Across the world, solutions to problems are often regarded to be well paid and highly appreciated. Especially when it comes to developing any applications or coding in general. There are platforms such as GitHub that allow you to connect with different developers from across the world, which in turn provides you a definitive solution. But many times, the responses might be vague and might result in ineffective results. Its where Request for Maintainers comes into picture where connecting the dots from the problem to the respective solutions plays a crucial role in its operation. Connecting the problem to a definitive solution provider is what the platform is all about.
While providing such innovative functions to developers in solving plenty of issues, Venture Mirror had the privilege to have a brief interview with Rubén Sospedra, Request for Maintainers founder to shed some light on the overall working and inception of ROM. All the excerpts from the interview can be found below.
What is the startup/product about? Give us a brief description of it.
RFM is an open platform to track OSS requests for maintainers. Find any repository calling for support. No more stale project, forgotten communities or ignored packages.
How many co-founders are there? Please introduce them and their backgrounds.
It’s me alone. This started as a side project where I wanted to explore the limits of GitHub as a service. I’m a software independent contractor. I’ve been helping business to deliver top quality products with blazing fast time to market over the past 7 years.
How did you come up with the idea? What motivated you to do this?
Forgotten and unmaintained projects are a big issue for developers. Many times a library is abandoned because no one can invest enough time. And, at the same time, thousands of developers don’t know where they can go to help.
RFM aims to close that gap. We keep track of all the Github repos that need support. There’s a powerful search box so anyone can find a suitable project to jump in. Finally, we put special attention on protecting the community: avoiding spam, ensuring high-quality results and being community-driven.
Who is your target market? Why do you think your product will appeal to them?
Any developer with a special sense on open source. And most specifically, the communities around OSS projects. RFM is not possible without the constant collaboration of the community.
Who are your competitors? How are you different from them?
There is nothing similar. You can search for projects in need of support manually through the GitHub search. But this is cumbersome since no one manually checked that indeed the need exists. You’ll find false positives, repos that already found support, others that are totally abandoned. RFM filters all of these.
What are the future plans with the product/startup? Any new features you are planning on?
The most exciting feature we want to add is a curated list of well-supported projects. It’s literally the opposite of what the project is doing now. But this will solved the other part of the unmaintained issue: finding the right library for the task. An up-to-date manually curated list will be glorious for such problem.
Know a great start-up story or want to share your own? Write to us at interact@insidermediacorp.com and we will get back to you. For more updates follow Venture Mirror on Facebook.
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