Here are some of the open source tools that I’ve been messing around with. Feel free to check them out, spin them up locally, and let me know what you think:

• Excalidraw - A NodeJS based diagramming program. You can create diagrams that look like they were white boarded. Create the diagrams on the website and export them as a file or you can run Excalidraw in a docker container and work locally. Not as collaborative as other programs out there, but it is open source and nice to work on for a presentation. It also gives your work a pre-COVID feel, when we used to do this on whiteboards in a conference room.

• Backstage - A service catalogue tool released by Spotify. This is a CNCF incubating project that lets you aggregate EVERYTHING about your product, from getting started guidelines to launching your app to supporting it. I just found this gem and haven't had a chance to try it out, but there are huge implications for this if it integrates well.

• Cryptpad - A privacy-centric collaboration suite. This is what you use if you don't want Google to have your docs. They claim to keep no personal data if you use their cloud offering, but you can also host this yourself as it is completely open source. This is not as fully featured as Google for workspaces, but it does have some basic tools. They also accept BTC for payment if you want to get the premium package which basically gives you more storage. Great for techies who like to write everything in Markdown.

• Dagger - A portable DevKit for CI/CD pipelines from the founders of Docker. Lookout Gitlab, Dagger's coming for ya! Actually, this is supposed to compliment other CI tools, and this seems to be a great option to test your CI pipelines locally and easily move that to your CI service of choice. Like Docker, it is supposed to run anywhere.

• Obsidian - A knowledge base tool that renders markdown files into visualizations. Since this is a very visual tool, a blog post does not do it justice. I recommend visiting the website, downloading it and taking it for a test drive. This is a really fun tool for anyone who likes to take notes or write documentation in markdown.