started, and eveneven if you just want to try it
out, and you maybe want to sellbooks later, still recommend
just using the SAS platform tobegin 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 peoplewill find us through our GitHub,
(15:41):
and just instal this directlywith through our documentation,
they never even have to sign upthrough a website or anything
like that. So you don't evenagain, you don't have to tell us
if you're using it. Just takeit. And yeah, so those are
primarily the two ways websiteand on GitHub.
Mario Cunha (16:02):
Okay. Okay. For, for example, for someone
starting to use base, is thereany certification paths that you
have prepared or are preparingfor in the future?
Michael Shanks (16:15):
Yeah, we don't have this at the moment. So this
is definitely something we willtackle over over the next year
or so. And we don't have acertification path there at the
moment. For for context on this,like we, we've gone, we went to
version one in November of lastyear, so we're okay, we're still
still pretty new. To be fair, ittook us it took us basically 20
(16:39):
months to get there. So theytook us almost two years to get
to version one. And that's justbecause of the size of the
products. And but yeah, no, soso we are quite, it's quite a
new platform in terms of youknow, how long we've been in
version one. And we're in theprocess now of really building
that, that education piece, justjust docs and tutorials. And
(17:03):
then once we've got really solidplatform of education, there is
well we'll start to build offthe top of that with training
training programmes, which a lotof large companies ask for us,
ask us just to provide thattraining. And then after that,
that is then when we think aboutcertifications and things like
that. So yeah, a few few stepsto get there. But yeah,
(17:25):
definitely on the radar next fewyears.
Tiago Neves (17:28):
In that case, Mike, I was speaking, what do you see?
The main challenges being interms of that learning curve,
then of many ways?
Michael Shanks (17:40):
The mentor on?
Yeah, I mean, I think that Ithink getting, getting to grips
with Hi, we put together thatdesign sections are is our
biggest challenge at the momentlike, Okay, well, again, depends
which background you're comingfrom. I would say a lot of the
people who come here come tocome to us have existing data
(18:01):
already. So they have some kindof SQL database or some data
somewhere else. So they do havesome the off, there's often more
familiarity around the data sidefor people and connecting to
data. And putting that designthe sorry, the the front end
(18:22):
part together is often thebiggest 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 definitelysomething we're looking out over
the next three to six months toreally improve the experience of
just getting people to movefaster through that user
(18:43):
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 justgetting in the way of any other
question, Marie, but I was justthinking in terms of this
learning curve, I'm I certainthat the community out there is
also a good support for anyonewanting to learn, right?
Michael Shanks (19:15):
For sure. Yeah, that's right. So yeah, our
GitHub, we use a platform calledGitHub discussions, which is
essentially our online forum.
And we we support this directly,the US the company, but also we
have some fantastic communityeffort in there that people will
yo people who we've supportedand want to give back, come on
and answer questions andunhealed people, right. So yeah,
(19:37):
I mean, there's there's alwaysthat we tend to respond to
questions faster than somepeople's priority support plans.
And but that's just the natureof having a large community and
global community that there'salways people there to chip in
and they do and that again, isone of the power that powerful
(19:58):
things about open source.
Mario Cunha (20:03):
That's actually good point, it touches the next
touch our next question. Sofirst to reach them, we go to
our to the GitHub discussionboard, 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&aformat. But you know, we take
any questions from, from how doI do this to, you know, can you
build this feature for me? Andwe will answer, whatever in
(20:35):
there. And we're generally avery transparent company as
well. So
Mario Cunha (20:38):
that's actually a good point. For example, imagine
me I want to start with Buddybass. How do I start go about
and learn it?
Michael Shanks (20:45):
Yeah. Oh, yeah.
So I mean, we do have a wholedocumentation side of things. So
you will go on, follow our Doc'sfollow tutorials. And that's,
you know, that's where we wouldrecommend starting, but by all
means, if you're struggling,that's or even if you just want
to say, Hello, come on, commentsout, it's coming post a question
post. So post your thoughts onGitHub discussions. And we like,
(21:05):
we, especially people, welcomepeople come in, and given their
feedback on their experiences,you know, that's, that's, again,
one of the one of the things wehave gained most about open
source is like, even before,like, even way back before we
were in alpha stages, whereproduct was changing massively.
(21:25):
We were getting people comingalong and trying to build stuff
with it. And sometimes beensuccessful, sometimes not, but
always giving back, giving backfeedback, and telling us what
they thought, reporting bugs?
No, it's just because we weregiven software for free to
people. And often we get that,that value back from them. And
(21:50):
all sorts of forms unconsciouscode contributions, as well. So
yeah, really? Oh, that's great.
Yeah, I mean, it's funny, wedon't, we do actively encourage
code contributions in general,because, because the team, our
team is working full time ondeveloping the product, we tend
(22:11):
to move a lot faster thancommunity contributions. But,
you know, every now and thensomeone will, will drive by and
fix a bug or, you know, the mainand it's, it's fantastic. And
it's so good. But, uh, yeah, soeveryone's getting value here
together and getting us
Tiago Neves (22:30):
Did you see the the contribution events, having
shaped somehow also the productwhere you are today?
Michael Shanks (22:42):
Um, for sure, I think one of the most important
contributions we had early onwas, was single sign on. And
Single Sign On is where, youknow, you would often see if you
log in into website pop up, likesign in with Google or sign in
with Microsoft. So that'sessentially single sign on. I
(23:03):
know a lot of a lot ofcompanies, a lot of open source
projects, or commercial opensource products, they would
often use single sign on as agateway into the paid features
of the product. Like you can useit, they say, you can use the
open source product, but if youwant single sign on, you have to
pay us. And now someone, one ofour community members built it.
(23:29):
So we accepted it. So it's amaybe maybe that would have been
a paid feature. I'm of the I'mof the belief that I would never
have been. But uh, yes, that'sthat's certainly a way in which
the community can can ship orcan ship our products. And on
the other hand, we are as thecompany that that owns the you
(23:50):
owns the code that owns the vastmajority of the contributions,
and we are the gatekeepers, andwe do code review everything
that comes in, and we still makethe decisions and what gets
accepted and what's not, andwhat doesn't. But yes, the
community has a big say, in thatas well.
Mario Cunha (24:07):
This is the part where I will need you to explain
to taking to account that it isan open source based product.
What can you tell me about thelicence? How would it work?
Yeah,
Michael Shanks (24:19):
so we use a licence called GPL. version
three. There are a lot of opensource licences out there. GPL
three is one of the most commonbut to your to be quite broad by
the GPL is what's known as acopyleft licence. And I did say
(24:42):
that right? So it's notcopyright. It's called me and
what what Kobe laughed means isthat if you if you make changes
to our code base, and then youare obliged to also make those
changes use open source. Andalso if you use any of our code
(25:04):
in your own product, and yourproduct also has to be open
source, okay? Now anything thatyou build with Buddy base, you
will that the licence thatdoesn't apply there, if you
build something as buddies, it'sclosed source, it's yours, you
can use it, that's fine. Butyeah, copyleft licences have
this this clause whereby if youlink to our code directly, like
(25:26):
you use the code, or you changethe code that you also have to
make that code open source. Andone of the one of the reasons
are actually the main reasonsfor this, I actually recommend
this as a licence to, to a lotof open source projects. But one
of the reasons for this isbecause it protect provides us
(25:47):
with protection. So it means ifa company comes along, and they
decide, right, I, this is opensource, I'm going to close this
source off, and I'm going tocreate a competitor to Balbus,
then they're not licenced to doso. Because as soon as they make
(26:09):
a change to the code, andwhether it's their own branding
or anything, they have to makethat open source as well. And
they can do that they can go offand do that, and they can still
be a competitor. But any changesthey make, we also benefit from
because, you know, if they've,they've done a really good
feature, we can pull it into ourcode base as well. So there's no
(26:29):
advantage to be gained fromsomeone forking the project.
Essentially. If it's really,really customed to them, that's
fine. There's no reason why theyshouldn't. We don't we don't
have to take that change. Butwe're happy for them for them to
make the change. But yeah, sothat copyleft licences probably
(26:53):
provide protection against that.
If you take another example ofanother licence, for example,
MIT, just probably the mostloose licence, the most
permissive licence out there,it's about it's about 10 lines,
basically says you can dowhatever you like, just don't to
us, is basically what it says.
(27:14):
No, if, if we were if we wereMIT licenced, then somebody
could just take our entire codebase, do what they want to close
it off, sell it, and rebranded.
And yeah, and those actuallycompete 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 tomy 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, youknow, our mission as a company,
is to create the world's largestecosystem for business
applications. Okay. So rightnow, we're building that core
platform, all the things thatyou can do with believers, you
(28:02):
can build a study base. Now, Italked earlier by that
ecosystem, and it's ourecosystem, 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 ofplugins off the top. Because
(28:24):
there's millions of plugins,there's millions of integrations
components is really, reallywhat people can, you know, other
companies, other software cannotreplicate. And that's huge
community is what can't bereplicated. And so yeah, we're,
it's really building thisecosystem on top, we've got a
really solid core platform atthe moment. But allowing people
(28:45):
to extend it right there andintegrations, write their own
components, but also write theirown full application templates.
And so again, but but it was afull stack. So we want people to
come along, build, you know, aCRM for podcasting. Okay. They
(29:09):
can put that on a marketplacesomewhere, maybe with
marketplace that we will host inthe future, potentially. And
other people can just one clickdeploy their CRM, podcasting,
CRM template, and they have athey have software for for, you
know, podcasting CRM. Yeah.
It's, it's, again, providingthis ecosystem of applications
(29:31):
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'reessentially vertical slices of
(29:53):
an industry. So a CRM specificto certain industry or you know,
even a holiday of prove a lap.
Okay, there are SAS platformsout there that you pay, you pay
a monthly subscription for. Butin a world where you've got, you
know, 1000s and 1000s of thesetemplates, like full web app
(30:14):
templates for Buddy base, if youalready pay a licence to buddy
base on our cloud platform, oryou're just self hosting for
free yourself, you can just pullthe you don't need to, you don't
need to buy another subscriptionsubscription, you've got an
you've got a full webapplication template right there
that you can pull in and use.
(30:36):
And it's ready to go. So that issomewhere, we as part of our
ecosystem, that is where we willgo. And again, just enabling
people to just build out anykind of application, any kind of
new business application on topof buddy this with any
(30:57):
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, sopeople always kind of try to see
so where does Buddy best fit?
And so how, how, how does thiscompare to basically so similar?
Or other low codes, at leastsolutions out there? What do you
(31:30):
think are the best fits? Notspecifically? What does it
compare with? But what do yousee 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 ahuge a huge array of software,
right. But if you narrow thatdown to building web
applications, then that thatnarrows the field considerably,
like you're not building achatbot. It's not a local
(32:06):
chatbot builder, builder. Okay.
So you narrow the field down toweb application builders, okay.
Then if you think about, it's afull stack builder. So you can
build them a tire on an entireapplication on buddy base alone
without having to go anywhereelse. It also connects really
well with existing data sources.
So sequel and unrest. And sowhen you when you start, and
(32:32):
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 buildbuild web apps, then again,
narrowing the fields of thingsthat that you can and can't do
with or that you can do withDBS. And so, yeah, and then if
(32:55):
you finally are open source ontop of that, then you'll find
that there's no one else. So. Soit's a Saturday. It's a matrix
of features of Orinda. And it'sthe it's for developers, it's
for any developers, it's fullstack 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 bigthank you to everyone who is
listening and hope you can joinus on our next episode of high
tech local podcast, where asalways, we'll talk about more
topics of the tech universe. Seeyou soon. Thanks, Mike. You guys
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