How to Create Open Source Applications with Free Cloud Resources

The dream of creating an application, sharing its source code, and letting a community contribute – all without breaking the bank – is more accessible than ever. Thanks to the generosity of cloud providers and a robust open-source ecosystem, you can now build, host, and maintain dynamic web applications for free.

This guide will walk you through the essential components and how to stitch them together for a truly open, free, and collaborative project.

The Core Philosophy: Separating Concerns

The secret to a scalable and maintainable open-source application with dynamic data lies in separating your concerns:

1. Application Code: This is your frontend (what users see) and your backend (what processes data). This code lives openly on platforms like GitHub.
2. Application Data: This is the information your application uses and generates. For dynamic data, it needs to live in a dedicated database, not directly within your code repository.
3. Deployment & Hosting: The infrastructure that makes your application accessible on the internet.

By adhering to this separation, you gain flexibility, scalability, and security, all while maximizing free tiers.

Essential Components and Free Resources

Let’s explore the key components you’ll need and the fantastic free services available for each.

1. Version Control & Collaboration: GitHub

• Role: The heart of your open-source project. GitHub (or GitLab, Bitbucket) is where your application’s source code lives. It provides version control, issue tracking, pull requests for collaboration, and excellent visibility for your project.
• Why it’s free: Public repositories on GitHub are completely free and offer virtually unlimited storage for code.
• How to use it:
  • Create a public repository for your frontend code.
  • Create another (or a sub-directory in the same) public repository for your backend code (e.g., your Cloud Functions).
  • Use Git for all your code changes, commits, and pushes.

2. Frontend Hosting: Making Your UI Public

• Role: To serve your user interface (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, React/Vue/Angular bundles) to anyone with a web browser. These are typically “static sites” even if they’re interactive, because the server simply sends files without complex processing.
• Free Resources:
  • GitHub Pages: Simplest for projects directly hosted on GitHub. Integrates seamlessly with your repository.
  • Netlify: Offers generous free tiers, continuous deployment from Git, custom domains, and serverless functions (more on this later). Excellent for modern web apps.
  • Vercel: Similar to Netlify, highly optimized for frontend frameworks (especially Next.js/React), with excellent developer experience and free tier.
• How to use it:
  • Connect your GitHub repository to your chosen hosting service.
  • Configure the build command (e.g., npm run build for React) and the publish directory.
  • Every time you push new code to your designated branch (e.g., main), the service automatically builds and deploys your updated frontend.

3. Backend Logic & APIs: Empowering Dynamic Features

• Role: Your backend handles server-side logic, data validation, interaction with the database, and exposing APIs for your frontend. It’s crucial for securely handling user data submissions.
• Free Resources (Serverless Functions are ideal for free tiers):
  • Firebase Cloud Functions (Google Cloud Functions for Firebase): Deeply integrated with Firestore (our database choice). Offers a very generous free tier (2M invocations/month, 400,000 GB-seconds, 200,000 CPU-seconds). Perfect for event-driven microservices.
  • Netlify Functions / Vercel Functions (AWS Lambda/Cloudflare Workers under the hood): If you’re already using Netlify or Vercel for frontend hosting, their built-in functions are incredibly convenient, also offering free tiers for serverless execution.
  • Render / Heroku (Free tiers may vary or be limited): Older PaaS options that used to offer perpetually free tiers, but these have become more restrictive or require credit card verification. Serverless functions are generally more reliable for long-term free usage.
• How to use it:
  • Write your backend logic as small, self-contained functions (e.g., in Node.js, Python).
  • Deploy these functions to your chosen serverless platform. They will expose an HTTP endpoint (API) that your frontend can call.
  • The code for these functions will live in your GitHub repository, often with their own CI/CD pipeline for automatic deployment on code changes.

4. Dynamic Data Storage: Your “Live” Database

• Role: To persistently store your application’s data (e.g., memorial entries, user profiles, comments). This is where your data lives, separate from your code, and is designed for efficient reading, writing, and querying.
• Free Resources (Crucial for user-updateable data):
  • Google Cloud Firestore: A NoSQL document database that is incredibly generous with its free tier (1 GiB storage, 50k reads/day, 20k writes/day, 20k deletes/day). It’s scalable, offers real-time updates, and integrates seamlessly with Firebase Cloud Functions. Highly recommended for your use case.
  • Supabase: An open-source Firebase alternative providing PostgreSQL databases, authentication, and API generation. Offers a free tier that’s excellent for small projects.
  • PlanetScale: Offers a “serverless MySQL” experience with a generous free tier for small databases, focusing on developer experience and branching.
  • MongoDB Atlas: Provides a free tier for MongoDB, a popular NoSQL database.
• How to use it:
  • Set up a database instance in your chosen provider (e.g., create a Firestore database in your Firebase project).
  • Crucially, configure security rules:
    • Public Read: Allow anyone to read your data (e.g., allow read: if true; for your memorials collection).
    • Secure Write: Only allow authenticated requests from your backend function to write data. This protects your database from direct, unauthorized public manipulation.

Putting It All Together: The User Update Flow

Let’s illustrate how a user update (e.g., adding a new memorial) would flow through this architecture:

1. User Action (Frontend): A user fills out a form on your frontend application (hosted on Netlify/Vercel) and clicks “Submit.”
2. API Call (Frontend to Backend): Your frontend JavaScript sends an HTTP POST request containing the new memorial data to the public URL of your Firebase Cloud Function (the backend).
3. Backend Processing (Cloud Function):
   • The Cloud Function receives the request.
   • It performs any necessary validation (e.g., checking data types, basic spam prevention like reCAPTCHA verification if implemented).
   • It then uses its authorized access (via the Firebase Admin SDK) to write the new memorial data as a document into your Firestore database.
   • It sends a success or error response back to the frontend.
4. Data Persistence (Firestore): The new memorial is now stored in Firestore.
5. Real-time Update (Frontend – Optional but common): If your frontend is set up to listen for real-time updates from Firestore (using onSnapshot), the new memorial will immediately appear in the public table view for all active users without a page refresh.

Why This is Better Than GitHub for Live Data

• Security: Your database credentials are never exposed in the frontend. Writes are controlled and validated by your backend.
• Concurrency: Databases are built to handle multiple users writing data simultaneously without conflicts or data loss.
• Scalability: Each component (static hosting, serverless functions, database) scales independently and automatically to handle traffic fluctuations.
• Efficiency: Databases are optimized for querying and updating specific records, unlike Git which operates on entire files.
• No CI/CD Loops: User data updates do not trigger new deployments of your application, ensuring stable operation.

Going Fully Open Source

To truly make your project open source:

• Public Repositories: Ensure both your frontend and backend code repositories on GitHub are public.
• Clear Documentation: Provide comprehensive README.md files for both repositories, explaining how to set up the project locally, how to contribute, and the architecture.
• Open Data License: If the raw data in your database could potentially be exported or used by others, consider applying an open data license (e.g., Creative Commons Zero (CC0) or Open Data Commons Public Domain Dedication and License (PDDL)).
• Community Engagement: Encourage contributions via GitHub issues and pull requests.

* Please note while we have used AI to write this content, there has been some research to arrive to this solution which makes it valuable as a recipe to share.