At work I was asked by a different team how we can deal with bots, because someone in my team remembered that I knew how to do it.

I reluctantly suggested Anubis because I got shit for it last time, This is the URL https://anubis.techaro.lol

This is the 2nd and last time I will ever recommend Anubis anywhere at work to deal with bots because of how unprofessional, un-serious and weird others perceive it.

image
The mascot being a ~10 year old "cutsie" anime cat girl is weird in a work setting.
I will never put myself in a situation again where I have to explain that it's not weird to anyone again, same for that URL.

What is a professional looking open-source alternative to Anubis?

Edit: No I can't just send my colleges here https://anubis.techaro.lol/docs/admin/botstopper The issue is they find the Mascot and domain weird, they will still run into both.

My Goal: Recommend a Open-Source bot protection tool

The Issue: When I send my coworkers to https://anubis.techaro.lol/docs/admin/botstopper they find the mascot and URL weird.

Result: They don't see Anubis as a serious tool and turn away from it

What is a professional looking open-source alternative to Anubis?

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[–] 65 points 4 weeks ago (4 children)

I imagine Anubis looking like that is because professional settings really should sponsor when using open source.
https://anubis.techaro.lol/docs/admin/botstopper/
https://github.com/sponsors/Xe

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  • [+] [S] -22 points 4 weeks ago* (3 children)

    That URL has all the same issues I mention in my post

    If I could send them to eg. botstopper.com where there is no mascot to be found, then that would be a solution.

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  • [–] 37 points 4 weeks ago (2 children)

    You can always contact techaro.lol and ask if they're willing to setup a secondary domain for you.

    Or you can use others endorsements of the product to give it weight.
    "The Linux Foundation uses Anubis to protect git.kernel.org and lore.kernel.org and seem very satisfied with the result.
    For the low cost of 50USD/Month we get a custom branded version of it.

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  • [–] 194 points 4 weeks ago (20 children)

    Well you can pay 50 USD / month to remove the anime jackal girl and apply your own branding. I think its a fair system: hobby & FOSS projects don't have to mind being cringe and profit-oriented operations that need to look professional can spare some of their profit for this cool service.

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  • [–] 29 points 3 weeks ago (7 children)

    That doesn't really solve the problem. The problem arises when he presents the product. It's a very unserious and unprofessional image that professionals see immediately when OP shows them the tool, which causes the project not to be taken seriously. Which is fine, because it's not really a professional product, and isn't trying to be. OP should probably just stop trying to present it as such. Any company is going to want something more common with funding and technical support anyway. Most likely what just about everyone else uses (Cloudflare).

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  • [+] [S] -34 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)

    Open-Source sadly shooting itself in the foot again because of hills they choose to die on.

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  • [–] 7 points 3 weeks ago

    finger touch grep awk cat pip, Red Hat..

    Unix. GNU.

    Dumb jokes and weird branding kinda comes with the package. People have fun.

    I think 'get over it' is a pretty reasonable take, overall.

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  • [–] 12 points 3 weeks ago

    Is it really shooting itself in the foot, though? There are plenty of FOSS projects that companies benefit from and never contribute back to, either monetarily, or in the form of writing code. They provide an easy option to make it look more professional while helping to support the project, and you could always fork it and do what you need to with your fork. The idea that developers should do a thankless job to maintain their software in a way that complies with random corporate policies in order to be more widely adopted strikes me as setting up devs to burn out and crash from having all the joy ground out of their projects for them.

    UNESCO, the Wikimedia foundation and other major organizations have already implemented it and gotten onboard, so I would suggest your coworkers are being a bit foolish in completely disregarding it because of a single mascot image that has a clear option to replace. The Dev is just saving themselves aggravation from people that were going to make endless demands of them, but most likely balk at actually supporting the project to enable features that only matter to their organization, but not to the Dev themselves or others.

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  • [–] 13 points 3 weeks ago (7 children)
  • [–] 5 points 3 weeks ago (6 children)

    As a millennial parent to teenage girls who eat this shit up, IMO, it is very cringe.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 weeks ago (5 children)
  • [–] 2 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)

    I don't really care. Grown-ass men should not be incorporating underage-appearing anime catgirls in....anything. Ever. It's weird as shit.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

    Why do you see an underage girl and immediately make it sexual

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  • [–] -1 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

    .....you do understand the very obvious connection between anime catgirls and porn, right?

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  • [+] [S] -8 points 4 weeks ago (1 child)

    https://anubis.techaro.lol/docs/admin/botstopper That URL has all the same issues I mention in my post

    If I could send them to eg. botstopper.com where there is no mascot to be found, then that would be a solution.

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  • [–] 156 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

    I think people are right that the solution here isn't to try a different project.

    Instead of being confrontational about it, though, I'd recommend a different aproach.

    evelyn: .lol 😜

    you: I know! I know. The branding is pretty silly. But this really is the right tool for the task. Unesco and Wikimedia use it. And we can do our own branding for $50/month. 🤷

    A lot can be fixed by just acknowledging people. They're trying to evaluate something they don't understand, and having a reaction. It's not even unreasonable. The right thing to do is just acknowledge and move on.

    Usually that's all it takes. Don't let yourself be embarrassed when you're being reasonable. If they won't move on, that's the point where I start thinking about job applications somewhere else.

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  • [–] [S] 20 points 3 weeks ago (1 child)

    My response was basically something along those lines. But it's still DOA, because that coworker now has to sell it to their team, and they won't.

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  • [–] 29 points 4 weeks ago (3 children)

    Anubis is open source under the MIT license. If the branding is an issue, fork it, change the branding, call it good.

    The MIT license makes it, effectively, a whitebox solution. You can change the branding to whatever you want it to be.

    If your colleagues are people of a technical inclination they should understand that. If they don't I would question their competence and literacy. If they're not technical in nature I would question why any such proposal is reaching their desk without having first been rebranded, implemented in a test environment, thouroughly tested, and then (and only then) being presented as a proof of concept.

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  • [–] 0 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

    Anubis is open source under the MIT license. If the branding is an issue, fork it, change the branding, call it good.

    People complained when the Tesseract dev did that. Though that response may have been emotionally charged due to what was also happening with Tesseract.

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  • [–] 83 points 3 weeks ago* (6 children)

    "Look, we don't need to use Photoshop for our shop. There's an open source option that matches our use case perfectly."

    "What's it called?"

    "Gnu Image Manipulation Program."

    "That's an awfully long name. They should have a shorter one that's less of a mouthful to say."

    "...they do not."

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  • [+] [S] -26 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)
  • [–] 26 points 3 weeks ago

    https://codeberg.org/wheresalice/go-away
    Even if you didn't have the issues with branding, this is just generally better than Anubis.

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  • [–] 99 points 4 weeks ago (4 children)

    Anubis is not out to make money, as such it has absolutely no obligation to try to appeal to corpos who would use it without contributing back to it.

    Either your coworkers have to get over their hangups (have they not noticed that some of the best software that exists is made by furries?) or you'll have to re-implement something yourselves.

    Anubis is open source. You COULD fork it and modify it for your own purposes.

    If your coworkers can't separate what a piece of software is able to do from how it is branded, that's their problem.

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  • [–] 13 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

    Xe Xaio is trying to self fund to replace their day job, so i wouldn't say there's no money motivation involved.

    It was a slightly uphill battle to get my organization to adopt it for similar reasons but we got there with the branding, and we love botstopper. I put some effort into letting them know just how much it's blocking.

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  • [–] 20 points 3 weeks ago (1 child)

    OP, anubis is not a catgirl. She is a jackalgirl.

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  • [–] 56 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)

    If you want serious and professional: Pay for it!

    If you want it free, you get the anime girl.

    This is an exclusive choice.

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  • [–] 16 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

    Isn't it MIT? Can't you just... Change the image?

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  • [–] 38 points 3 weeks ago

    There is a debranded version you can pay for

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  • [–] 15 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)

    I dont have a solution but I get it. My company ended up using slack over discord because of the same issue. Discord is unprofessional, the brand name and gamer logo were a nonstarter and that ended the discussion without looking at the software features.

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  • [–] 21 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (3 children)

    Yeah buddy, you probably don't want discord for legal reasons. Discord gains perpetual copyright to reuse anything you upload to their servers. Best way is self hosted or a service like slack if you don't want to hassle with servers.

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  • This was like 10 years ago when it was still new, but yea, in the end glad they didn't go with it. Just mentioned it because I've seen the same experience of software options being declined just due to just name and logo and not the actual functionality of the software.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 weeks ago (1 child)

    Discord gains perpetual copyright to reuse anything you upload to their servers.

    All of them do this. Discord, Slack, WebEx, etc etc... You're naïve if you think otherwise.

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  • [–] 62 points 3 weeks ago

    I also find the logo weird. They call it Anubis, but use an anime girl instead of a sexy, shirtless jackal man like Neferu.

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  • [–] 26 points 3 weeks ago

    Sounds like you need to explain the difference between a serious tool and a serious looking tool. They can frump about it being weird but it is the foss option.

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  • [–] 25 points 3 weeks ago (1 child)

    The mascot is part of the repellent. It will repeal the tech and finance bros.

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  • [–] 12 points 3 weeks ago

    Duckduckgo searching it, Botstopper, running Anubis in back and by the same author. I assume the website is theirs

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  • [–] 12 points 3 weeks ago

    This is the 2nd and last time I will ever recommend Anubis anywhere at work to deal with bots because of how unprofessional, un-serious and weird others perceive it.

    tell them its professional enough for kernel.org, qemu.org, the freedesktop gitlab server and several other serious software projects.

    but I understand it. I just find tye priorities funny.

    what kind of company is this? do you believe your work benefits the public? if yes, have a look at gandalf from nerdvpn, but I guess they'll laugh just the same. if no, you are better off not recommending them effective bot blockers.

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  • [–] 41 points 3 weeks ago (1 child)

    The Issue: When I send my coworkers to https://anubis.techaro.lol/docs/admin/botstopper they find the mascot and URL weird.

    You've decided without listening to the responses

    https://botstopper.net/

    Botstopper doesn't have the .lol domain, and doesn't use the anime cat girl splash

    It's not even expensive

    You don't have to tell your peers it is just a rebadged version of the same website, just say "look I've found another one that does the same thing but without the domain and splashscreen probs you complained about"

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  • [–] [M] 32 points 3 weeks ago*

    I want to remind everyone to keep on topic. Disparaging people for whatever reason is not on topic.

    If you see something problematic, please report rather than respond. Your comment in response will be nuked along with the original problem comment.

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  • [–] 54 points 3 weeks ago* (6 children)

    Look, you suggested software that does the job. The issue is not the software, its that your colleagues are being dismissive and disrespectful.

    Instead of looking for other alternatives, you need to be more assertive in your job and career. Tell them you offered an option that does the job and if they have better options its on them to offer them. And also tell them you dont appreciate "lol" as a response to a work suggestion.

    Scrambling to find an alternative because your work colleagues are too immature or arrogant to get past an animal character really doea not reflect well on you. Instead you can tell them the company can pay a small amount to have their own branding, or they can go with a more expensive option like cloudflare, just because they can't be bothered to engage with the cheaper option.

    But whatever you do, do not accept this dismissive treatment by your colleagues. You're just setting the standard that they can just laugh at you and insult you. That is the unprofessional behaviour by them, not some projects mascot. Do not tolerate that BS.

    You've been perfectly williing to argumentative with people here. Apply that attitude to your colleagues who are the real issue.

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  • [–] 39 points 3 weeks ago (1 child)

    And also tell them you dont appreciate “lol” as a response to a work suggestion.

    Not sure if you're joking but the answer isn't "lol" it's ".lol?" because the tld of the website ends in lol (anubis.techaro.lol)

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  • [–] 7 points 3 weeks ago

    All these comments about the URL being unprofessional or whatever, and I am just now realizing what they mean by that. I saw anubis.techaro.lol and didn't get what about that was unprofessional. Professional tools can be named after mythological beings, etc. It wasn't until seeing your comment here that I realized lol may seem unprofessional or something.

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  • [–] -1 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

    I don't think you understand the problem.

    I will never put myself in a situation again where I have to explain that it’s not weird to anyone again, same for that URL.

    To some people, anubis is weird, there is no changing that. It does the job, the mascot can be changed by paying, but the project itself is weird to some people. Such person is asking, is there an alternative. You cannot just say "push back that is not weird".

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  • [–] 16 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)
  • [+] -4 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)
  • [–] 13 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

    It's a harmless way to try and get some money from corporations for unbranded versions. A swastika would not be so harmless. What a batshit crazy analogy attempt.

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  • [–] 10 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

    Ridiculous strawman in the last sentence. A pic of a furry anime character is completely innocuous, and the only thing stopping acceptance of the service is intolerance. There really is no need to try to accommodate for the intolerant.

    Like others have said, a simple rational response in the line of "yes, it initially shows an inappropriate branding for our purposes, but the nerds who made this like it. This branding does not take away from its suitability as a bot prevention tool, and the branding can be easily changed."

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  • [–] 21 points 3 weeks ago

    Life is too short to be all serious all the time, love Anubis logo!

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  • [–] 20 points 3 weeks ago (11 children)

    they see a mascot that dont like and then dont use that software because that? how unprofessional

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  • [–] 25 points 3 weeks ago (8 children)

    Professionalism = prioritizing getting the job done.

    These people are incredibly unprofessional.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 weeks ago (7 children)
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  • [–] -1 points 3 weeks ago* (5 children)

    Are you being sarcarstic? because your first answer has more upvotes than my comment, and the answer seems to concur with my comment (and i quote):

    Professionalism = prioritizing getting the job done. These people are incredibly unprofessional.

    that is what i dont understand, you are saying the same thing as me so why response in first place and why are you getting more upvotes? Sorry if i sound very upset but i really dont understand

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  • [–] 20 points 3 weeks ago (5 children)

    If this is for work you probably should bring in a professional. There are enterprise solutions for this.

    This is selfhosted after all

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  • [–] [S] 9 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)

    My client wants to ditch US tech and have a Open-Source division, so they are pro self hosting and open source.

    It's government, so they will frown upon that mascot, and won't choose it as a tool.

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  • [–] 8 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

    Look at the anubis challenge algorithm, reimplement it, publish it for the rest of your government organizations.

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  • [–] [S] 3 points 3 weeks ago (1 child)

    Not my teams job, we won't get time or budget for that

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  • [–] 6 points 3 weeks ago

    If they (budget-givers) won't let you (plural, team) get budget to alternativise the software, that is an indication that the catgirl is not really an issue. Or, alternatively, that to them the catgirl is worth that much money.

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  • [–] 28 points 3 weeks ago

    "You can change the logo bruh"

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  • [–] 33 points 4 weeks ago (2 children)

    Look buddy I understand that URL has the same issue you mention in your post but it is the official Anubis URL.

    Thus if you really want to be professional you load up the URL past the anime girl, organize a meeting and share your screen.

    Tell them what it is and what it is for.

    Explain what is opensource and the fact that this is free only if they accept that anime girl. Otherwise it'll be 50 bucks and they can put their own ai designed logo instead.

    If they are still acting like childs treat them like childs. Recenter the meeting on what it is for. Do a proof of concept. I don't know, do something instead of stating that the official website is not how you would like it to be ?

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  • [–] [S] -5 points 4 weeks ago (1 child)

    That is not always possible, or worth the fight.

    Even if I was willing to go through all of that, not everyone is, so what happens is more people turn to cloudflare instead of something Foss

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  • [–] 13 points 4 weeks ago

    Sounds like you work with a bunch of short-sighted, judgemental simpletons who cannot look past initial aesthetics for a product that has nothing to do with aesthetics.

    Tbh I would run far the fuck away from that company if they can't be bothered to sit down for a meeting where you explain that it's an open-source project run by an extremely small team of nerds and that there is a commercial product available without the branding issues.

    Everything you're describing about your employer/coworkers gives me giant red-flag warnings regarding their decision making process.

    Time to start looking for a new employer, or accept that they're idiots and next time they ask about bots tell them "I've tried explaining this already but you dismissed me for silly reasons, so go pay for CloudFlare and stop bothering me".

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