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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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Your help needed: PhD research on why people choose to self-host (survey.lpt.feri.um.si)

submitted 4 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Hi everyone,

I’m a PhD student in Computer Science researching why people choose to self-host software—what motivates you, what concerns you, and what factors affect your decision-making.

To better understand this, I’ve prepared a short anonymous survey (~10 minutes). Your insights as part of the self-hosting community would be incredibly valuable for this research.

🔗 Survey link: https://survey.lpt.feri.um.si/376953?newtest=Y&lang=en&s=ls

This study is part of my doctoral research at the University of Maribor, Slovenia, conducted under the supervision of Assist. Prof. Lili Nemec Zlatolas, PhD. All responses are anonymous and used strictly for academic purposes.

If you’ve ever self-hosted anything—or even just considered it—I’d really appreciate your input.

Thanks a lot for your time, and feel free to ask me anything about the project ([email protected])!

Cheers!

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Thank you for your comment. The use of similar statements is a common practice in survey research, as it helps to capture various dimensions of a construct more reliably and provides a clearer understanding of individual perspectives.

Regarding your concern, the purpose of this study is not to ask anyone to justify or defend their choices, whether it’s about using third-party services or self-hosting. Instead, we aim to identify the factors that influence such decisions, from a scientific standpoint, to better understand the motivations behind them. The goal is not to judge whether one choice is better than another, but to gain insights into the different considerations that shape people’s decisions when it comes to managing their data and services. Thank you again for taking the time to complete the survey.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Sure, I'm just bemoaning the fact that you've taken cloud hosting to be the default. It's as much a complaint about the world in general as anything specific to you. Good luck with it all.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

Totally understand your concern, and you're right, the assumption of cloud as a default can be frustrating in many ways.

That said, this framing partly reflects the state of the academic literature: in the past 10–15 years, cloud adoption (especially SaaS) has been extensively studied, to the point where it often feels "default" in research too. In contrast, self-hosting has been far less explored, which is exactly why we're doing this study—to help fill that gap and highlight its relevance, especially in academic contexts.

Thanks again for your thoughts and for the good wishes! :)