A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.
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What self-hosted alternative would you recommend for document collaboration? Word processing docs, spreadsheets, pdf’s, etc.
I was using Nextcloud, but it’s not been as straightforward for file-sharing as I’d like, multiple people can’t work on a document at once, and it doesn’t save changes consistently (especially with fillable PDF’s).
Onlyoffice + Nextcloud. Is a little complex to self host the Onlyoffice Document server (the backbone of Onlyoffice collaboration), but it works very nice for multi user document collaboration, it even works on federated instances when using same document server.
Thanks! I’ll give it a whirl.
This is neat! Bookmarking this. Not sure what you’re using on the backend, but are you open to contributions for more detailed descriptions?
I use NextJS for both front and backend. I'm open for any contributions if you're interested.
Wow, that's a really complete list. Thanks for sharing! I might check out Dokploy some time, it sounds interesting.
You should check it for sure! I actually use it to deploy some of the services I need for running OpenAlternative.
Maybe you wanna collaborate with selfh.st to complete each others list?
Edit: Looked at the list. Good job on the design and content. Bookmarked it :)
We've talked with Ethan (owner of selfh.st) and shared some insights, but I'd definitely be open to collaboration. I don't think merging both sites is possible since we're focusing on different topics, but maybe we can figure something out.
Thank you all for the comments and the feedback! I've implemented most of the things reported. You can now filter the self-hosted tools by category directly in the filters. Tool cards should now show more info about the product on hover (longer description and the most popular alternative).
If you see anything else to improve, let me know.
Your self hosted page should have the categories listed too.
Done 👍
Great stuff.
So sorry for all the errors! I got crazy traffic to the website and the database is not holding on as it should. Will have to upgrade the server very soon🫡
One thing I would like to see is a way to distinguish which apps do Real™ Open Source vs fakie open source. For example, I see Joplin on there saying "Your secure, open-source note-taking companion". I guess that's technically true at this point in time, but they also force contributors to sign a CLA so they have the option to pull the rug later on. (Something which does happen.)
They even say so explicitly:
This is necessary so that if we ever want to change the license again we are able to do so
— https://joplinapp.org/news/20221221-agpl/#what-does-it-change-for-developers
And fine, if they want to do that it's up to them. I'd just like a quick way to tell the difference between open source 😒 and Open Source 😄.
The Free Software Foundation requires "CLAs" as well. I have no fear that they're going to rug-pull. I don't think we can use that as the indicator. IMO, it's even a good idea to have a CLA so that's no conflict that the project owns the code.
The warning for me is if the project is run by a company, especially a VC-backed company. Joplin isn't, so I would be comfortable using it (although I don't).
Interesting! I didn't realize this! https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-assign.en.html
only the copyright holder or someone having assignment of the copyright can enforce the license. If there are multiple authors of a copyrighted work, successful enforcement depends on having the cooperation of all authors.
So it seems like the FSF does this in order to be able to enforce GPL. Buuut, these guys really gotta be the exception. I feel like the probability of the FSF selling out and going full corporate evil is pretty low...
a good idea to have a CLA so that’s no conflict that the project owns the code.
That's exactly the problem though. The project owning the code, instead of the contributors owning the code.
Maybe a filter by license?
I don't think the type of license matters too much if you have to sign a CLA, since the company can just change it whenever they want. For example, you can be AGPL today (Joplin) and then not AGPL tomorrow.
How would you determine if a thing is true open source, or capitalism masquerading as open source like you've described, if you were to just stumble onto a software randomly and wanted to check?
For the specific case I'm talking about (CLAs), I check if the project (on GitHub or wherever) requires signing a CLA to contribute. In Joplin's case, they do:
Basically, with a CLA they can change the license at any time to whatever they want. If they want to go closed source tomorrow they can with zero trouble. Without a CLA, they would need approval from everyone who has contributed to the project to do a license change, giving the project proper open source protections.
This needs to be made more visible on github, like a little tag near all the share data under about. But I guess the only way that would work was people self reporting their CLA's. And not sure how keen microsoft would be on a consumer protection change
Can you change the color of the ad badge? I'm fine with ads, but it blends in too well :/
Why does it list Gitea instead of Forgejo?
What's wrong with gitea?
Seems like the owners of Gitea did something like a self-coup and kicked out community members from the project. https://gitea-open-letter.coding.social/
Forgejo is the community-driven fork of Gitea.