Welcome to the OpenShift Developer Spotlight where we get to know the members of the OpenShift community a little better and show off their skills as developers. Also check out their applications developed on OpenShift in our App Gallery. Interested in being featured? Apply here or view past entries.
- Name: Lorenzo Gil Sanchez
What inspired you to be a developer?
I always liked tinkering with devices, first with toys (opening them up) then with computers. At one point I realized what made these machines work and I found out the combination of hardware and software to be really powerful. Until recently I have focused on software since it was easier to get started with. Nowadays I also like playing with hardware since systems like Arduino and Raspberry PI makes it really easy to learn. And above all I'm really passionate about the concept of open source and open hardware both for the community and philosophical ideas behind them.
Why did you choose OpenShift as your hosting platform?
I like the fact that everything is open source and if I want I can run an OpenShift cluster in my own Raspberry PI mini cluster. Because of that there is no vendor lock-in which is important for a project like this where I just do it for fun and don't have too many resources to invest in things like moving it to a different service provider. I also love the fact that I can develop my own cartridges if what I want is not available in the marketplace. That's something truly unique in OpenShift.
We also got a grant from Red Hat due to the open source nature of our application. That grant covers all the costs of our hosting so of course that was a big reason too.
What advantages does OpenShift give you that other platforms don't?
As I mentioned above the open source nature of it allows me to learn from it and understand how everything works together. It's not a blackbox where I deploy my code and it magically works. If I want I can dig into it, learn and become a better developer.
Tell us more about your application currently hosted on OpenShift:
- Name: Yith Library
- What does it do? Yith Library is an online password manager. It helps you to keep your secrets under control in a secure and easy way. Your online data is too valuable to avoid protecting it seriously. It allows you to manage your credentials and other passwords using the best security practices without the need to be a cryptographer or a paranoid nerd.
- What technologies were used to create your app? The application is programmed in the Python programming language using the Pyramid framework. For storage it uses the relational database Postgres and for sessions it uses Redis.
- What motivated you to create this application and what problems does it solve? At some point in my previous job we needed an open source password manager that could store the credentials we used in several services. We wanted it to be web based so we could access our passwords from any device. So we started the project there and we have been improving it for the last 3 years.
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