Nowadays Open Source Software (OSS) is a widely adopted approach in the modern IT industry. No matter if you are looking for a small library, a whole platform or even programming language, you may find an open source of every scale especially in the frontend development space.
One of the great pieces of OSS is Angular. Angular framework by Google is rightfully considered to be one of the most popular open source frontend frameworks in the modern digital environment due to its awesome modularity, options to scale and strong dev community.
Angular Consulting was created as an extension to the Angular dev community and makes its commitment in developing a strong presence around the Angular ecosystem and complementing the Angular framework features.
While presenting our latest open source product NGVM on various events, we got a number of questions which may be rightfully considered to be the most frequently asked ones about the nature of open source in general and our products in particular. We have gathered the most popular question and answers here for your reference.
Is Open Source Software the same as Free Software?
No, it’s not the same. The core difference between free and open source software is continuous development and improvement. Open source is constantly modified and improved by the dev community. In fact open source is mainly a design philosophy in which the source code should always be publicly available and never discriminate against persons or groups.
What is an Open Source Community?
An open source community is a group of people united by the shared purpose of developing, maintaining, extending and promoting a specific body of open source software. These communities are often spread across the globe—their members occupy different geographic regions and work across numerous industries. Still they have a common vision for the open source software, network and share knowledge.
Is Open Source Software more secure?
Thanks to the active developer community, open-source software code is often highly visible and updated quite frequently, so there are less risks of security vulnerabilities than commercial alternatives. However, regular updates are not always the case, as it depends on the popularity and level of adoption of a particular open-source software. Typically open-source software inspires innovation, provides greater flexibility for customization, and facilitates the submission of requests for changes, commonly referred to as RFCs
What Open Source Products extend Angular functionality?
There are a lot of great open source products out there that extend Angular functionality. Based on your exact use-case, here are just a few examples of open source products that complement Angular functionality.
Every web application requires a solid UI library that allows you to build the UI/UX layouts. For example, you can use Angular Material, which is based on Google's Material Design and provides pre-built UI components and styles for Angular applications. Another option could be Ant Design , PrimeNG , ngx-bootstrap , Onsen UI , Syncfusion Angular UI , Clarty UI and more. All that component libraries provide hundreds of UI components out of the box that helps to speedup the development process.
Sometimes, you want to bring a form library to handle user data input. Form libraries provide a way to handle complex forms with advanced validation. There are many open source form’s libraries available for Angular, such as Reactive Forms and Template-Driven Forms that shipped as a part of Angular framework as well as a very powerful Formly library that helps to handle dynamic forms with ease.
Depending on the nature of your application, there might be a reason to bring in the state management library. State management libraries provide a way to manage complex application states and application data flow in a predictable way. Libraries like NGXS, NGRX , Elf are very popular but there always should be a solid reason to decide such libraries should be brought to the project.
And, of course, we cannot forget to mention the TypeScript language and RxJS library, which are the two main open-source (OSS) pillars that Angular has always relied on.
Does Angular Consulting have their own Open Source Products?
As a part of the dev community, we are making our commitment complementing Angular functionality. Now the company has two OS products in our OSS portfolio: Rx Service and NGVM.
Rx Service is a small library that allows advanced and yet simple component communication and data flow scenarios within Angular applications.
NGVM stands for Angular CLI Version Manager which is a command line tool for developers that simplifies the process of managing Angular projects and Angular CLI versions. This tool was inspired by one of the most popular StackOverflow answers by our Director and the idea of being more productive when it comes to analysing Angular applications and preparing them for an upgrade.
This OSS is often utilised by the Angular Consulting team while working on Upgrade Strategy and other services. To know more about our approach, arrangement and execution of the working process you may read our blog post How to keep up with Angular updates .
Is it possible to use Rx Service as a state management solution?
Yes, you can use Rx Service as a state management solution, but we recommend that only for simple scenarios. However if you are looking for an advanced state management solution it is better to consider other options.
Can NGVM be used instead of NPM commands?
Yes, NGVM has a lot of built-in shortcuts that replace most of the Angular CLI related NPM commands. For example checking the latest Angular CLI versions, or fetching a list of Angular CLI releases on NPM. NGVM allows you to type less and do more.
Is Angular Consulting planning to release any other OSS?
While we don't have any new specific OSS projects in the work, we are always looking for opportunities to innovate and improve our services. Our team is currently focused on supporting our existing OSS projects, but we are keeping an eye on potential future endeavours.
Sometimes OSS development is an answer that was found while resolving our client’s challenges. Angular Consulting is always giving a preference to solid forward-looking solutions which may be also advantageous for the industry.
How to find Angular Consulting OSS products?
The best way to find Angular Consulting open-source (OSS) products is to visit our Product page. To explore the source code of our OSS projects, head to our GitHub page and don't forget to give us a star ⭐
We are constantly inventing and updating! Follow us in socials to keep track of our projects and products!
