The first time in my life I heard about open source was in school. I started at 16 in a school for computer science and our teacher for programming was joking about open source. His background was IBM and enterprise software with C and C++.

“Open source is developed by nerds who name projects like Python because they think Monty Python is funny.” — My programming teacher, 2007

I thought, ok maybe he is right, but a few months later when I was learning PHP and JavaScript, I started to see the open source ecosystem. I was amazed by the amount of free software available and how it was developed by people from all around the world. The whole internet at this time (2007) was based on open source software, from the web servers to the content management systems. I was fascinated by the idea of contributing to something that could be used by millions of people.

That’s when I understood my old teacher was wrong. The entire internet was built on open source — it’s not just for nerds, it’s for everyone who wants to create something useful and share it with the world.

Homelabbing and the Need for a Reading List AppLink to heading

In 2024 I started digging into homelabbing and it is a big rabbit hole. My experience from the years with Linux, CLI and Docker was so helpful to get into it.

At this time my favorite service for read-later articles was Pocket. I had been using it for years and I loved it. Then the shocking news came that Pocket is going to be shut down. I was devastated. I had so many articles saved in Pocket and I didn’t want to lose them. I started looking for alternatives, but I couldn’t find anything that was as good as Pocket.

My First Open Source Project: ReadeckLink to heading

Then I found Readeck, the idea was not only to save the URLs, it also saved the whole article and made it available offline. I was amazed by the idea and I wanted to contribute to it. The clean interface was nice and woah it was fast as sh*t. But the big downside was that it was only available for Android. As an iOS user I wanted to have the same experience on my iPhone. So I decided to create an iOS app for Readeck.

The good documentation of the API was a big help to get started. I started by creating a simple app that could authenticate with the Readeck API and fetch the saved articles. Then I added the ability to save articles from the iOS share sheet. I also added a feature to download the articles for offline reading.

After finishing a small prototype, I decided to ask the maintainer of Readeck if he was interested in having an iOS app for his service. He was very supportive and encouraged me to continue working on it. He also offered to pay for the Apple Developer account to publish the app on the App Store.

And that was the deal, he would pay for the Apple Developer account and I would publish the iOS app for Readeck as open source. I was so excited to start working on the app and share it with the community.

Lessons Learned and Future PlansLink to heading

Working on Readeck was a great learning experience for me. I have been developing in Swift since 2017, but this was my first time working on an open source project. It was great to decide everything by myself and to have the freedom to implement the features that I wanted. It was also great to get feedback from the community and to see how people were using the app. Many features came directly from community requests — like different fonts or various layout options for reading articles.

So finally in summer 2025 I published the app on the App Store and shared the code on Codeberg and GitHub. The response from the community was amazing. People were excited to have an iOS app for Readeck and they wrote me from all around the world to thank me for creating the app and share new ideas or just small bugs. It was a great feeling to see that my work was appreciated and that it was making a difference in people’s lives.

Maintaining ReadeckLink to heading

In the meantime the app is stable and it will be enhanced more and more in the future. But it’s also hard to maintain an open source project. Issues and feature requests come in from multiple channels:

• Codeberg Issues
• GitHub Issues
• TestFlight feedback
• Email

Keeping track of everything across all these channels is a real challenge. The user base is growing and with it the expectations. Some things I learned along the way:

• Keep the code clean and well documented, so other developers can easily contribute
• Prioritize issues — not everything needs to be fixed right away
• Communicate openly with the community about what’s planned and what’s not

ConclusionLink to heading

Starting my first open source project with Readeck was a great experience for me. It was a great way to learn new skills, to contribute to the community and to create something that people can use and enjoy. I am looking forward to continue working on Readeck and to see how it evolves in the future.