 Hi, this is Anubhath and today we have with us a special guest from India, Jaskerath Singh, who is founder of Codino. It's an open source project or community. That's building amazing software for social networking. Jaskerath, first of all, welcome to the show. Now, tell us a bit about the project itself. So Codino is an open source software development commentary that desires the potential to change the way other communities use other projects use, create an open source environment and sustainable tools to better align with the end user expectations. So basically this gives prospectors, allowing many other external projects, other communities to use some of the social environments built within Codino, like social media platforms, basically the discussion forums within Codino in customized way. Excellent. But I'm still kind of curious that what exactly is Codino? Is it a project? Is it a platform? Is it a community? Just explain that part of it. Codino is basically a social networking community that takes into the account of only social environment projects like the Donut project, the Codebatch project and the Spansperry project. I got it. Excellent. So basically it's like an open source community that is creating software targeted at social networking solutions. Well, we just make up these softwares, right? So we have projects which any other external communities, any other projects can use those platforms in their own way. So we just provide a set of projects, a set of software, the open source tools to make it available for the other external projects, other communities to, and those things can be used in the customized way since it's open source and it's free. Excellent. Now you mentioned three projects. One of the projects that I am personally interested in is Project Donut. Tell us a bit more about a Donut project. Okay. So Donut is basically an open source feature and highly privacy friendly social media platform. So it is not basically a replication of the Facebook, but it is the own build, the version of the social media platform that has been built for the community oriented collaborations in a customized way. So it's basically built on the not just framework that helps the other communities to set up like, it's a self-hosted project, right? So this helps the external communities, external projects to set up this on their own server and use it for their own community. So this will act as a bridge between their projects and their users of the community. So this is basically a kind of social media platform and this comes with expensive set of library of modules where you can even customize with some external, like we have mentioned, we have an appropriate mechanism inside this Donut platform where you can organize, you can create more features related stuff inside the Donut platform itself with one click. So this is something which even helps you to create your own features, like basic features, functionalities inside the Donut platform. Now, if you look at history, there have been many efforts to create open source solutions for social networking. I mean, Macedon is a very good example, which did not get the kind of traction we expected it to get. So how different is Donut from these open source efforts? The world we currently live in is full of giant technologies and with each passing day, new software or a gadget is brought into the market which tends to improve the people life in one or the other way. Communication technology has enabled new approaches to the external communities, projects, and users in which stakeholders across various sectors are engaged in consensus building and basically in the implementation process. So basically, this Donut projects involves like and allows the users to pass through some of the platform where you can have the one-on-one interaction with their own community. So this is basically a platform which would help the bridge the gap between the communities, their own workings, their own working ethics, and the targeted users which gets involved with the communities. Because for every open source community or every open source projects, the most prioritized thing is their users, right? So and every community usually within the open source is basically depends upon the contribution they receive from the external users. So I think like this is something which would help engage the external users as well with their projects and they would be able to organize their own stuff on this particular self-hosted version of their own Donut on their servers. So this is something which would act as a two-side of the Facebook network which is the social media platform. Okay, so if I'm not wrong, you're not building a next... Okay, so if I'm not wrong, you're not building the next Macedon. You're not building the next Facebook or Twitter. You're actually building open source kind of social media solution or software that others can leverage to build a social network for their own needs. Is that correct? Yes, we are building a kind of a software that people can be benefited from it. Now I got it. So who is the target audience of Donut? If I'm not wrong, you seem to be looking at business to business or B2B space and not at business to consumer or B2C space. Is that correct? Okay, so basically if I talk about the targeted audience, so targeted audience in a sense, like this is available to the communities. Like suppose if I talk about a Linux Foundation community, it has got a quite a large of huge users, right? So to sustain those users with their own communities and to keep them updated about the stuff and engage them with the external stuff like their media or even like the projects, events and other things. So this is something which would help engage the both the external communities as well and as well as the targeted users for those particular communities. And you have also been accepted into Google Summer of Code. What has been that experience so far? That is really interesting even because we are currently in the phase of Google Summer of Code itself. So basically we have been serving around with many major development programs like Google Summer of Code, Google Code in Google Season of Dogs. And even now as I just mentioned, like we are currently in the phase of Google Summer of Code 2020. So I think like participation through these programs have enabled us to grow our community of various developers and other activists. And I think like being a social networking community, it will be social need to interact with various other activists and like researchers, designers, and you know like the developers across the globe. So basically these are the basically platforms for the open source community. And this basically is a contest which is organized by the Google. So where we get a chance to interact with the developers and we seek developers to who could work on our exciting projects. So this is something we seek some kind of contribution from those development programs. I also want to know a bit about how wide is spread is the community. I do understand that it originated from India but tell us a bit about where its developers are. Is it specific to region or it's a global phenomenon? Oh well this is something not really restricted to our country. So this is something globally present. So anyone who feels to like anyone who wants to join we have appropriate like ways of communicating and ways of joining within the community and contribute within the community. So it's all open to the all people across the globe. Now I want to take a step back. I understand a lot about the project. I want to know the story why and when you got the idea to create this project. What problem you saw in the market that you wanted to solve with it? Well I just wanted to know like when I started with this project I was around like 14 years old and the major problem for me was to seek some contribution like how to basically set up the foundation for this particular project. Because I actually got to know about the open source stuff from the one of the contest by the Google which is named as Google Codein. And after that it really made me to research about like how social media platforms are made. Like how about Twitter's, how Facebook and made. So I was wondering like how about if every community and every project have their own Facebook. So this is something which helped me, which motivated me because I started researching out, I started brainstorming around like why there is a need of social environments. Why there is a need of a community bridge between the users, why actually there's a need of you know like basically the sustainability within any community or any project. So this actually motivated and encouraged me to start with this particular projects and with this growing projects we had a chance to integrate the other projects as well like discussion forums with this social media platform and the project which measures the health of the users. So you, so it's all about like getting all in one place. So yeah, even more momentarily like this type of project doesn't exist for now because not really in the open source communities or like open source ecosystem. So this is something, we would be the first community like we are serving this particular platforms and particular projects for external users and communities to use in their own way. Now one of the critical piece of any project especially open source project is funding. So how are you funding or sponsoring the project? Well for now we don't have enough funding like we don't receive enough funding for now about whatever the funding we receive are basically from the development programs and even now like I just had a Google summer of code and those are the things like they usually pays like they support some open source communities who took part space. So this basically we are even like looking forward to have a financial support from the communities some large space communities and where we could help grow our market. We could have grow our development phase. So this is something even now if I talk about I would really like to thank Linux Foundation because the Linux Foundation recently is supporting us and even we got approved for a new like for the Linux Foundation's new community bridge mentorship program where code is participating with the two mentees. So I think this is something we are really excited about. Right that's reality but if you look at open source commercialization of open sources critical to the health of the project and its ecosystem it ensures that the project has some longevity. Do you have any plans to commercialize Donut? Basically yes because currently we have lots of goals you know like we are currently in a phase off to making this reach to some external markets as well making it more viable product at a production level and we are heavily working on this Donut platform and other interlink projects to have a security and whether or not these are related stuff you know like because if any communities use this platform for their own like for on their self. So the very first priority would be to have the security right so security and the privacy is the most important part for any community. So this is something we are really trying to build on and really trying to make it more secure so that this could be reached to the major production level and this could be used by many other communities and projects. Great now we are in the middle of 2020 can you talk about what does your roadmap for the year look like? Basically the very first priority for us would be to seek some funding from the communities and from the projects because funding plays a vital role for for our because you know like we have to because basically for any open source community or project they usually depends upon the contributions they receive from the external users and those are you know like they're usually freely not really paid so basically those are free so so this is something like which would help us to enable and get into the markets and organize some kind of meetups organize some of the development sprints online hackathons where we could introduce the project and we could have the you know like better improvements inside the platforms we are working on. The other thing I include is the going around with the wide scope for the current scenario like if I talk about the artificial intelligence plays is playing a really great importance in every project so I think like adding AI to projects would even enable us to seek some more you know like the growth so this is something we really plan to do this in particular this year. That was great thank you Jasgirath for taking time out and talking to me today. Good luck with your project and I look forward to talk to you again once we hit some of those milestone on your roadmap. Thank you. Thank you, thanks a lot.