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Welcome to the NGI Zero podcast where we talk to the people who are building the next
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generation internet.
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Hi, I'm Ronny Lam.
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And I'm Tessel Renzenbrink.
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We both work for NLnet, a foundation which financially supports people working on free
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and open source technologies.
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Today we're joined by Joep Meindertsma.
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He is the CEO of Ontola IO, a Dutch software development firm that aims to give people
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more control over their data.
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He has received NGI Zero funding for three separate projects, Solid Search, Atomic Data
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and Atomic Tables.
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These are the projects we will talk about today.
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Welcome Joep, and thanks for joining.
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Awesome, looking forward to it.
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Did we miss anything in our introduction?
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I think that pretty much sums it up.
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Maybe for some extra background, I started off with doing online democracy stuff about
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10 years ago, and from there on slowly migrated towards doing more with data ownership and
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open data, but we'll probably dive into that soon.
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Sure, yeah, indeed.
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Your projects are all about modeling and connecting data.
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What are the key issues with how data is used on the web today?
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I think one of the biggest issues at this point is that a lot of data is siloed, and
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this is partly because a lot of big tech companies are designing their systems to have data siloed.
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What that basically means is that it's very hard to reuse data.
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What that means is that users get locked into an ecosystem.
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There's a very concrete example of this.
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I'm locked into the Google ecosystem.
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I have a Gmail account.
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I have a Google calendar.
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It integrates everywhere.
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I have a Google Drive thing, and that kind of limits how easy it is for me to switch
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to some sort of competitor, and this really limits the degree of innovation, and it also
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makes me very dependent on what Google does.
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Google has a large control over my life.
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It can serve me ads and manipulate me.
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It can have a large impact on how my software world looks like.
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I think that there's a lot of reasons why we should want to have more control over our
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data, but it's just difficult.
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The main reason that it's difficult is not necessarily only because these big tech companies
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are trying to lock us in, but also because it's very difficult to make open tools that
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work well with each other.
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Of course, there's an open source email tool, and of course, there's an open source calendar
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tool, and there's an open source this and this and that.
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But every time somebody makes some sort of open source tool, they not only have to make
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that tool open and really good, but they also have to make sure it works well with people's
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data.
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That's basically the fundamental limitation, in my view, of how many of these applications
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work nowadays is that they don't really work well together.
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So the issue that as a software engineer you have is when you're designing an application,
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you also have to design its API, its programming interface.
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When you do that, it's very tempting to just design the thing that you need at that point
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in time.
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But that also means that if somebody wants to use that API, they'll have to read your
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specification, they have to understand how you've been thinking about this.
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And many APIs are vastly different.
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So one of the things that I was trying to solve with first with linked data and later
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with Atomic Data is to make one API that's highly standardized, very readable, very browsable,
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and very highly interoperable so that at some point in the future, people could make
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their own applications that work well together.
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And one of the cool things you can do if you have a very well-defined API is that you can
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have decentralized data.
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So you can have data that's stored in a different server somewhere else in the world, and you
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can point to it using a link, and you can reuse that.
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So for example, let's say I'm going to plan a wedding event, and I have a lot of lists
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of attendees of people who I want to invite to my wedding.
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And I have this wedding event concept where I want people to be able to RSVP, but I also
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want a lot of information from people like, are you a vegetarian?
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What's your profile picture?
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What's your phone number maybe or email address?
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And are you taking a plus one?
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All of these questions.
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What would be really nice if I could just point to someone's URL, like I would point
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to your URL, and that URL would contain all this information like, what's your profile
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picture?
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What's your name, et cetera.
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And that's basically what linked data promise has been about in the past few decades, but
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wasn't really achieved because it was just too much of a hassle for developers.
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So that's why I started working about four years ago on Atomic Data, which is a very
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strict subset of linked data, which enforces JSON compatibility.
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Most developers use JSON as a serialization format.
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And it also enforces type safety, which means that if you have like a date field for your
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birth date, for example, that's standardized in how it's written, like year, year, year,
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month, month, date, date.
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So you can't like, you know which data type it is, which is very useful for software engineers.
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And the third thing it does is enable this decentralized data approach.
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You use URLs.
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So it's basically a very long monologue for the main problem that I've been working on
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and how I'm trying to solve it with Atomic Data specification.
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Yeah, thanks.
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That really clarifies things.
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But just for people who are not really super into this field, can you maybe go back a little
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and explain what the semantic web is and what RDF is and what Atomic Data does to improve
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on RDF?
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So the inventor of the World Wide Web is Tim Berners-Lee.
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And he made the first websites, the first website and the first web browser and the
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first web server back in, I think, 88 or 89.
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And at some point in time, he realized that websites are nice, they're documents.
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But what you want is that a URL, like the link to websites, doesn't just represent a
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document, but it can represent a person.
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It can represent an event.
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It can represent anything.
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And that's when he started working on the semantic web, right?
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Where the web is linked with semantic meanings.
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So you have like a person and they have a friend, right?
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And this friend is another link somewhere which has its own data.
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So that's basically the goal of the semantic web.
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And the semantic web is expressed using this language basically called RDF, which is the
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Resource Description Framework.
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And it was introduced in the 90s.
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It was based on XML and it never really took off.
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Like nobody's actually using RDF in production.
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But this dream of having a semantic web where all machines are connected to each other and
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people can reuse data and this data is extremely machine readable.
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I really love that dream.
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So my software company, Ontola, had this product called Argue, which is this e-democracy platform
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we talked earlier about.
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And we went all in on RDF, right?
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So we basically made our whole stack linked data RDF stuff.
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But at some point, we became really frustrated and we saw some of the fundamental limitations
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of RDF.
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And that's basically when I was thinking, OK, I need to constrain this.
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I need to make it a smaller subset.
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I need to make it a little bit tighter.
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So it's easy to work with as a software engineer.
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And that's what Atomac Data is.
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It's like this is making this semantic web useful for software engineers and for developers.
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That's like when I'm talking about JSON compatibility and type safety.
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I know this is already becoming pretty technical.
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So I'm sorry if you're listening to this and you think, what was this guy talking about?
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How is it taking off?
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Are other people adopting this?
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That's an interesting question because when I started out with Atomic Data, I first wrote
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the specification, right?
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I had like this 70 page document just detailing how the specification would work.
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And it's just an idea and nothing happens, right?
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Like nobody's going to make something if you just have a specification.
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So what you need is a specification plus an implementation.
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That's why I started working on what I thought would be the best killer application, which
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is Atomic Server.
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And Atomic Server is basically, I'm not sure if you're familiar with Notion, but like this
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all in one workspace app where you have documents, but you also have tables.
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So in a way, it's like Microsoft Excel plus Microsoft Word merged into one user friendly
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application.
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So I wanted to make that, but using Atomic Data as basically the core and make it fully
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open source and free for everyone and make it really, really performant.
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So I wrote it in Rust, which is a really nice programming language for making these performance
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system applications.
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Atomic Server became basically this database with a very easy to use front end, which people
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can use to manage their data.
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And that's basically the main use for Atomic Data right now is that application implementation.
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So what I'm trying to do now is basically build a community around that implementation.
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So people start using it for their own projects.
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And we have a bunch of front end libraries which people can use to implement it in their
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apps.
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So there's like a React library, there's a Svelte library, there's a Node.js library.
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So like a lot of tools for developers to help them get started.
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But because it's all JSON, you don't even need to use these libraries.
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You can just use your whatever framework you're already using and just fetch the data straight
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from Atomic Server.
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And really the goal is to make it really easy for developers to start using this in their
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production apps.
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I think it's really interesting what you're saying that you cannot just write a specification,
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but that you also have to do an implementation.
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And you did a lot of implementation already.
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Yeah, that's true.
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I think I was mainly inspired by Tim Berners-Lee.
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So he did the same thing with when he started the World Wide Web.
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He's like, okay, I wrote this specification for the World Wide Web with, you know, HTTP
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and HTML.
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But the only reason it took off is because he also wrote an open source server and an
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open source browser.
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And so he had the specification server and browser.
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I did the same thing for Atomic.
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Because I think that's like a recipe that could work.
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The specification still has to prove itself, right?
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Other people also have to like it to some extent.
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And that's kind of the difficult part is convincing developers to also use this.
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But that's why I'm focusing so much on the implementation, just to have like a very good
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open source database.
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Because if you have a good open source database, you can just use it without the benefits of
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Atomic Data.
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But as more and more projects are using that, at some point, the interoperability between
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these projects is going to be a huge selling point.
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So I'm hoping that we get like this S curve adoption, right?
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So first you have a couple of projects using atomic data.
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And at some point, a lot of people are using it and they can point to each other and you
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get like this accelerating effect, same as the World Wide Web growth, right?
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You get this network effect and then it can really pick up steam.
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Yeah, I also want to congratulate you on your on your documentation.
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I mean, it's it's super.
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It's huge.
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It's well written.
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It's understandable.
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I think not enough people pay so much attention to documentation.
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Is this something that is specifically important to you?
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Is it something you like to do?
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How come you do it so well?
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Oh, thanks.
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To be honest, I'm not entirely very happy about all the documentation.
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I mean, some things of it are good and I'm a bit proud of, but there's also like still
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a lot of gaps.
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Because I think documentation writing isn't very fun compared to application writing.
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I think that's like one of the biggest hurdles.
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So what I often tend to do is to structure my thoughts using my writing and that becomes
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documentation.
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So if I'm thinking about, oh, I need to solve like this problem, then I just start writing
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the documentation basically and use it as part of a process.
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So that for me makes it a little bit easier to to to make something.
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So in a way, that's like documentation driven development.
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Right.
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So you have like a couple of software development paradigms.
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Some people do test driven development and this is documentation driven development.
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And the advantage of that is that you end up with an API that's very easy to explain
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because you basically start with the explanation of how you can use it.
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And then at some point you've built it and then other developers who look at it,
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hopefully it feels understandable because otherwise you make something that's
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logical to program, but maybe harder to use.
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And is or may be one of your goals to to to put this into a standard.
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I mean, you you wrote a specification, but I it's your hope to get this into a real
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standard.
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So I think what's what the specification is, is to some extent, it already is a standard.
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So when I started off, I also named it a standard.
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And then somebody called me and said, hey, listen, this is not a standard.
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I'm like, but but it's a specification, right.
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And it standardizes something.
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He says, yes, but for it to be a standard, it has to be adopted.
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So I think, yes, that's exactly my goal.
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I want it to be a standard.
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I want it for I want people to use it.
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So then it kind of becomes a standard.
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And that probably also includes making the specification even stricter and tighter
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because like at some point there's going to be some sort of ambiguity that's inside
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the documentation already.
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It's going to be very obvious if people are going to make their own applications on it
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or their own server implementations, for example, that are slightly different.
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So this is like one of the challenges is if you build an implementation is that it's very
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tempting for the implementation to basically get further than the documentation because
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it's very tempting to just add this new feature or this cool thing.
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And if you don't document it, well, then it's kind of out there and it becomes a de facto
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specification, even though it's not written down.
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So that's like, I think, a pitfall.
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And is that is that the way you work?
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You first write your specification and you then develop your application to it?
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For pretty much.
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Yeah, for most things, that's how I prefer to work.
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That's definitely the case at very early days of Atomic Server development, which is like
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I was on vacation in Switzerland and I was just on my laptop all day.
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My girlfriend hated it because I wasn't really enjoying the vacation as much, but I was in
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this flow where I just writing Atomic Server and writing the documentation.
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And nowadays, what I often do is I first write an issue in GitHub, very detailed issue,
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explore a couple of approaches and a couple of APIs, and then I build it.
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Because now I'm at a point where the specification is not changing a lot
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and the implementation is changing mostly because like specific endpoints,
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specific plugins, specific added features that the documentation is pretty stable.
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Just to follow up on Ronny's question.
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So you want it to be adopted, but are you planning on going through like a standards
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body to get it adopted as a standard?
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So the Atomic Data is a W3C working group, which in a sense means that there is already
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some sort of process in there for it to become a standard.
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I also reached out to a body that is concerning media type standards.
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I forgot like the body doing the MIME types.
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But at some point, I also became a little bit frustrated with the bureaucracy of some
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of these processes.
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And I saw that there are some really, really effective standards or specifications that is
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they're widely adopted, but they're not documented in such a group.
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So then I became more, I was more like, okay, if I just document it well and I make the process
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open and transparent, then I don't necessarily have to adhere to some very bureaucratic
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external process at this point.
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But maybe later it becomes necessary, like as it grows and more people are using it.
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I do think that's the point.
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I would like to make a NGI Zero plug here because we don't only give grants to great projects,
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but we also support with practical support.
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And one of our partners in the NGI Zero coalition is Tolerant Networks.
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And they have very much a lot of experience with standardization bodies.
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And especially this point that you mentioned, like it's super slow and difficult and you
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need to speak to the right people.
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And they can, if you are interested, or maybe you can send somebody else to do it if you
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don't like it, but they can really help you with taking the steps.
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I mean, they can't do it for you, but they can definitely give you advice on it.
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And this is also for anybody listening who wants this kind of support than NGI Zero.
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Oh, this sounds actually really useful.
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So I'm 100% going to do this.
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Nice.
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I also have another question.
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And this is more from the perspective of people who are using the web.
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So of course you are directed mostly toward developers.
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But what would a person who is using the web, what would Atomic Data be like for them?
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Would the web experience change or would it be like under the hood and they would hardly
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notice or?
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I think if it works well, if it's like widely adopted and many services use it, at some
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point, many things are going to start to feel like magic.
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Like your calendar is just completely integrated with all these other services and it just
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works.
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You can have like one list of contacts and they are automatically updated in terms of
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their profile picture and new data arises.
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And you only get access to people who actually want you to have access and you get the
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fields that you should get access to.
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I think you can have like completely open source social media platforms that have a timeline
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that don't order based on what advertisers want.
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So Facebook, they have like an AI trained to maximize engagement and make you click
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on as much ads as possible.
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You can have like your own algorithm for social media feed.
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So for example, I would like to have a social media feed that helps me understand the world
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as good as possible and keeps me up to date on important events and have some sort of
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neutrality not to be too much biased in a certain direction.
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And maybe someone else could pick their own algorithm that they would want for their
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social media feed.
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I think the open source social media direction is very interesting and I hope it can make
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polarization in our society a little less worse.
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And I can also imagine that it just removes a bunch of hassle.
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So like if you have your Google Photos, right, there's a lot of photos stored there and at
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some point you just want a different front end.
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You have like this other app and it works really nice.
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You want to migrate to it.
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Well, with Atomic Data, that should be completely trivial because you can just change the front
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end of an app without moving your data.
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Your data just is yours.
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It's on your server somewhere.
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And as an additional benefit to that, that means things are really, really fast.
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So if you use Atomic Server, which if you're listening to this and you want to try it,
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it's just a one-liner Docker command.
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It's a 12 megabytes binary executable.
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It's very, very easy to install.
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You'll notice that it's ridiculously fast.
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Like there's nothing on the web, like pretty much not a single app that you've used that
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is this fast.
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And I like fast applications.
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I like that things open instantly.
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And with Atomic Server, like when you're searching through all of your data, like every key press
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performs a search and within like seven or 20 milliseconds, you get like a full response
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back.
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So you'll feel very productive.
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And I think that's also a big plus.
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That's a nice bridge to our next question, which is, I mean, if people are interested,
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how can they get involved?
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What do they have to do to work with Atomic Data?
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I think the easiest path for people to work with it is to just install Atomic Server
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somewhere.
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And that's like probably the easiest with the Docker image.
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So like I said, like a one-liner, no external dependencies or whatever.
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And if then people actually want to make an application, there's a couple of libraries.
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So we have like a React library, a Svelte library, an Atomiclib library for other JS
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applications.
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There's a template for React applications.
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There's also a template for Svelte websites, which basically is an entire website, which
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is already linked to Atomic Server.
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So there's a couple of ways people can get started.
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But I think the biggest one is to join the Discord server, because we have like a Discord
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server.
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You can just ask your question there.
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I'd love to help you.
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There's other people who help as well.
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And it's, I think, a very good place to just share your idea and get some feedback and
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start working on this.
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What are the next steps for the project?
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So at this point, the project lacks some important features for me that I think limited to
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becoming a very useful headless CMS.
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So a headless CMS is basically the number one proposition I'm trying to achieve with
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the Atomic Server application, which is basically...
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Can you explain what a headless CMS is?
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Yes.
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So a headless CMS is basically a thing where you store content for the web.
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It's a content management system.
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So WordPress, for example, I think many people are familiar with WordPress, which you use
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for building websites.
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That is a CMS, but it has a head as well, which is the front end.
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And the headless CMS is only the backend stuff, but without the front end.
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So you can design the web page all the way you want, any way you want.
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And the headless CMS basically deals with all the data.
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It's a place where you can sign in and edit your web pages.
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You can search your things.
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And I really want to make that proposition really well.
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So we have this proposition mostly aimed at software engineers who want to make websites.
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So we have a couple of features that are still missing, which are currently being prioritized.
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One of them is an improved document editor, which should feel similar to Obsidian.
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Not sure if you're familiar with that, but it's like this markdown, what you see is what you mean.
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kind of text editor, which I feel like is very productive.
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And we're building things like a form interface where you can create a form web page,
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where you can just make submissions without creating a user or whatever, just for guest entries.
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For example, for surveys or for a contact form for your website or a reservation for your restaurant.
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These types of things is what forms are about.
383
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So better document support, better form support are two top priorities.
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And the newest things right now is basically the table editor and the data model editor,
385
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the ontology editor, which was done using the NGI Zero grant.
386
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So thank you a lot for that.
387
00:23:12,780 --> 00:23:16,220
And it seems a lot of stuff is happening.
388
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I looked at your roadmap and it's like every month there's a new thing being built.
389
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Can you tell me something about the team that's behind this?
390
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Who are the people working on this?
391
00:23:28,060 --> 00:23:31,340
At this point, the team working on Atomic Server is pretty small, actually.
392
00:23:31,340 --> 00:23:33,420
It's me and Polle Pas.
393
00:23:33,420 --> 00:23:35,420
So Paul Opass also works at Ontola.
394
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He's mostly working on the front end.
395
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So if you see something in the front end that's good and well designed,
396
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chances are pretty high that he did that.
397
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And I'm mostly doing the backend stuff.
398
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But we're both doing a bit backend and a bit frontend as well.
399
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And there's also now a couple of people who have been contributing to the repository,
400
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which to me, that's like the most magical thing.
401
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If you have an open source project and there's some random person you've never heard of
402
00:24:03,980 --> 00:24:08,460
and they're improving your code base and asking how the testing suite works or something,
403
00:24:09,340 --> 00:24:12,060
when that happens, I just feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
404
00:24:12,060 --> 00:24:12,940
It's really magical.
405
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That's when the adoption starts.
406
00:24:16,780 --> 00:24:18,300
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
407
00:24:19,740 --> 00:24:23,020
Well, the next question was, what do you like most about working on your project?
408
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But maybe that was the answer.
409
00:24:25,500 --> 00:24:30,060
Yes, I think that a feeling of community when people start using something,
410
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that's one of the most magical and good feelings.
411
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I also really like it when things come together and they are simple.
412
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So I really have a strong distaste for complexity in software projects
413
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or having too many components.
414
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And if you make something that feels very lightweight and easy to understand
415
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and easy to set up and it has a little amount of dependencies,
416
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that also feels very, very good.
417
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But I'm not sure if other people will feel the same about that,
418
00:24:58,460 --> 00:25:01,660
but I feel that's a very strong guiding force in how we write software.
419
00:25:02,300 --> 00:25:07,420
To zoom out again a little to the semantic web more generally,
420
00:25:08,860 --> 00:25:10,300
what do you think is needed?
421
00:25:11,660 --> 00:25:16,060
Because it sounds like there are a lot of positive sides to it.
422
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So what would be needed in the rest of the world to get the semantic web going?
423
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I think that's a good question because if I look at just the semantic web
424
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and the RDF specification, it has a couple of these big limitations,
425
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which I feel will make it impossible to be really big.
426
00:25:37,420 --> 00:25:39,820
So we have RDF and the SOLID project.
427
00:25:40,860 --> 00:25:43,660
I've also been a contributor to SOLID and worked quite closely
428
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even with Tim Berners-Lee a couple of years ago.
429
00:25:46,140 --> 00:25:49,580
But at some point I just felt like this isn't going to be the thing
430
00:25:49,580 --> 00:25:50,460
that I want it to be.
431
00:25:51,020 --> 00:25:52,460
It's too technically complex.
432
00:25:52,460 --> 00:25:54,780
It's too difficult for software engineers to make something.
433
00:25:54,780 --> 00:25:58,220
So I feel like what the semantic web needs is type safety,
434
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JSON support and a clear consistent protocol.
435
00:26:02,140 --> 00:26:07,260
And these are the three things I think that Atomic Data has solved and has now added.
436
00:26:08,700 --> 00:26:13,580
I do think that there's still some things that Atomic Data is probably missing,
437
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like good OAuth support.
438
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So I think that's a big one I also want to work on in the near future.
439
00:26:22,300 --> 00:26:24,780
And what we're also missing is just implementations,
440
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just people toying with it and creating their own apps.
441
00:26:28,460 --> 00:26:32,300
Because the only way it really takes off is if we are seeing the start of this S curve
442
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and you get these network effects.
443
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And I think that there's a couple of domains where that makes more sense than in other domains,
444
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mostly personal data, personal document management, event management, event registration, RSVPs.
445
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I think these specifically would benefit a little bit extra from having open...
446
00:26:53,340 --> 00:26:56,620
Yeah, having an implementation for atomic server.
447
00:26:57,820 --> 00:27:03,820
And the people who are now listening, how can they contribute to making the semantic web
448
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a thing that's going to be?
449
00:27:07,420 --> 00:27:08,460
Oh yeah.
450
00:27:09,500 --> 00:27:17,020
I think one of the biggest things you can do is just make simple apps.
451
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Just make simple, useful apps for yourself.
452
00:27:19,420 --> 00:27:21,900
Just make some sort of short demonstration.
453
00:27:21,900 --> 00:27:25,020
Just make it like a weekend project, toy around with it a bit.
454
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And demonstrate to people that this is something that you can play with
455
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and actually use it for something that you want.
456
00:27:32,620 --> 00:27:36,620
So maybe you want to import your playlist from Spotify
457
00:27:36,620 --> 00:27:39,020
and have a playlist manager for your music.
458
00:27:39,900 --> 00:27:41,820
That's not a very complex application,
459
00:27:41,820 --> 00:27:44,860
but it's a very fun process to make something like that.
460
00:27:45,580 --> 00:27:49,980
Or make a tool for your resume.
461
00:27:50,460 --> 00:27:53,980
Make a resume editor and use that in Atomic Data
462
00:27:53,980 --> 00:27:56,220
and share the data models that you've created.
463
00:27:56,220 --> 00:27:59,420
So one of the big things for Atomic Data is that the data models that you create
464
00:28:00,300 --> 00:28:02,460
are also URLs, which you can reuse.
465
00:28:02,460 --> 00:28:04,460
So other people can reuse your data models.
466
00:28:04,460 --> 00:28:06,780
And as that happens, you get like this standardization effect.
467
00:28:07,740 --> 00:28:10,940
But that does require that people start making some of these data models
468
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and spreading them and using them in applications.
469
00:28:13,340 --> 00:28:16,220
That's like the magic of the network effect that still has to happen.
470
00:28:16,700 --> 00:28:21,660
How did the NGI Zero grant help you reach your goals for your project?
471
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It has a huge effect because I have a very small software company.
472
00:28:28,700 --> 00:28:32,700
And we basically get to choose how we spend our time,
473
00:28:32,700 --> 00:28:34,540
depending on how the money flows.
474
00:28:37,180 --> 00:28:41,500
So we would love to work on an open source tool,
475
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like completely MIT licensed, without having some sort of paid service attached to it,
476
00:28:49,260 --> 00:28:51,180
to just make that available for people.
477
00:28:51,180 --> 00:28:54,940
And that's basically only possible through grants and subsidies
478
00:28:55,500 --> 00:28:57,180
to bootstrap that process.
479
00:28:57,180 --> 00:28:59,740
Because it takes a while, even for an open source tool,
480
00:28:59,740 --> 00:29:02,300
to get it to a point where you get like user adoption.
481
00:29:04,220 --> 00:29:07,980
And you can use the grant to bootstrap adoption.
482
00:29:07,980 --> 00:29:10,620
And from there on, at some point, get an investor
483
00:29:10,620 --> 00:29:13,340
to build towards a revenue model that's sustainable.
484
00:29:13,900 --> 00:29:17,900
So what NGI Zero for me did was enable this first path, basically,
485
00:29:17,900 --> 00:29:21,820
this first place in the process where you can do your fundamental research
486
00:29:21,820 --> 00:29:25,900
and you can build the open source tool and you can get your first amount of users.
487
00:29:25,900 --> 00:29:30,060
And from there on, you can try to basically scale it up and turn it into a service.
488
00:29:30,060 --> 00:29:34,940
But what I really wanted to do is to first focus on having a good specification,
489
00:29:34,940 --> 00:29:36,700
having a good open source implementation.
490
00:29:36,700 --> 00:29:39,900
And that's basically impossible if the first thing that you need to do
491
00:29:39,900 --> 00:29:43,020
is to find customers and get a consistent revenue flow.
492
00:29:43,020 --> 00:29:45,340
Because then you're going to focus on a lot of different things.
493
00:29:45,340 --> 00:29:48,780
And I think that the open source character is going to be left behind if you do that.
494
00:29:49,420 --> 00:29:52,780
So for me, it's essential in developing something with this kind of business model.
495
00:29:53,660 --> 00:29:54,380
Yeah, agreed.
496
00:29:55,740 --> 00:30:00,380
What advice would you give to people considering to apply for funding?
497
00:30:03,100 --> 00:30:05,020
Yeah, focus on community.
498
00:30:05,020 --> 00:30:06,620
I think that is such a big thing.
499
00:30:07,420 --> 00:30:13,500
Just set up a Discord server for your project and invite people to that, link to it everywhere.
500
00:30:15,340 --> 00:30:18,140
And every time somebody joins, just reach out to them
501
00:30:18,140 --> 00:30:22,060
and talk about what makes them enthusiastic about technology.
502
00:30:22,060 --> 00:30:24,780
Because these individual connections that I had with people
503
00:30:24,780 --> 00:30:27,260
have been so incredibly inspiring and rewarding.
504
00:30:27,260 --> 00:30:30,140
Because the first people who are going to join such a community
505
00:30:30,140 --> 00:30:34,460
are probably one of the most innovative, interesting people that you'll ever meet.
506
00:30:35,500 --> 00:30:39,580
So I feel like just set up an infrastructure for your community to grow.
507
00:30:39,580 --> 00:30:40,860
Do everything in public.
508
00:30:41,740 --> 00:30:44,300
Just write your thoughts in GitHub issues.
509
00:30:44,300 --> 00:30:46,940
Because there's a small chance that other people are going to read it.
510
00:30:46,940 --> 00:30:50,300
And if they do, these are the most important people for your project to grow.
511
00:30:51,500 --> 00:30:52,940
So yeah, community, community, community.
512
00:30:55,020 --> 00:30:55,520
True.
513
00:30:56,860 --> 00:31:00,700
I think we're getting to the end of our questions at least.
514
00:31:00,700 --> 00:31:03,020
Is there anything you would still like to say?
515
00:31:03,980 --> 00:31:07,100
Yeah, I want to say thank you so much for making this all possible.
516
00:31:07,100 --> 00:31:13,100
I think that it's pretty rare for software engineers to be able to do something like this,
517
00:31:13,100 --> 00:31:13,340
right?
518
00:31:13,340 --> 00:31:20,220
To basically receive income for working on completely open source tools just for a more open web.
519
00:31:20,220 --> 00:31:23,340
And I think without the role that you play in this ecosystem,
520
00:31:23,900 --> 00:31:27,660
it would be very, very difficult to make meaningful changes.
521
00:31:27,660 --> 00:31:29,900
So yeah, thank you so much for that you're working on this.
522
00:31:29,900 --> 00:31:30,780
I really appreciate it.
523
00:31:31,260 --> 00:31:34,060
Well, and we'd like to return that because we'd like to
524
00:31:34,060 --> 00:31:36,940
thank you for working on improving the internet.
525
00:31:36,940 --> 00:31:37,580
Oh, thank you.
526
00:31:39,580 --> 00:31:43,020
I think that's it for this podcast.
527
00:31:43,020 --> 00:31:44,780
So we'll leave it here.
528
00:31:44,780 --> 00:31:47,740
And Joep, thank you very much for joining us today
529
00:31:47,740 --> 00:31:51,420
and sharing all the interesting things about your project.
530
00:31:51,420 --> 00:31:52,780
Well, thank you so much for having me.
531
00:31:52,780 --> 00:31:53,740
It's been a blast.
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:10,200
Welcome to the NGI Zero podcast where we talk to the people who are building the next
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generation internet.
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Hi, I'm Ronny Lam.
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And I'm Tessel Renzenbrink.
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We both work for NLnet, a foundation which financially supports people working on free
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and open source technologies.
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Today we're joined by Joep Meindertsma.
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He is the CEO of Ontola IO, a Dutch software development firm that aims to give people
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more control over their data.
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He has received NGI Zero funding for three separate projects, Solid Search, Atomic Data
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and Atomic Tables.
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These are the projects we will talk about today.
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Welcome Joep, and thanks for joining.
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Awesome, looking forward to it.
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Did we miss anything in our introduction?
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I think that pretty much sums it up.
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Maybe for some extra background, I started off with doing online democracy stuff about
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10 years ago, and from there on slowly migrated towards doing more with data ownership and
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open data, but we'll probably dive into that soon.
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Sure, yeah, indeed.
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Your projects are all about modeling and connecting data.
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What are the key issues with how data is used on the web today?
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I think one of the biggest issues at this point is that a lot of data is siloed, and
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this is partly because a lot of big tech companies are designing their systems to have data siloed.
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What that basically means is that it's very hard to reuse data.
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What that means is that users get locked into an ecosystem.
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There's a very concrete example of this.
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I'm locked into the Google ecosystem.
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I have a Gmail account.
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I have a Google calendar.
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It integrates everywhere.
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I have a Google Drive thing, and that kind of limits how easy it is for me to switch
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to some sort of competitor, and this really limits the degree of innovation, and it also
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makes me very dependent on what Google does.
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Google has a large control over my life.
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It can serve me ads and manipulate me.
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It can have a large impact on how my software world looks like.
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I think that there's a lot of reasons why we should want to have more control over our
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data, but it's just difficult.
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The main reason that it's difficult is not necessarily only because these big tech companies
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are trying to lock us in, but also because it's very difficult to make open tools that
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work well with each other.
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Of course, there's an open source email tool, and of course, there's an open source calendar
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tool, and there's an open source this and this and that.
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But every time somebody makes some sort of open source tool, they not only have to make
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that tool open and really good, but they also have to make sure it works well with people's
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data.
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That's basically the fundamental limitation, in my view, of how many of these applications
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work nowadays is that they don't really work well together.
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So the issue that as a software engineer you have is when you're designing an application,
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you also have to design its API, its programming interface.
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When you do that, it's very tempting to just design the thing that you need at that point
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in time.
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But that also means that if somebody wants to use that API, they'll have to read your
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specification, they have to understand how you've been thinking about this.
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And many APIs are vastly different.
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So one of the things that I was trying to solve with first with linked data and later
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with Atomic Data is to make one API that's highly standardized, very readable, very browsable,
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and very highly interoperable so that at some point in the future, people could make
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their own applications that work well together.
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And one of the cool things you can do if you have a very well-defined API is that you can
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have decentralized data.
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So you can have data that's stored in a different server somewhere else in the world, and you
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can point to it using a link, and you can reuse that.
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So for example, let's say I'm going to plan a wedding event, and I have a lot of lists
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of attendees of people who I want to invite to my wedding.
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And I have this wedding event concept where I want people to be able to RSVP, but I also
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want a lot of information from people like, are you a vegetarian?
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What's your profile picture?
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What's your phone number maybe or email address?
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And are you taking a plus one?
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All of these questions.
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What would be really nice if I could just point to someone's URL, like I would point
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to your URL, and that URL would contain all this information like, what's your profile
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picture?
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What's your name, et cetera.
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And that's basically what linked data promise has been about in the past few decades, but
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wasn't really achieved because it was just too much of a hassle for developers.
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So that's why I started working about four years ago on Atomic Data, which is a very
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strict subset of linked data, which enforces JSON compatibility.
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Most developers use JSON as a serialization format.
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And it also enforces type safety, which means that if you have like a date field for your
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birth date, for example, that's standardized in how it's written, like year, year, year,
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month, month, date, date.
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So you can't like, you know which data type it is, which is very useful for software engineers.
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And the third thing it does is enable this decentralized data approach.
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You use URLs.
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So it's basically a very long monologue for the main problem that I've been working on
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and how I'm trying to solve it with Atomic Data specification.
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Yeah, thanks.
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That really clarifies things.
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But just for people who are not really super into this field, can you maybe go back a little
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and explain what the semantic web is and what RDF is and what Atomic Data does to improve
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on RDF?
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So the inventor of the World Wide Web is Tim Berners-Lee.
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And he made the first websites, the first website and the first web browser and the
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first web server back in, I think, 88 or 89.
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And at some point in time, he realized that websites are nice, they're documents.
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But what you want is that a URL, like the link to websites, doesn't just represent a
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document, but it can represent a person.
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It can represent an event.
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It can represent anything.
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And that's when he started working on the semantic web, right?
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Where the web is linked with semantic meanings.
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So you have like a person and they have a friend, right?
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And this friend is another link somewhere which has its own data.
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So that's basically the goal of the semantic web.
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And the semantic web is expressed using this language basically called RDF, which is the
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Resource Description Framework.
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And it was introduced in the 90s.
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It was based on XML and it never really took off.
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Like nobody's actually using RDF in production.
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But this dream of having a semantic web where all machines are connected to each other and
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people can reuse data and this data is extremely machine readable.
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I really love that dream.
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So my software company, Ontola, had this product called Argue, which is this e-democracy platform
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we talked earlier about.
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And we went all in on RDF, right?
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So we basically made our whole stack linked data RDF stuff.
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But at some point, we became really frustrated and we saw some of the fundamental limitations
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of RDF.
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And that's basically when I was thinking, OK, I need to constrain this.
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I need to make it a smaller subset.
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I need to make it a little bit tighter.
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So it's easy to work with as a software engineer.
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And that's what Atomac Data is.
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It's like this is making this semantic web useful for software engineers and for developers.
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That's like when I'm talking about JSON compatibility and type safety.
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I know this is already becoming pretty technical.
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So I'm sorry if you're listening to this and you think, what was this guy talking about?
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How is it taking off?
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Are other people adopting this?
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That's an interesting question because when I started out with Atomic Data, I first wrote
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the specification, right?
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I had like this 70 page document just detailing how the specification would work.
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And it's just an idea and nothing happens, right?
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Like nobody's going to make something if you just have a specification.
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So what you need is a specification plus an implementation.
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That's why I started working on what I thought would be the best killer application, which
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is Atomic Server.
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And Atomic Server is basically, I'm not sure if you're familiar with Notion, but like this
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all in one workspace app where you have documents, but you also have tables.
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So in a way, it's like Microsoft Excel plus Microsoft Word merged into one user friendly
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application.
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So I wanted to make that, but using Atomic Data as basically the core and make it fully
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open source and free for everyone and make it really, really performant.
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So I wrote it in Rust, which is a really nice programming language for making these performance
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system applications.
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Atomic Server became basically this database with a very easy to use front end, which people
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can use to manage their data.
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And that's basically the main use for Atomic Data right now is that application implementation.
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So what I'm trying to do now is basically build a community around that implementation.
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So people start using it for their own projects.
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And we have a bunch of front end libraries which people can use to implement it in their
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apps.
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So there's like a React library, there's a Svelte library, there's a Node.js library.
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So like a lot of tools for developers to help them get started.
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But because it's all JSON, you don't even need to use these libraries.
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You can just use your whatever framework you're already using and just fetch the data straight
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from Atomic Server.
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And really the goal is to make it really easy for developers to start using this in their
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production apps.
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I think it's really interesting what you're saying that you cannot just write a specification,
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but that you also have to do an implementation.
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And you did a lot of implementation already.
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Yeah, that's true.
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I think I was mainly inspired by Tim Berners-Lee.
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So he did the same thing with when he started the World Wide Web.
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He's like, okay, I wrote this specification for the World Wide Web with, you know, HTTP
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and HTML.
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But the only reason it took off is because he also wrote an open source server and an
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open source browser.
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And so he had the specification server and browser.
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I did the same thing for Atomic.
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Because I think that's like a recipe that could work.
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The specification still has to prove itself, right?
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Other people also have to like it to some extent.
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And that's kind of the difficult part is convincing developers to also use this.
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But that's why I'm focusing so much on the implementation, just to have like a very good
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open source database.
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Because if you have a good open source database, you can just use it without the benefits of
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Atomic Data.
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But as more and more projects are using that, at some point, the interoperability between
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these projects is going to be a huge selling point.
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So I'm hoping that we get like this S curve adoption, right?
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So first you have a couple of projects using atomic data.
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And at some point, a lot of people are using it and they can point to each other and you
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get like this accelerating effect, same as the World Wide Web growth, right?
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You get this network effect and then it can really pick up steam.
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Yeah, I also want to congratulate you on your on your documentation.
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I mean, it's it's super.
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It's huge.
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It's well written.
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It's understandable.
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I think not enough people pay so much attention to documentation.
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Is this something that is specifically important to you?
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Is it something you like to do?
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How come you do it so well?
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Oh, thanks.
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To be honest, I'm not entirely very happy about all the documentation.
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I mean, some things of it are good and I'm a bit proud of, but there's also like still
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a lot of gaps.
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Because I think documentation writing isn't very fun compared to application writing.
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I think that's like one of the biggest hurdles.
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So what I often tend to do is to structure my thoughts using my writing and that becomes
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documentation.
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So if I'm thinking about, oh, I need to solve like this problem, then I just start writing
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the documentation basically and use it as part of a process.
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So that for me makes it a little bit easier to to to make something.
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So in a way, that's like documentation driven development.
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Right.
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So you have like a couple of software development paradigms.
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Some people do test driven development and this is documentation driven development.
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And the advantage of that is that you end up with an API that's very easy to explain
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because you basically start with the explanation of how you can use it.
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And then at some point you've built it and then other developers who look at it,
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hopefully it feels understandable because otherwise you make something that's
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logical to program, but maybe harder to use.
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And is or may be one of your goals to to to put this into a standard.
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I mean, you you wrote a specification, but I it's your hope to get this into a real
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standard.
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So I think what's what the specification is, is to some extent, it already is a standard.
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So when I started off, I also named it a standard.
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And then somebody called me and said, hey, listen, this is not a standard.
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I'm like, but but it's a specification, right.
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And it standardizes something.
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He says, yes, but for it to be a standard, it has to be adopted.
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So I think, yes, that's exactly my goal.
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I want it to be a standard.
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I want it for I want people to use it.
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So then it kind of becomes a standard.
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And that probably also includes making the specification even stricter and tighter
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because like at some point there's going to be some sort of ambiguity that's inside
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the documentation already.
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It's going to be very obvious if people are going to make their own applications on it
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or their own server implementations, for example, that are slightly different.
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So this is like one of the challenges is if you build an implementation is that it's very
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tempting for the implementation to basically get further than the documentation because
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it's very tempting to just add this new feature or this cool thing.
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And if you don't document it, well, then it's kind of out there and it becomes a de facto
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specification, even though it's not written down.
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So that's like, I think, a pitfall.
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And is that is that the way you work?
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You first write your specification and you then develop your application to it?
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For pretty much.
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Yeah, for most things, that's how I prefer to work.
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That's definitely the case at very early days of Atomic Server development, which is like
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I was on vacation in Switzerland and I was just on my laptop all day.
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My girlfriend hated it because I wasn't really enjoying the vacation as much, but I was in
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this flow where I just writing Atomic Server and writing the documentation.
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And nowadays, what I often do is I first write an issue in GitHub, very detailed issue,
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explore a couple of approaches and a couple of APIs, and then I build it.
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Because now I'm at a point where the specification is not changing a lot
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and the implementation is changing mostly because like specific endpoints,
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specific plugins, specific added features that the documentation is pretty stable.
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Just to follow up on Ronny's question.
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So you want it to be adopted, but are you planning on going through like a standards
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body to get it adopted as a standard?
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So the Atomic Data is a W3C working group, which in a sense means that there is already
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some sort of process in there for it to become a standard.
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I also reached out to a body that is concerning media type standards.
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I forgot like the body doing the MIME types.
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But at some point, I also became a little bit frustrated with the bureaucracy of some
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of these processes.
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And I saw that there are some really, really effective standards or specifications that is
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they're widely adopted, but they're not documented in such a group.
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So then I became more, I was more like, okay, if I just document it well and I make the process
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open and transparent, then I don't necessarily have to adhere to some very bureaucratic
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external process at this point.
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But maybe later it becomes necessary, like as it grows and more people are using it.
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I do think that's the point.
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I would like to make a NGI Zero plug here because we don't only give grants to great projects,
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but we also support with practical support.
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And one of our partners in the NGI Zero coalition is Tolerant Networks.
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And they have very much a lot of experience with standardization bodies.
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And especially this point that you mentioned, like it's super slow and difficult and you
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need to speak to the right people.
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And they can, if you are interested, or maybe you can send somebody else to do it if you
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don't like it, but they can really help you with taking the steps.
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I mean, they can't do it for you, but they can definitely give you advice on it.
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And this is also for anybody listening who wants this kind of support than NGI Zero.
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Oh, this sounds actually really useful.
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So I'm 100% going to do this.
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Nice.
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I also have another question.
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And this is more from the perspective of people who are using the web.
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So of course you are directed mostly toward developers.
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But what would a person who is using the web, what would Atomic Data be like for them?
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Would the web experience change or would it be like under the hood and they would hardly
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notice or?
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I think if it works well, if it's like widely adopted and many services use it, at some
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point, many things are going to start to feel like magic.
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Like your calendar is just completely integrated with all these other services and it just
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works.
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You can have like one list of contacts and they are automatically updated in terms of
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their profile picture and new data arises.
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And you only get access to people who actually want you to have access and you get the
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fields that you should get access to.
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I think you can have like completely open source social media platforms that have a timeline
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that don't order based on what advertisers want.
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So Facebook, they have like an AI trained to maximize engagement and make you click
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on as much ads as possible.
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You can have like your own algorithm for social media feed.
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So for example, I would like to have a social media feed that helps me understand the world
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as good as possible and keeps me up to date on important events and have some sort of
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neutrality not to be too much biased in a certain direction.
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And maybe someone else could pick their own algorithm that they would want for their
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social media feed.
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I think the open source social media direction is very interesting and I hope it can make
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polarization in our society a little less worse.
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And I can also imagine that it just removes a bunch of hassle.
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So like if you have your Google Photos, right, there's a lot of photos stored there and at
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some point you just want a different front end.
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You have like this other app and it works really nice.
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You want to migrate to it.
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Well, with Atomic Data, that should be completely trivial because you can just change the front
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end of an app without moving your data.
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Your data just is yours.
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It's on your server somewhere.
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And as an additional benefit to that, that means things are really, really fast.
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So if you use Atomic Server, which if you're listening to this and you want to try it,
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it's just a one-liner Docker command.
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It's a 12 megabytes binary executable.
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It's very, very easy to install.
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You'll notice that it's ridiculously fast.
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Like there's nothing on the web, like pretty much not a single app that you've used that
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is this fast.
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And I like fast applications.
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I like that things open instantly.
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And with Atomic Server, like when you're searching through all of your data, like every key press
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performs a search and within like seven or 20 milliseconds, you get like a full response
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back.
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So you'll feel very productive.
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And I think that's also a big plus.
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That's a nice bridge to our next question, which is, I mean, if people are interested,
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how can they get involved?
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What do they have to do to work with Atomic Data?
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I think the easiest path for people to work with it is to just install Atomic Server
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somewhere.
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And that's like probably the easiest with the Docker image.
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So like I said, like a one-liner, no external dependencies or whatever.
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And if then people actually want to make an application, there's a couple of libraries.
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So we have like a React library, a Svelte library, an Atomiclib library for other JS
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applications.
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There's a template for React applications.
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There's also a template for Svelte websites, which basically is an entire website, which
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is already linked to Atomic Server.
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So there's a couple of ways people can get started.
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But I think the biggest one is to join the Discord server, because we have like a Discord
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server.
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You can just ask your question there.
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I'd love to help you.
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There's other people who help as well.
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And it's, I think, a very good place to just share your idea and get some feedback and
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start working on this.
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What are the next steps for the project?
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So at this point, the project lacks some important features for me that I think limited to
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becoming a very useful headless CMS.
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So a headless CMS is basically the number one proposition I'm trying to achieve with
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the Atomic Server application, which is basically...
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Can you explain what a headless CMS is?
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Yes.
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So a headless CMS is basically a thing where you store content for the web.
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It's a content management system.
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So WordPress, for example, I think many people are familiar with WordPress, which you use
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for building websites.
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That is a CMS, but it has a head as well, which is the front end.
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And the headless CMS is only the backend stuff, but without the front end.
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So you can design the web page all the way you want, any way you want.
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And the headless CMS basically deals with all the data.
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It's a place where you can sign in and edit your web pages.
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You can search your things.
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And I really want to make that proposition really well.
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So we have this proposition mostly aimed at software engineers who want to make websites.
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So we have a couple of features that are still missing, which are currently being prioritized.
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One of them is an improved document editor, which should feel similar to Obsidian.
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Not sure if you're familiar with that, but it's like this markdown, what you see is what you mean.
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kind of text editor, which I feel like is very productive.
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And we're building things like a form interface where you can create a form web page,
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where you can just make submissions without creating a user or whatever, just for guest entries.
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For example, for surveys or for a contact form for your website or a reservation for your restaurant.
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These types of things is what forms are about.
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So better document support, better form support are two top priorities.
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And the newest things right now is basically the table editor and the data model editor,
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the ontology editor, which was done using the NGI Zero grant.
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So thank you a lot for that.
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And it seems a lot of stuff is happening.
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I looked at your roadmap and it's like every month there's a new thing being built.
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Can you tell me something about the team that's behind this?
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Who are the people working on this?
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At this point, the team working on Atomic Server is pretty small, actually.
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It's me and Polle Pas.
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So Paul Opass also works at Ontola.
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He's mostly working on the front end.
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So if you see something in the front end that's good and well designed,
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chances are pretty high that he did that.
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And I'm mostly doing the backend stuff.
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But we're both doing a bit backend and a bit frontend as well.
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And there's also now a couple of people who have been contributing to the repository,
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which to me, that's like the most magical thing.
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If you have an open source project and there's some random person you've never heard of
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and they're improving your code base and asking how the testing suite works or something,
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when that happens, I just feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
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It's really magical.
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That's when the adoption starts.
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Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
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Well, the next question was, what do you like most about working on your project?
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But maybe that was the answer.
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Yes, I think that a feeling of community when people start using something,
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that's one of the most magical and good feelings.
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I also really like it when things come together and they are simple.
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So I really have a strong distaste for complexity in software projects
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or having too many components.
414
00:24:45,660 --> 00:24:49,820
And if you make something that feels very lightweight and easy to understand
415
00:24:49,820 --> 00:24:52,540
and easy to set up and it has a little amount of dependencies,
416
00:24:53,260 --> 00:24:55,180
that also feels very, very good.
417
00:24:55,180 --> 00:24:58,460
But I'm not sure if other people will feel the same about that,
418
00:24:58,460 --> 00:25:01,660
but I feel that's a very strong guiding force in how we write software.
419
00:25:02,300 --> 00:25:07,420
To zoom out again a little to the semantic web more generally,
420
00:25:08,860 --> 00:25:10,300
what do you think is needed?
421
00:25:11,660 --> 00:25:16,060
Because it sounds like there are a lot of positive sides to it.
422
00:25:16,540 --> 00:25:21,980
So what would be needed in the rest of the world to get the semantic web going?
423
00:25:23,340 --> 00:25:29,180
I think that's a good question because if I look at just the semantic web
424
00:25:29,340 --> 00:25:33,660
and the RDF specification, it has a couple of these big limitations,
425
00:25:33,660 --> 00:25:37,420
which I feel will make it impossible to be really big.
426
00:25:37,420 --> 00:25:39,820
So we have RDF and the SOLID project.
427
00:25:40,860 --> 00:25:43,660
I've also been a contributor to SOLID and worked quite closely
428
00:25:43,660 --> 00:25:46,140
even with Tim Berners-Lee a couple of years ago.
429
00:25:46,140 --> 00:25:49,580
But at some point I just felt like this isn't going to be the thing
430
00:25:49,580 --> 00:25:50,460
that I want it to be.
431
00:25:51,020 --> 00:25:52,460
It's too technically complex.
432
00:25:52,460 --> 00:25:54,780
It's too difficult for software engineers to make something.
433
00:25:54,780 --> 00:25:58,220
So I feel like what the semantic web needs is type safety,
434
00:25:58,780 --> 00:26:02,140
JSON support and a clear consistent protocol.
435
00:26:02,140 --> 00:26:07,260
And these are the three things I think that Atomic Data has solved and has now added.
436
00:26:08,700 --> 00:26:13,580
I do think that there's still some things that Atomic Data is probably missing,
437
00:26:13,580 --> 00:26:16,780
like good OAuth support.
438
00:26:17,420 --> 00:26:21,180
So I think that's a big one I also want to work on in the near future.
439
00:26:22,300 --> 00:26:24,780
And what we're also missing is just implementations,
440
00:26:24,780 --> 00:26:28,460
just people toying with it and creating their own apps.
441
00:26:28,460 --> 00:26:32,300
Because the only way it really takes off is if we are seeing the start of this S curve
442
00:26:32,300 --> 00:26:33,660
and you get these network effects.
443
00:26:35,100 --> 00:26:40,460
And I think that there's a couple of domains where that makes more sense than in other domains,
444
00:26:40,460 --> 00:26:47,340
mostly personal data, personal document management, event management, event registration, RSVPs.
445
00:26:47,340 --> 00:26:52,620
I think these specifically would benefit a little bit extra from having open...
446
00:26:53,340 --> 00:26:56,620
Yeah, having an implementation for atomic server.
447
00:26:57,820 --> 00:27:03,820
And the people who are now listening, how can they contribute to making the semantic web
448
00:27:04,700 --> 00:27:05,740
a thing that's going to be?
449
00:27:07,420 --> 00:27:08,460
Oh yeah.
450
00:27:09,500 --> 00:27:17,020
I think one of the biggest things you can do is just make simple apps.
451
00:27:17,020 --> 00:27:19,420
Just make simple, useful apps for yourself.
452
00:27:19,420 --> 00:27:21,900
Just make some sort of short demonstration.
453
00:27:21,900 --> 00:27:25,020
Just make it like a weekend project, toy around with it a bit.
454
00:27:25,820 --> 00:27:30,220
And demonstrate to people that this is something that you can play with
455
00:27:30,220 --> 00:27:32,620
and actually use it for something that you want.
456
00:27:32,620 --> 00:27:36,620
So maybe you want to import your playlist from Spotify
457
00:27:36,620 --> 00:27:39,020
and have a playlist manager for your music.
458
00:27:39,900 --> 00:27:41,820
That's not a very complex application,
459
00:27:41,820 --> 00:27:44,860
but it's a very fun process to make something like that.
460
00:27:45,580 --> 00:27:49,980
Or make a tool for your resume.
461
00:27:50,460 --> 00:27:53,980
Make a resume editor and use that in Atomic Data
462
00:27:53,980 --> 00:27:56,220
and share the data models that you've created.
463
00:27:56,220 --> 00:27:59,420
So one of the big things for Atomic Data is that the data models that you create
464
00:28:00,300 --> 00:28:02,460
are also URLs, which you can reuse.
465
00:28:02,460 --> 00:28:04,460
So other people can reuse your data models.
466
00:28:04,460 --> 00:28:06,780
And as that happens, you get like this standardization effect.
467
00:28:07,740 --> 00:28:10,940
But that does require that people start making some of these data models
468
00:28:10,940 --> 00:28:12,780
and spreading them and using them in applications.
469
00:28:13,340 --> 00:28:16,220
That's like the magic of the network effect that still has to happen.
470
00:28:16,700 --> 00:28:21,660
How did the NGI Zero grant help you reach your goals for your project?
471
00:28:23,580 --> 00:28:27,820
It has a huge effect because I have a very small software company.
472
00:28:28,700 --> 00:28:32,700
And we basically get to choose how we spend our time,
473
00:28:32,700 --> 00:28:34,540
depending on how the money flows.
474
00:28:37,180 --> 00:28:41,500
So we would love to work on an open source tool,
475
00:28:41,500 --> 00:28:49,260
like completely MIT licensed, without having some sort of paid service attached to it,
476
00:28:49,260 --> 00:28:51,180
to just make that available for people.
477
00:28:51,180 --> 00:28:54,940
And that's basically only possible through grants and subsidies
478
00:28:55,500 --> 00:28:57,180
to bootstrap that process.
479
00:28:57,180 --> 00:28:59,740
Because it takes a while, even for an open source tool,
480
00:28:59,740 --> 00:29:02,300
to get it to a point where you get like user adoption.
481
00:29:04,220 --> 00:29:07,980
And you can use the grant to bootstrap adoption.
482
00:29:07,980 --> 00:29:10,620
And from there on, at some point, get an investor
483
00:29:10,620 --> 00:29:13,340
to build towards a revenue model that's sustainable.
484
00:29:13,900 --> 00:29:17,900
So what NGI Zero for me did was enable this first path, basically,
485
00:29:17,900 --> 00:29:21,820
this first place in the process where you can do your fundamental research
486
00:29:21,820 --> 00:29:25,900
and you can build the open source tool and you can get your first amount of users.
487
00:29:25,900 --> 00:29:30,060
And from there on, you can try to basically scale it up and turn it into a service.
488
00:29:30,060 --> 00:29:34,940
But what I really wanted to do is to first focus on having a good specification,
489
00:29:34,940 --> 00:29:36,700
having a good open source implementation.
490
00:29:36,700 --> 00:29:39,900
And that's basically impossible if the first thing that you need to do
491
00:29:39,900 --> 00:29:43,020
is to find customers and get a consistent revenue flow.
492
00:29:43,020 --> 00:29:45,340
Because then you're going to focus on a lot of different things.
493
00:29:45,340 --> 00:29:48,780
And I think that the open source character is going to be left behind if you do that.
494
00:29:49,420 --> 00:29:52,780
So for me, it's essential in developing something with this kind of business model.
495
00:29:53,660 --> 00:29:54,380
Yeah, agreed.
496
00:29:55,740 --> 00:30:00,380
What advice would you give to people considering to apply for funding?
497
00:30:03,100 --> 00:30:05,020
Yeah, focus on community.
498
00:30:05,020 --> 00:30:06,620
I think that is such a big thing.
499
00:30:07,420 --> 00:30:13,500
Just set up a Discord server for your project and invite people to that, link to it everywhere.
500
00:30:15,340 --> 00:30:18,140
And every time somebody joins, just reach out to them
501
00:30:18,140 --> 00:30:22,060
and talk about what makes them enthusiastic about technology.
502
00:30:22,060 --> 00:30:24,780
Because these individual connections that I had with people
503
00:30:24,780 --> 00:30:27,260
have been so incredibly inspiring and rewarding.
504
00:30:27,260 --> 00:30:30,140
Because the first people who are going to join such a community
505
00:30:30,140 --> 00:30:34,460
are probably one of the most innovative, interesting people that you'll ever meet.
506
00:30:35,500 --> 00:30:39,580
So I feel like just set up an infrastructure for your community to grow.
507
00:30:39,580 --> 00:30:40,860
Do everything in public.
508
00:30:41,740 --> 00:30:44,300
Just write your thoughts in GitHub issues.
509
00:30:44,300 --> 00:30:46,940
Because there's a small chance that other people are going to read it.
510
00:30:46,940 --> 00:30:50,300
And if they do, these are the most important people for your project to grow.
511
00:30:51,500 --> 00:30:52,940
So yeah, community, community, community.
512
00:30:55,020 --> 00:30:55,520
True.
513
00:30:56,860 --> 00:31:00,700
I think we're getting to the end of our questions at least.
514
00:31:00,700 --> 00:31:03,020
Is there anything you would still like to say?
515
00:31:03,980 --> 00:31:07,100
Yeah, I want to say thank you so much for making this all possible.
516
00:31:07,100 --> 00:31:13,100
I think that it's pretty rare for software engineers to be able to do something like this,
517
00:31:13,100 --> 00:31:13,340
right?
518
00:31:13,340 --> 00:31:20,220
To basically receive income for working on completely open source tools just for a more open web.
519
00:31:20,220 --> 00:31:23,340
And I think without the role that you play in this ecosystem,
520
00:31:23,900 --> 00:31:27,660
it would be very, very difficult to make meaningful changes.
521
00:31:27,660 --> 00:31:29,900
So yeah, thank you so much for that you're working on this.
522
00:31:29,900 --> 00:31:30,780
I really appreciate it.
523
00:31:31,260 --> 00:31:34,060
Well, and we'd like to return that because we'd like to
524
00:31:34,060 --> 00:31:36,940
thank you for working on improving the internet.
525
00:31:36,940 --> 00:31:37,580
Oh, thank you.
526
00:31:39,580 --> 00:31:43,020
I think that's it for this podcast.
527
00:31:43,020 --> 00:31:44,780
So we'll leave it here.
528
00:31:44,780 --> 00:31:47,740
And Joep, thank you very much for joining us today
529
00:31:47,740 --> 00:31:51,420
and sharing all the interesting things about your project.
530
00:31:51,420 --> 00:31:52,780
Well, thank you so much for having me.
531
00:31:52,780 --> 00:31:53,740
It's been a blast.
