Hi readers ๐, welcoming you back to the "Appwrite OSS Fund" series, where we celebrate open-source maintainers. ๐
๐ค What Is OSS Fund?
On the 4th of May, the Appwrite team launched the OSS Fund, an initiative to support open-source project maintainers. Being an open-source company, we wanted to give back to the community and help as many people as we can.
The OSS Fund is an initiative that is very close to our heart.
Hear what our Founder and CEO has to say - The Appwrite Story:
Announcing the Appwrite OSS Fund - Appwrite
Appwrite provides web and mobile developers with a set of easy-to-use and integrate REST APIs to manage their core backend needs.
appwrite.io
๐ข Announcing The Sixth Project
After careful considerations from the committee we are thrilled to announce the sixth project:
Appwrite@appwrite
๐ข Announcing the 6th OSS Fund sponsored project!
It's a pleasure to support projects like @usebottles that makes the life of a developer easier!
๐ OSS Fund is still accepting applications and is here to support open source maintainers - appwrite.io/oss-fund15:00 PM - 08 Sep 2022
๐ค What Is Bottles?
Bottles is an application that allows Windows software to run on Linux. The project uses the Wine compatibility layer that converts WinAPI calls to POSX compatible. Windows software runs natively on Linux without emulation or virtualisation,
The software is installed in controlled environments that mimic the structure of a Windows system, and with technologies such as DXVK, it is possible to natively run applications that make use of DirectX by automatically converting calls to Vulkan.
With Bottles, the goal is to automate the entire process of setting up these technologies and configurations, requiring minimal effort from the user.
๐ค Meet The Maintainer
Mirko Brombin who is a UI / UX Designer from Italy is the maintainer of the project.
Mirko has been passionate about design and technology since he was a child. He has been working as a UI / UX designer for several years with the pleasure of taking care of his passion for design day after day.
Over the years Mirko also started working as a developer for business needs, adding this to his greatest passions.
In his spare time he likes to create projects that can somehow improve the life of those who use Linux distributions. Each of his projects focuses mainly on the user experience.
๐ก How Did The Idea Of Bottles Come Up?
The idea for Bottles came about mainly to meet some of Mirko's needs. After a few years of contributing translations and fixes to other projects, in 2017 he wanted to try to create his own application to test the GTK and Granite toolkits, so he asked himself what his needs were and realised that there was no software that would allow him to manage Wine simply (for an inexperienced user). So he decided to read up on it and after a few months he had made the first version of Bottles, now far from what the project is today.
๐ The Journey So Far
In 2019 Bottles had grown exponentially and many people started using it and providing feedback to improve it, so collecting all the reports Mirko decided to rewrite the project from scratch focusing on the user experience and automating all the more complex operations. One of the big problems with similar applications at that time was the lack of visual feedback of what was happening or having to use multiple tools to get a result. For this reason he re-implemented most of Wine's functionality directly into Bottles, even rewriting it to provide the user with a consistently straightforward user experience without having to switch from one to multiple tools to perform a single operation.
Bottles like most Open Source projects improves with the feedback from the community and evolves based on that, every time a problem arises they think of a way to solve it always keeping UX in mind before anything else.
๐๏ธ Ending Notes
As Mirko continues to work on his project, here something he has advised to everyone who is getting started with open source.
"I would like to use this space to give personal advice to those who want to start contributing to Open Source projects.
Don't be shy, follow a project and try to help based on your knowledge, never think that a small contribution cannot be appreciated. Open Source for me is synonymous with Community and everyone must do their part, even the smallest."
If this story resonates with you or your friend, tell them about OSS Fund, as applications are still open:
Appwrite OSS Fund
Appwrite provides web and mobile developers with a set of easy-to-use and integrate REST APIs to manage their core backend needs.
appwrite.io
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