Episode 139: Manuel Riel on PikaPods, a container hosting service for open source apps

Guest Manuel Riel Panelists Richard Littauer | Justin Dorfman Show
Notes Hello and welcome to Sustain! The podcast where we talk about
sustaining open source for the long haul. Today, we are super
excited to have as our guest, Manuel Riel, joining us from Austria.
Manu ran a web development agency and launched multiple open source
related products, including an invoice processing tool, and a
backup service. He’s also the Co-founder of PikaPods, which is a
container hosting service for open source apps. Manu is with us to
talk about PikaPods. We’ll find out what it does, why it’s needed,
the benefits of having it, the most popular app, and plans he has
in the future for PikaPods. Go ahead and download this episode to
learn more! [00:01:23] Manu tells us his background, what PikaPods
is, and about the apps. [00:03:32] What’s the difference between
Heroku, Netlify, and PikaPods? [00:04:29] Since you can’t run your
own stuff and you can’t edit the apps, Manu explains how this is an
open source marketplace. We hear about PikaPods user base, how long
he’s been up and running, and how many people are using the
platform. [00:06:11] Manu explains the one source of revenue they
provide to open source office. [00:09:06] We hear Manu’s selling
point he pitches to open source maintainers and open source
projects. [00:11:45] Why did Manu choose to work with open source
projects to host when there are other things available to him? Why
PikaPods? [00:13:32] Justin brings up pricing on PikaPods site and
comments a trend with the ones that paid the least had the most
demands. He wonders how Manu deals with that. [00:15:04] Justin
wonders if the services are subsidized by using the BorgBase
infrastructure, and Manu explains how they are totally separate,
and he tells us about his team. [00:16:31] We hear if there are any
collabs with maintainers Manu is working with since there are a lot
of projects he hosts. [00:18:02] Find out PikaPods most popular
app, if there’s a limit, and if bandwidth is an issue. [00:21:17]
Manu shares some things he would like to do in the future with
PikaPods. [00:23:35] How does Manu position himself in the
ecosystem and are there other things that could be used in
collaboration with PikaPods that makes it easier for maintainers?
[00:25:37] Find out where you can follow Manu and PikaPods online.
Quotes [00:10:08] “Hosting is not a good fit for part-time
maintainers because it’s a big responsibility.” [00:12:20] “The
motivating event for me was the Log4j Vulnerability.” Spotlight
[00:26:42] Justin’s spotlight is pydantic, data validation and
settings management using Python type hints. [00:27:10] Richard’s
spotlight is Amna Shamim. [00:27:36] Manu’s spotlight is Uptime
Kuma, a fancy self-hosted monitoring tool. Links SustainOSS
(https://sustainoss.org/) SustainOSS Twitter
(https://twitter.com/SustainOSS?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor)
SustainOSS Discourse (https://discourse.sustainoss.org/)
podcast@sustainoss.org (mailto:podcast@sustainoss.org) Richard
Littauer Twitter
(https://twitter.com/richlitt?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor)
Justin Dorfman Twitter
(https://twitter.com/jdorfman?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor)
PikaPods (https://www.pikapods.com/) PikaPods Twitter
(https://mobile.twitter.com/pikapods) Apache Log4j Vulnerability
(https://status.n-able.com/2021/12/20/apache-log4j-vulnerability-updated-230-p-m-est-december-20-2021/#:~:text=As%20you%20may%20know%2C%20a,potentially%20vulnerable%20to%20this%20exploit.)
pydantic (https://github.com/pydantic/pydantic) Amna Shamim
(https://github.com/pydantic/pydantic) Uptime Kuma
(https://github.com/louislam/uptime-kuma) Credits Produced by
Richard Littauer (https://www.burntfen.com/) Edited by Paul M. Bahr
at Peachtree Sound (https://www.peachtreesound.com/) Show notes by
DeAnn Bahr Peachtree Sound (https://www.peachtreesound.com/)
Special Guest: Manuel Riel.