Open-Source

In late 2019, the Java world was buzzing with a new name: Quarkus. Promising “Supersonic Subatomic Java,” it aimed to fix the long startup times and heavy memory usage that had plagued traditional Java applications in the age of containers and serverless. At that time, Quarkus was still in its BETA phase, but the vision was clear. It wasn’t just another framework; it was a fundamental rethink of how we build Java applications for Kubernetes. ...

In the world of modern data architectures, Change Data Capture (CDC) has become a cornerstone for building reactive, event-driven systems. At the heart of this movement is Debezium, a distributed platform that turns your existing databases into event streams. Joining the Stream In July 2020, I had the opportunity to contribute to the Debezium project. My involvement came at a time when I was deeply immersed in building real-time data pipelines and realized the power of capturing row-level changes without overloading the source databases. ...

Looking back at my career, one of the most rewarding chapters was the time I spent as a Linux Administration instructor at Fundación Código Libre Dominicano. This journey began in 2006, following what the foundation recognized as an “outstanding study” period where I deeply immersed myself in the world of Unix-like systems. By 2007, I transitioned from student to instructor, a role I would hold until 2012. Building the Foundation Teaching at FCLD wasn’t just about showing people how to use a terminal; it was about fostering a mindset of freedom and technical sovereignty. My students were often professionals or aspiring sysadmins looking to break away from proprietary stacks and embrace the power of the GPL. ...

Floci is a local AWS service emulator — a drop-in replacement for LocalStack’s community edition that requires no auth token, has no usage limits, and is MIT-licensed. The name comes from cirrocumulus floccus, a small, fluffy cloud formation. That’s the design goal: minimal, lightweight, and always free. GitHub: github.com/hectorvent/floci Native Floci vs LocalStack Metric Native Floci LocalStack Advantage Startup Time ~24 ms ~3,300 ms 138× faster Idle Memory ~13 MiB ~143 MiB 91% less Lambda Latency 2 ms avg 10 ms avg 5× faster Lambda Throughput 289 req/s 120 req/s 2.4× faster Docker Image Size ~90 MB ~1.0 GB 11× smaller Price Free Forever Auth Token Req. $0 / No Auth Supported AWS Services SSM · SQS · SNS · S3 · DynamoDB · DynamoDB Streams · Lambda · API Gateway REST · API Gateway v2 · IAM · STS · Cognito · KMS · Kinesis · Secrets Manager · CloudFormation · Step Functions · ElastiCache · RDS · EventBridge · CloudWatch Logs · CloudWatch Metrics ...

Local development against AWS services has always been painful. You either run real AWS (expensive, slow, requires an internet connection) or use an emulator. For years, LocalStack was the go-to choice — until they required auth tokens and locked down their community edition in early 2026. That gap is exactly what Floci fills. Key Numbers: Native Floci vs LocalStack Metric Native Floci LocalStack Advantage Startup Time ~24 ms ~3,300 ms 138× faster Idle Memory ~13 MiB ~143 MiB 91% less Lambda Latency 2 ms avg 10 ms avg 5× faster Lambda Throughput 289 req/s 120 req/s 2.4× faster Price Free Forever Auth Token Req. $0 / No Auth What Is Floci? Floci is a free, open-source local AWS service emulator written in Java using Quarkus and compiled to a native binary via GraalVM Mandrel. It runs as a single process on port 4566 — the same port LocalStack uses — so switching requires zero changes to your existing code or tooling. ...