alexellis

Founder @openfaas @inlets @self-actuated

Funding Links: https://github.com/sponsors/alexellis

Name: Alex Ellis
Location: United Kingdom
Company: @openfaas
Kind: user
Followers: 4954
Following: 5
Total stars: 21525
Repositories count: 444
Created at: 2022-11-10T12:25:40.236Z
Updated at: 2025-03-25T12:45:55.949Z
Last synced at: 2025-03-25T12:45:55.949Z

GitHub Sponsors Profile

How my work benefits you 🎯
If you've searched for a topic on Go, Docker, Raspberry Pi, Kubernetes, or Firecracker, then you've probably already benefitted from my work. You might have also seen one of my blog posts on Twitter, Reddit, Hacker News or in a newsletter. Maybe you've heard me speak at a conference like KubeCon / GopherCon or on a podcast like Changelog.
I keep things simple - make it work, make it pretty, make it perfect (in that order). I value developer experience over everything else. I run Linux as a daily driver and am inspired by UNIX principles.
How it all started 📖
I was working away on business applications in a regular job. One day I started learning new technology and explaining it to others. That naturally spilled over to writing and releasing Open Source software like OpenFaaS.
I quit my job in 2017 to focus fully on OpenFaaS - a portable serverless platform that you can run anywhere with your own choice of limits, languages, triggers & capabilities. It has over 30k GitHub Stars, more than 350 contributors, and hundreds of blog posts and conference talks recorded from around the world. By 2019, I just couldn't sustain working for free any longer. I didn't want to be making charitable donations to benefit companies making significant profits from my sacrifice.
The commercial has worked far better, and OpenFaaS is still free for personal/non-commercial use - with a version for Kubernetes, and one that works on a single host.
So why sponsor?
You're familiar with the 80/20 principle. 80% of are benefitting from my work will continue to do so as a one-way thing. But what if you could join the 20%? Because you want to spur me on and to become a part of this together with me.
Technical writing, and Open Source has become my hobby again, but it needs both investment and support for me to be able to carve out the time needed. I need to to maintain existing projects, and be free to create new ones.

arkade - the antidote to the slowness of brew - install binary CLIs on any platform and OS. Set up servers and CI systems with tools like containerd, node, caddy.
k3sup - bootstrap a HA Kubernetes cluster for production or development over SSH in a few seconds
fstail - unlike tail -f - it picks up any new file in a directory and can filter on just what you want to see
actions-usage - get a detailed report of your personal or organisation's usage of GitHub actions broken down by user/repo
kubetrim - clean up KUBECONFIG by trimming off unreachable clusters

I also created a Kubernetes operator (registry-creds to protect you from the Docker Hub rate-limits and another (inlets-operator that gets you TCP load balancers for any private/local Kubernetes cluster.
As part of creating actuated, I also published a webinar explaining microVMs vs. containers and a Firecracker lab showing how to build with them yourself.
You may also be interested in my eBooks:

Everyday Golang - everything I've learned writing Go for a living since 2013
Serverless For Everyone Else - turn your scripts and crons into functions deployed via CLI/API
Netbooting a Raspberry Pi cluster - throw away those SD cards and build a homelab with proper networking

Extras
25USD / mo or higher

Debug GitHub Actions jobs over SSH using the ssh gateway from actuated
Sponsor @openfaas instead and get free access to all OpenFaaS Edge features for personal use
Direct access to my sponsors portal, with all my past sponsors emails and 20% off my eBooks
50% off a 1:1 meeting with me via Zoom for advice & direction