Floci: a free practice copy of Amazon's cloud
Floci lets your developers rehearse on a pretend version of Amazon's cloud, right on their own laptops, with no account, no token and no paid tier.
A rehearsal space for your software
If your product runs on Amazon's cloud, your developers face a small daily problem. Every time they want to check that something works, they either poke at the real thing, which can cost money and break stuff, or they use a practice version that pretends to be Amazon.
The best-known practice version is called LocalStack. It's good, but it asks for an account and keeps some features behind paid tiers.
Floci is a new, free alternative. It's open source, it needs no sign-up and no special key, and nothing is locked away. The people behind it say you can swap it in where LocalStack used to be without rewiring things. One trending roundup also describes it as starting almost instantly and using very little memory, though that's worth checking on the project page.
Why it caught my eye
It's a bit like a restaurant kitchen having a full mock service before opening night. Same stations, same tickets, no real customers to disappoint. Floci gives your team that, for free, on their own machines.
For a small company, that means one less subscription and one less account to manage, and fewer moments where someone is afraid to try something.
Words worth knowing
AWS: Amazon Web Services, the rented computers and storage a huge share of the internet runs on.
Emulator: software that convincingly pretends to be something else, so you can practise safely.
CI: the automatic checks that run every time your developers change something.
Something to ask
Next time you talk with your tech lead, ask: what do we pay for just to test things? You might find a quiet saving here.
Want something like this working in your team's tools? That's what I do.
Field Notes, every Friday
The week’s best free and open-source tools in one short email. Plus David’s own notes when he has something worth sending.