Star History Monthly Pick | January 2023
Happy February! Hope you all had a lovely January. Can't believe it's already time to share Star History's January open-source picks!
In case you don't know, each month Star History picks out some of the most fascinating open-source projects that we share over @StarHistoryHQ, and also try to explore the stories behind these projects.
Hermes
Hermes is HashiCorp's newly open-sourced document management system. Previously an internal tool, it is designed to help team members write, review, approve, discover, and revoke documents. It currently supports Google Workspace, but it tops Google Docs in that you can directly request reviews, which is fantastic.
Lago
Lago is a metering and usage-based billing tool that can be seen as an open-source alternative to Chargebee, Recurly, or Stripe Billing. You can deploy it yourself (the open-source version) or use their cloud version. Dealing with complex billing logic is a headache for most companies, but Lago is a convenient low-code tool that allows users to create billing metrics and plans directly using the UI or API.
Lago was originally a no-code reverse ETL tool designed for growth teams, but their original product didn't quite fit their target audience (it turns out the no-code tool was actually used by engineers), and eventually pivoted to become what it is now.
Mafs
Mafs is a set of React components that can be used to create beautiful math visualizations. You can deploy it locally, and it also has a playground that can be generated directly in your browser. If I had this in high school, I'm sure I would've enjoyed Algebra more.
PRQL
PRQL is Pipelined Relational Query Language, pronounced "Prequel" (just the opposite of SQL/Sequel). Like SQL, PRQL is readable and declarative; however, unlike SQL, it supports abstract concepts such as variables and functions. Moreover, PRQL is linear: each query line converts the result of the previous line. This should make writing PRQL statements much more straightforward.
ZITADEL
Auth0's open-source alternative ZITADEL is a user login and account management solution that comes in both open-source and SaaS versions, which raised a $2.5M seed round in 2022. Their vision is to let developers focus on building applications without caring about user identity management. Love how rigorous they are in every little detail, you'd want that for your authorization system!
Wrap-up
Well, that's it for February’s roundup. Hope you enjoyed it and see you next month!
BTW - we did a roundup of "Open Source Best of 2022" series over the course of January, make sure to check it out 😆!
