this post was submitted on 22 Jan 2025
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Hey, community :)

I run a website that showcases the best open-source companies. Recently, I've added a new feature that filters self-hosted tools and presents them in a searchable format. Although there are other options available, like Awesome-Selfhosted, I found it difficult to find what I needed there, so I decided to display the information in a more digestible format.

You can check out the list here: https://openalternative.co/self-hosted

Let me know if there’s anything else I should add to the list.

Thanks!

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 months ago
[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Love the list, but scrolling through, the one liners don't mean much for a lot of these.

The descriptions are just too short and vague to even understand what a lot of them actually do.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Noted! I have longer descriptions in the db, but didn't want to bloat the listings. Will try with a longer description soon.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It's a tough balance, you don't want a whole page for each one. Maybe if there was a clear list of tags so it's easier to understand even what category they're talking about?

For example:
Penpot
Design freedom meets open-source collaboration

I really don't know what this product category even is. Is it for web layout? Is it a drawing program? Is it for CAD?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Fair point. I'll try to add more context to the listings. Thanks!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Maybe consider collapsible dropdowns or similar for the extra information

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

This is the solution. That way i can decide if i want to read more about one of them and then sinply open the dropdown.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (2 children)

personally I love it when websites solve this problem with hover hints, theres something satisfying about seeing a paragraph of text on hover that just answers all my questions. not sure how that'd work for people viewing on mobile though

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

No please, hover links are just useless to tablet and mobile users, anybody without a mouse actually!

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

Added just that! Thank you for the suggestion.

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

anytime! just remember as @[email protected] pointed out, these will be useless for tablet and mobile users, so you may still need an additional solution!

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

Added longer description and major alternative when you hover over the cards. Hope that'll make it easier to browse.

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

Yeah, that looks amazing, and it's really quick. That's a huge improvement!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago
[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

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 :)

[–] Die4Ever 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

I don't see any Fediverse platforms on there, how would you feel about adding them? Seems like they'd fit.

https://openalternative.co/categories/social-media

Could add Lemmy, Mastodon, MBin, PieFed, PixelFed, Loops, PeerTube, NodeBB...

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (6 children)

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 😄.

simpsons

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

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).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

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.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Wow, that's a really complete list. Thanks for sharing! I might check out Dokploy some time, it sounds interesting.

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

You should check it for sure! I actually use it to deploy some of the services I need for running OpenAlternative.

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

Never heard of 99% in that list.

Also, Gitea should not be there. It is a corporate -owned open core project that was hostilely taken away from the community.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Didn't know that. Do you have more info/source?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

Forgejo is the fork that sprung from this whole debacle. https://forgejo.org/2022-12-15-hello-forgejo/

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

This is neat! Bookmarking this. Not sure what you’re using on the backend, but are you open to contributions for more detailed descriptions?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

I use NextJS for both front and backend. I'm open for any contributions if you're interested.

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

Your self hosted page should have the categories listed too.

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

Great stuff.

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

It's really surprising how fast people forget about the shady shit rustdesk has done.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

Near as I understand it: years ago some dumb engineering decisions were made, acknowledged, and corrected. Is there some recent scandal I'm out of the loop on?

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

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).

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

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

Thanks! I’ll give it a whirl.

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

I'm tired of Cloudflare ... 😔

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago

Yeah I havent been able to load the cf verification on my android for like over a week now lol

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (3 children)

I wish more software wasn’t “hosted” these days.

I miss app ass apps.

Don’t mind me. I’m just feeling old.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

I mean this lemmy is for self hosting apps. Not sure what you were expecting to come across lol. If you don't have a Nas or server or dedicated host computer you're probably not gonna enjoy anything in this lemmy

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

That’s fair. Ran across it in All.

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

UPDATE: I've added advanced search filters directly on the listing, so you can now filter self-hosted tools by their alternative, category, tech stack used and licence they're released on 🔥

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

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.

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

Appreciate the effort, but without categories it's not going to sail too far.
Right now it's just a long list of everything that it's out there, awesome-selfhosted is much more usable for looking up what you need.

Also, did you join any kind of affiliate programs/partnerships for these "10% off" green boxes? If so, would be great to disclose it. Nothing bad with getting some cash, but community will just appreciate the honesty.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

There are some affiliate links on the website, but the discounted products are not affiliated. I just reached out to the owners asking for an exclusive discount for paid plans.

There are categories on the website, but not directly on the list. But here is "full-text" search, so you could technically search by category or an alternative. Try "analytics" or "google analytics" for example.

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