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[META] Are paid for, closed source projects, being advertised on this community, appropriate? (lemmy.world)
submitted 4 months ago by to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
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A number of brand new accounts have popped up shilling their paid for applications.

Is this within the rules? Is the community happy with this? Could mods clarify this in the rules?

Either allowing advertising, or banning it entirely.

my point is - there is a difference between an open source homegrown project that might be useful, vs closed source paid for projects from brand new accounts

some replies are misunderstanding, somehow.

I am against

brand new accounts who:

  1. first post is a brand new project
  2. project is closed source
  3. project will cost money
  4. is asking for free testing
  5. the post is literally an advertisement
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[+] -54 points 4 months ago (13 children)

I want to be in control of my data and own it. Closed software is the antithesis of that

So, please do share how your homelab has indexed the entire global internet, so you can use your 100% selfhosted, 100% open source search engine? I'm very interested. I've always wanted to run a search engine that is not tied to someone else's.

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  • [–] 56 points 4 months ago* (8 children)

    That's a petty troll response to a legitimate statement of what someone wants (which aligns with this group's stated focus), where they aren't claiming what they have done

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  • [+] -43 points 4 months ago (7 children)

    It's not trolling at all. You stated you got into self hosting because you wanted opensource and you want to retain all of your data. I'm asking you to share your homelab set up. A lot of people would be genuinely interested. The point being, all the gnashing of teeth is a duplicitous argument. If you truly do as you stated, then I'm wondering how you search a global internet from your homelab that indexes it all.

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  • [+] 16 points 4 months ago (7 children)
    [removed by mod]
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  • [–] 0 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    There's no respect in that statement and thats not appropriate here. Lets calm it down and keep it a discussion, not aggression and attacks.

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  • [+] -16 points 4 months ago (4 children)
    [removed by mod]
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  • [–] 17 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    Sigh... As always, life must be balanced. You can't go from one extreme to the other. It's a spectrum. I self-host what I deem important in order to keep it under my control and not on a capitalist platform.

    It's an adventure, each month, you learn more and realize that you can host more services yourself.

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  • [+] -6 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    I self-host what I deem important in order to keep it under my control and not on a capitalist platform.

    And I applaud you for that. However, the fact remains, that not everyone selfhosts for the same reasons. I got into selfhosting because I wanted to be as private, as secure, and as anonymous as I could be. However, I do thoroughly enjoy learning how to do things on my server. At my age, it's good to keep what's left of my brain active. I genuinely like to tinker. I do also make concessions.

    I looked at the rules, and I can't find anything about closed source. I did find 'without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don’t control.' The reason this thread exists is because some people think closed source that integrates with selfhosted, opensource, is 100% out, and I find no evidence of such. It also states 'Be civil: we’re here to support and learn from one another. Insults won’t be tolerated.' Civility: Hey is this open source? Was it vibe coded? Ok no thanks bro.' It sure isn't the dog pile on the rabbit we see most of the time here when something AI, paid for, or closed source that integrates with opensource threads show up.

    I agree that 100% asking selfhosters to outright buy something should be out. We've seen a few of these. But, again, the reason this thread was started was because a dev asked a bunch of selfhosters to beta test an app that integrates with what most here run, and in return for your efforts, he will let you keep the app if you so desire. So, you actually do retain control. You can pass. You can beta test. You can uninstall. Your choice.

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  • [–] 8 points 4 months ago

    Self-hosting is a community effort in which the whole community helps each other to self-host their data, including programming the services people use for this purpose. The problem with closed-source software is that we don't know what's happening behind the scenes, or if it's indeed sending telemetry.

    Even worse, if that service is ever no longer supported or updated, I'll be left with data on my server that can't be used to its full potential, and a service that won't receive security updates.

    Open-source software, on the other hand, is a community effort. If, for example, software is no longer updated or supported, it can easily be forked, and my data can be transferred to the new service.

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  • [+] 5 points 4 months ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 child)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago

    do you know about YaCy?

    I do know YaCy. YaCy can use peers in the YaCy network for search results. I've never got consistently good results with YaCy tho. It's been a while sing I experimented with YaCy. Perhaps it has gotten better and I should revisit. I do run Searxng, but that is an aggregator and I'm still using an external search engine, just cutting out all the telemetry and metrics. My point was, selfhosters do not live in a bubble. We, like everyone else, depend on services that a closed source, and out of our control. Sure, we try to be as private, secure and anonymous as possible, however at times you got to do a little dirt. Making money off an app or service seems to be an sticky wicket with some. Yet FOSS is full of apps that require a subscription to unlock more or different features.

    • Buying an opensource app to unlock features. Dev team gets paid.
    • Buying an app for your phone: Dev team gets paid.

    I honestly don't see much of a difference, other than one is definitely opensource, while the latter may not be, or is a combination of both. That seems to make the defining difference to some. Not all selfhosters align with the same creed.

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