Appwrite Loves Open Source: Why I decided to support Starship
Tags: opensource, rust, programming, productivity
Published: 2023-01-23 10:21:00

Open-source is at the ❤️ of everything we do at Appwrite, and we want to enable and foster the open-source community that helped us grow to nearly 28k stars on GitHub.
However, open-source projects require much effort to maintain and grow. We use open-source tools daily to build Appwrite and want to help our community.
To give back, each Appwrite engineer gets to pick an open-source project for Appwrite to sponsor for one year.

## Keeping track of where you are and your current tools can be time-consuming in the terminal.
This is why Starship is such a cool project. Starship is an excellent customisable prompt for any terminal, shell, and OS. Many developers run the same command when they change into a new directory. `ls`. Many of us also run other commands to tell what version of PHP, Rust, or other tools we use.

Starship adds extra information to your terminal prompt to tell you what technologies are currently in the directory you are using, what version they are, and what git branch you are on. These usually are commands we typically have to sit there typing ourselves, spending precious time just getting our bearings on what we are doing.


![Starship running in the Terminal in the Appwrite Source Code directory](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/vm9k4xna9cukjz4flq7o.png)



This extra information has even saved me a couple of times, reminding me of what branch I'm currently on (usually the wrong one 😅) and reminding me to maybe not push to it.

Not only that, but Starship is infinitely customisable; want to see what song is currently playing on your Spotify in your terminal? You can write a module for that. Want to see your current memory usage? [There's a module for that.](https://starship.rs/config/#memory-usage)

This ease of customisation and ability to install on any environment I use, whether that be windows, macOS, Linux or even Android! It makes Starship a main stay in whatever device I'm using to develop.

Because this project had given me so much in saving time and time spent tinkering, when I was asked what project I would like to sponsor as a part of our Open Source initiative, it was a no-brainer to help support this project.

## Open-source Software (OSS) Is Hard
Since Appwrite is open-source, we understand the challenges that OSS projects face. If you fall in love ❤️ with an open-source project (like we have), consider checking out ways to contribute. Most OSS projects happily accept contributions, whether in the form of commits, bug 🐛 reports, advocacy, or even monetary 💰 support. If you love Starship, consider joining us as a [GitHub Sponsor](https://opencollective.com/starship). Or, if you're interested in contributing to Appwrite, check out our [contribution guide](https://github.com/appwrite/appwrite/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md).

## Who are we?
Appwrite is an open-source Backend-as-a-Service (BaaS), packaged as a set of Docker micro-services to give developers of any background the tools necessary to build modern apps quickly and securely.

Check out Appwrite as the backend for your next [Web](https://appwrite.io/docs/getting-started-for-web), [Flutter](https://appwrite.io/docs/getting-started-for-flutter), or [Server-side](https://appwrite.io/docs/getting-started-for-server) application. Here are some handy links for more information:

- [Appwrite Contribution Guide](https://github.com/appwrite/appwrite/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md)
- [Appwrite Discord](https://appwrite.io/discord)
- [Appwrite Github](https://github.com/appwrite)
- [Appwrite Documentation](https://appwrite.io/docs)