Release Wappler open source (frameworks and builder)

[karh]

Controversial.

I don’t know if open source is the answer, however I do 100% agree with the thread.

I always felt like Wappler gave me the power of 5 ‘conventional’ developers who are not using low code.
As our project grew, we’ve overstepped the boundary of where Wappler is saving us time, into doing it using conventional code many times. For example: creating server connect extensions to workaround Wappler’s Stripe integration constraints.
Using different client side js libraries because the built-in components are not up to date or lacking UI options.
Creating many custom SQL queries because the built-in editor is JUST missing something.

And now, for overstepping those boundaries we’re using AI more and more to generate it quickly. In the past I’d be spending 3 hours writing my custom SQL query (because I’ve never learned it properly thanks to Wappler’s SQL builder). But now I can have a 5 minute conversation with Chatgpt to get the query I want.

Same goes for writing server connect extensions… it doesn’t know how to use .hjson, so there have been many times I wish I’d be working with something like React, so Chatgpt can help me more.

So, I feel like the threat of AI to Wappler is very real and is already slowly pulling me away from Wappler. Which is a feeling I absolutely hate, because we owe Wappler our entire business and I have nothing but love for the application and team.

I guess open sourcing would work with the proper contribution, and with a proper way for the team to not lose revenue. But I don’t have much experience contributing / working with open sourced projects, so I’m saying this on the assumption that the application in general will be able to develop much faster.

It would be great if individuals could improve all these tools (like the db manager) that I feel are 90% there, but still need a 10% push to be as good as it can be.

[JonL]

@karh

I don’t know if open source is the answer

Me neither really, but I feel that only human collective intelligence will be able to put up a fight against AI.

[scalaris]

And that Karh, is exactly my/our position. Due to a lack of robust components or partnerships, we’ve built a suite of components based on 3rd party tooling like surveyjs, bryntum, AWS lambdas, tabulator and also built our own robust stripe integrations. Wappler was the tool that started all of this and literally created a £multi-million international business. We love Wappler but have outpaced its capabilities. It’s been obvious for some time that serious money and an experienced exec team is required. Long ago I stopped sharing my opinions as they weren’t welcome. I’m glad to see others are seeing things my way to some extent finally

[NewMedia]

@JonL

, , , but I feel that only human collective intelligence will be able to put up a fight against AI.

I’m sure you don’t really believe that.
There is no “human collective intelligence” going to replace the exponentially expanding coding, programming prowess of the daily output of new, smarter, more comprehensive AI models.

Ideally a future web development suite is instantly able to listen to your project goals, ask questions, set up the UI to your specs, highlighting or rearranging the Wappler UI to prioritize just the tools needed for the task. Building the project files then working with your feedback to further refine your app capabilities.

Even just as importantly, pointing out or suggesting with Demos, some extra possibilities, server & device side components configured to give your app more sophistication or improved performance. When it comes to debugging AI already heads bugs off at the pass, able to simulate many different load conditions simultaneously and then offering fixes for any issues discovered at that point.

AI could also describe the components, packages, dependencies you need to install on your server and then optimize your server environment online. This little description will sound quite modest and cautious in another year as AI continues exploding.

[JonL]

It seems you are describing AGI, not AI. We are not near that yet.

Humans are still smarter than AI, collectively even more.

[NewMedia]

Already the term AGI, Advanced General Intelligence, versus AI, is becoming more muddled as AI models themselves are accomplishing what the goals of AGI had been presumed to be a year ago.

What I am describing is absolutely on the near horizon for the whole field of Artifical Intelligence. AI models have already been programmed to interact with all components of operating systems and there is a whole thrust of development to incorporate AI into the Design process of software programs providing new interfaces that don’t exist, in general, to make the program UI fluid, dynamic, beyond merely dragging split views, or choosing what you want to see or hide in the UI options panel.

What I described for a Wappleresque program is totally within the scope of quite a few different major AI projects. It will take probably until the end of the year to see the first adaptations that can perform the way I described. Not only that, but the AI trained model installed on a computer can be taught, can learn your environment preferences and even road map the steps you will need to accomplish best practice coding. Or ask if you want it to run those steps itself.

But, the main point is that AI projects I have been following daily are demonstrating that for most of our programming and coding projects that the speculative goals for AGI will definitely not be required. Plus, Nvidia & other chip makers are pimping up their chipsets to empower AI models to go far beyond their present limitations when run on domestic home computers.

Just look at what Windows is doing with Nvidia.

Driving Innovation for Windows PCs in Generative AI Era | NVIDIA Blog

[George]

Sorry @JonL but we don’t thinking open sourcing Wappler will bring any advantage to the product or its community.

Our vision is to bring the best tool for the right job and keep on improving it as our users demand to suit their work and improve their productivity.

Our users trust us to do so, so they don’t have to build such tools by them self, but just profit from the Wappler’s great powers and time saving.

And our The Wappler's philosophy is still fully in place.

Other companies open source their products just to have them as a “free plan” in disguise, so users can try the products fully on they own without any support obligations as well, so it is a bit like the wild west. Or they offer free plans and semi open source just for additional marketing and vendor lock-in (like Oracle, Microsoft, Adobe). Free plans aren’t feasible any more and are already on the way our as you can see from https://blog.railway.app/p/introducing-trial-hobby-pro-plans - there is no such thing as free lunch

We do not want to offer limited tools and free plans, we just want to give the best for very reasonable price, all community driven. Our strongest part is our community and we just build Wappler to meet the community wishes.

For people who want contribute to Wappler, we already have great extensibility in place, so custom components and workflows can be easily build and contributed to the community.

So I think we are still on the right track

PS. we do have our own AI plans already in advanced progress

[JonL]

I respect that vision. I think you might be thinking short-term though. There will be a generational change on your user base sooner rather than later.

And that actually scares me. 70% of your user base is happy building simple websites as a hobby or for small businesses. Only a handful of people are building apps that provide huge amounts of value. A search on websites using appConnect.js tells the story.

I am assuming the first ones come from the dreamweaver pack and these are retired or planning on retiring.

The second group eventually outgrows Wappler and will leave or will stay complaining until they leave.

What will happen when the DW pack retires and people that build simple websites find out that AI can do that for free for them in less time.

What happens when the only people(new gen) that could potentially subscribe to Wappler in a few years time find out that the software has been catering so much to old tech to satisfy the soon to be retired user base that it’s even missing switch-elseif and that AI will take them 60% of the way anyway.

Wappler will have a hard time surviving AI if you try to compete with it. AI and Wappler user base is exactly the same -> People that don’t know how to code!

AI will delete you in a few years time if you continue catering to the same audience.

You need to start catering to developers, and the best way for that is to open source. Open source the stuff, do some outreach, grow the OS community around them. Hopefully the project is interesting enough and smart developers help you grow this thing.

@George

all community driven. Our strongest part is our community and we just build Wappler to meet the community wishes.

Well this FR didn’t go very well anyway community wise so you have the support of it on this

Anyway, I said my piece. If it’s not clear enough I have done a horrible job at explaining my thoughts. Obviously, for me, my thoughts are enough to make me worried about the future of Wappler and mine if I depend too much on it.

TLDR; You can’t compete with AI and win because both of you are catering to the same audience: people that don’t know how to code.

[George]

@JonL

Wappler will have a hard time surviving AI if you try to compete with it. AI and Wappler user base is exactly the same -> People that don’t know how to code!

There is no competition with AI, we see AI as a great way to optimize the workflow even further. So AI will be helping you even better and taking boring tasks our of your hands so you can focus even better on the bigger picture.

So let Jarvis help you

[JonL]

I will ask Jarvis to create a switch-elseif action for me

[sitestreet]

@JonL

Wappler will have a hard time surviving AI if you try to compete with it. AI and Wappler user base is exactly the same -> People that don’t know how to code!

Sorry, I don’t agree with that at all. While there probably are a number of people using Wappler who could be considered as non-coders, I doubt it’s anywhere near the majority. Non-coders will generally steer towards Wordpress, page builders, plugins, etc. to achieve what they want and won’t give Wappler any consideration.

[JonL]

Let me rephrase that then: people that don’t know what binary search is.

Anyway, I can already infer from the popularity of the FR that not many people agree with me. That’s OK.

Still I believe in my analysis of the situation and if I am wrong I won’t mind backtracking.

I have strong opinions loosely held.

[NewMedia]

Definitely you have to know quite a lot of “code” to use Wappler. So many technologies are employed, interwoven via thousands of lines of code governing CSS, framework interpolations, server connections, functions, classes, flows, browser engines, etc. to just make a dynamic project that queries, filters, writes and retrieves data from databases.

Wappler for all of its modules & grooviness is still not a “non-coder” tool.
But then this is due to the complexity Web 2023 demands for everything beyond a static page.

It is amazing what these genius founders have accomplished to this day!

[JonL]

@caleb

Let’s say the company goes down or becomes unsustainable, what will be the founder’s next move? We know that we are not being locked in since we can have the code, however, we want to know the company’s future plans to avoid that worst case scenarios.

The builder app is only available to you while you are subscribed. This builder produces code that belongs to you, but for that code to be useful it is using some frameworks and libraries that don’t belong to you.

Those frameworks and libraries are owned by Wappler and are copyrighted therefore you can’t use them or modify them without their permission.

The permission to use them(not modify them) is granted in their terms.

You are allowed to continue using the App Connect and Server Connect frameworks on your web sites and mobile apps even after your subscription expires and you don’t have a valid Wappler license any longer. You will just not be able to get any new components and security updates.

So worst case scenario your app will continue working as-is.

The builder will eventually fail to run for one of these two reasons depending on what worst case scenario we are talking about.

• Your subscription ends and you can’t renew
• The builder can’t validate your license against their license server.

Once that happens you would be able to modify your code with other tools (vscode, notepad, vim), but only YOUR code. Not the libraries that are copyrighted so you wouldn’t be able to patch or improve Server Connect or App Connect from a legal perspective.

At that point in time you should already be looking at rebuilding your app as it wouldn’t be wise for any business to be messing around with copyright infringements.

[NewMedia]

Not just IDE and IDK tools are threatened by AI but Developers’ uniqueness.
I follow quite a few AI projects daily and the new Open Source Large Language Models released into the wild for installation on home computers.

Absolutely the direction is this: Talk, describe what you want your app to do, then answer the questions AI requires to refine your application vision.
Ai will be able to create entire projects, offer multiple UI stylings, search features, API connections. AI will even create custom API’s and integrate them into the app where needed, fitting the precise specs.

AI will also have comprehensive knowledge of stacks on servers so that it can match the components for best performance in each environment. AI will tell you what is necessary to scale up for rising demands. Hosting companies, clouds will employ AI to match your account & the apps running for optimization on the fly.

AI will detect flaws in software upgrades done by a human team and will disable the flaws or write a workaround or improve the upgrade by debugging it and installing the software it has fixed.

More and more hosting techies will be sitting around cafes as AI takes over server maintenance duties. AI will much more quickly be able to combat a Denial of Service Attack or respond to hacks. AI will be very adept at preventing security breaches because it will know every possible avenue of malevolent attacks and be able to INTELLIGENTLY monitor outside sniffing and even whip up a custom honey pot to foil hackers.

But beyond this some AI projects are already quite advanced in having their AI models innovate to the extent of writing entirely new machine code and programming languages that are not dependent on human engineered code that is running our machines now. And AI has also been turned loose on designing the hardware processors, the chips themselves.

AI is going to give us new types of processors to run AI engineered programming languages on these processors. The processors and machine code will be optimized by AI & it will write the software that most efficiently extracts all of the power of the whole hardware system.

The Wappler of the future will be astonishingly capable of executing anything you can imagine. And, really, truly, AI projects have made astonishing leaps that you will be hearing about over this summer, Fall, Winter. AI sophistication is learning, developing at a blistering pace.

[Cheese]

[YogiYang]

@Apple

I would ask you to explain of a way to accomplish this, and then berate open-source money only works then the project is big, bigger than Bubble.

Or it is powered by VC funds.

[nshkrsh]

has anyone tried noodl? is it any good/easy to use/develop on?

[JonL]

There is a learning curve. You need to rewire a bit your brain to work with a UI that is adapted to designing for composable architecture. I used it for a bit a few months ago to test it out. But since my company transferred me to a team that was working on a Svelte project I finally decided to pour the hours into Svelte, Sveltekit, Tailwind, etc. At the rate AI tooling is advancing in VS code(copilot) the entry barrier for regular coding is plummeting.

Noodl is a great alternative to Wappler. I would say right now it’s the only good alternative out there. Their UI now seems a bit dated against Wappler’s one due to the latest changes in version 6.

But their commitment to open source makes up for it as they have been pouting engineering time there instead of the UI. They also generate react code for the frontend so if you need to extend the platform you have a huge ecosystem to work with.

For the cloud backend they provide their custom one based on the Parse platform but they are working on detaching the Noodle app from it as part of the Open source transition. So I guess in the end you will end up with a SPA based on react and you will choose a backend for it. Being that one based on the current parse integration which will make things easier or by BYO backend. I believe they have a community integration for Supabase.

What I don’t like is their design system. They need to improve that and add support for tailwind.

[JonL]

Noodl just dropped a bomb on their discord.

Instead of going “open core” (mix of free open source and paywalled features geared to commercial/pro/enterprise users) they are going 100% open source releasing everything they got.

Noodl's Journey Towards an Open Source Future-Noodl

For most this means that they will have a 100% free low-code platform to develop apps and deploy wherever they want backed by a core team coming from the parent company and the community.

Myself, I am more interested in following the transition journey from commercial to open-source as there are not many successful examples out there to learn from. I think it is quite interesting.