First Open Source Mobile Messaging System Available to Developers
Online, January 22, 2014 (Newswire.com) - Spika, the first open source mobile messaging system for iOS and Android, is now available to developers and companies worldwide to use its source code to develop custom apps. Spika uses various open source technologies like CouchDb, Silex and Vagrant and is meant to reduce costs of development of various messaging apps, mobile social networks or mobility solutions or any other app that requires live communication feature.
"The problem is that there isn't similar complete open source system offering apps iOS and Android with backend solution included. It is quite hard to start from scratch so our goal is to enable young developers learn to code with existing examples while experienced developers don't have to reinvent the wheel but just adjust existing solution. We have a lot of experience with mobile messengers so the choice to make this an open source system came from desire to speed up development and evolution of this kind of apps. What we would like to see is that Spika has similar effect Wordpress had on web development industry" said Ken Yasue, creator of Spika app.
As a CEO of a mobile development company Ken noticed a pattern of customer demands and tried to incorporate a solution that will give more value to both developers and end users. He started testing this idea and has discovered there is a certain interest for such solution. System was developed in-house and first tested in Japan. First comments were great, especially for the apps, but famous Japanese PHP developer @yando noticed certain issues with the backend so community in Japan included on the project. Collaborating with Ken backend has been improved and community helped to develop this solution further.
"Open source community is the key and I'm glad they have accepted our solution. I mean community in Japan went crazy for the app, spending time to improve it and that is the main reason we would reach out to the rest of open source supporters. We would love to see it happen in other parts of the World. It would be great if all participated, improved the code quality and bring new ideas to the table" says Yasue.
Everyone interested can get involved over http://spikaapp.com/ page and reach out to Ken with questions. Also complete source code is available on GitHub https://github.com/cloverstudio/Spika