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There's an interesting trend of open source clones of popular products. Most recent one that comes to mind is Athens [0] which is an open source clone of Roam R

There's an interesting trend of open source clones of popular products. Most recent one that comes to mind is Athens [0] which is an open source clone of Roam Research. The business model is always that people who really want it for free can self host, and people who don't want to deal with the hassle will pay for hosting. Seems like a reasonable strategy to me. [0] https://github.com/athensresearch/athens https://github.com/athensresearch/athens

sevencolors 6y ago
I think it's a smart way to make money with open-source projects. Charge for hosting and premium add-ons. For me Gatsby comes to mind. The framework will always be free but they have a build, CI and hosting platform that makes it easy. And i don't mind paying money for.
- tjbiddle 6y ago
  Plus, some occasional free development from PRs. The number of times where I would be HAPPY to work on a project for free to fix an issue or add a feature I want - I couldn't count. Instead, it's always reaching out to support and "Thanks for your feature request - it's not currently on our road map, but I've added it to our list."
- piggybox 6y ago
  Open source as a marketing tool
zwayhowder 6y ago
I work at a university, we are legally not allowed to host a lot of our data outside of our country. While I'd love to use tools like Airtable & Roam we can't. As those vendors aren't interested in hosting in a small backwater country like Australia </sarcasm> an open source alternative I can host myself is amazing. But I'd gladly pay more to have someone else manage hosting...
travisjungroth 6y ago
I wonder if there’s a business model of paid hosting of other companies open source alternatives...
- mikkom 6y ago
  You mean AWS?
  - travisjungroth 6y ago
    Yeah, something like that. But for all these SaaS apps.
    - toomuchtodo 6y ago
      Heroku?
    - e12e 6y ago
      Sandstorm kind of tried that (https://sandstorm.io https://sandstorm.io).
  - viraptor 6y ago
    AWS is a few layers below that service. You can't tell AWS "give me a domain with baserow installed". Or at least not without going through the layers of describing how it's mapped to actual compute resources and how is deployed.
    - ncallaway 6y ago
      Yea, but you can tell AWS "give me a domain my (MySQL | Postgres | Elasticsearch | ...) installed, which I think was the parent poster's joke
      - viraptor 6y ago
        It requires a lot of work and very low level configuration to go beyond the infrastructure elements. Databases? - sure. Managed apps? - here's a book on vpcs, subnets, and eni attachments in AWS.
edjrage 6y ago
I wasn't aware of Athens, thanks! There's also Logseq: https://github.com/logseq/logseq https://github.com/logseq/logseq and a few others, but I forgot their names.
- mkl 6y ago
  More info on Athens and alternatives in this discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26316793 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26316793
ShakataGaNai 6y ago
I think it's great that it's happening. Sure (for example) Baserow will never be as awesome as Airtable... but for users with extremely small use cases, hobbyists, or tiny startups - it works out. They aren't the niche Airtable wants and they can't afford it either.
hanniabu 6y ago
I've noticed this as well and I really think there's a market for a simple self-hosted cloud server. Many people aren't comfortable with managing a server and all the tech aspects that come with it. What I envision is a bring-your-own server solution that provides recommended specs (or buy from the company as a funding source) and similar to the app store you can download containerized app, let's say from docker, with 0 technical knowledge. Just a nice UI and all the functionality automated so the user doesn't have to do anything but click a button and maybe a settings page for really basic stuff. There can be an open library that just links to docker hub or whatever other platform as well as a curated library. It should all be encrypted and secure by default. It should all serve on localhost with an option screen to specify UI or hookup your own domain to access remotely. Again, UX is key here to abstract everything away from the user and make it stupid simple to use. From what I've seen, people would love to host their own services but either don't have the technical know-how or don't want to deal with managing their own server or AWS or whatever other droplet solution.
- popinman322 6y ago
  Isn't this the PaaS model?
  - hanniabu 6y ago
    Sort of but not really. On thinking about it some more for the average user, you'd really want to sell a ready-to-go unit so they don't even have to deal with the initial computer setup and platform download/install because I know that's still way more than a lot of people would want to do or feel comfortable doing. They want something that they own, with good privacy, that just works, and is maintenance free. I imagine this company selling a visually appealing unit similar to how xbox and playstation aim to be more of an elegant accent piece than a clunky electronic box. This way when the user gets the product they just open, plug it in, create an account and password, wait for it to initialize, and then you're good to go and can start immediately downloading apps. Then just download an accompanying app on your phone/desktop/computer and connect to your own personal cloud where you own all your software and data. Could even sell upgradeable units for a premium that have an easy access panel to just swap or plug in additional RAM or SSD modules.
flylib 6y ago
anyone know of a GitHub list of open source clones of popular products?
- ianwalter 6y ago
  This is kind of close to that: https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted
knubie 6y ago
I'm reminded of Jonathan Blow's rant about open source software at the beginning of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLVjSeusPYg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLVjSeusPYg
- elyobo 6y ago
  That video's oddly edited; is there some context which makes him seem less... nuts?
- alisonkisk 6y ago
  Blow is a great programmer but his criticism makes no sense to me. "It's elitist and undemocratic that someone gets to decide whether they want to ship you code". what??
  - nuggien 6y ago
    he was criticizing the idea of pull requests. You could spend a lot of time adding code and submit a pull request and the maintainer of the project gets to decide whether they want your code or not. If they don’t, then you just wasted all your time.
tangjeff0 6y ago
Hey! Founder of Athens here, we just launched on HN 2 weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26316793 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26316793 Agree with your comment. What we've found is that most people don't actually want to self-host, even technical users who can. But they all want the optionality to self-host, which you don't have with most SaaS's like Notion or Roam. This is doubley important for "second brains", apps where you brain dump your closest thoughts. As Balaji has said, given the choice, "you'd always pick open source over a comparable proprietary equivalent." https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1365212646945923074 https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1365212646945923074
toyg 6y ago
> an interesting trend of open source clones of popular products Well, it's a "trend" as old as dirt, really. The "Linux desktop" was, for years, little more than a series of clones of closed-source Windows apps. Arguably even the original GNU programs started as clones of existing Unix tools. It's unsurprising that this would later happen for web-based services too. > The business model is always that people who really want it for free can self host, and people who don't want to deal with the hassle will pay for hosting. Again, pretty old news - Wordpress is almost 20 years old at this point. The problem of this setup, though, is that the commercial version will typically set the roadmap and priorities, while the open version will end up lagging.
dexter89_kp3 6y ago
There is also Obsidian, which does not compete with Roam Research directly on all features (but comes pretty close), but is locally hosted. Great option for those seeking privacy of their notes and thoughts.
- ncallaway 6y ago
  The thing I love about Obsidian is it's just a directory of markdown files. Still totally useful if Obsidian disappeared tomorrow. I also just setup a cron job to daily check for changes, and if there are git commit and git push and now I can access my notes from any device with a browser.

sevencolors 6y ago

I think it's a smart way to make money with open-source projects. Charge for hosting and premium add-ons. For me Gatsby comes to mind. The framework will always be free but they have a build, CI and hosting platform that makes it easy. And i don't mind paying money for.

tjbiddle 6y ago
Plus, some occasional free development from PRs. The number of times where I would be HAPPY to work on a project for free to fix an issue or add a feature I want - I couldn't count. Instead, it's always reaching out to support and "Thanks for your feature request - it's not currently on our road map, but I've added it to our list."
piggybox 6y ago
Open source as a marketing tool

zwayhowder 6y ago

I work at a university, we are legally not allowed to host a lot of our data outside of our country. While I'd love to use tools like Airtable & Roam we can't. As those vendors aren't interested in hosting in a small backwater country like Australia </sarcasm> an open source alternative I can host myself is amazing. But I'd gladly pay more to have someone else manage hosting...

travisjungroth 6y ago

I wonder if there’s a business model of paid hosting of other companies open source alternatives...

mikkom 6y ago
You mean AWS?
- travisjungroth 6y ago
  Yeah, something like that. But for all these SaaS apps.
  - toomuchtodo 6y ago
    Heroku?
  - e12e 6y ago
    Sandstorm kind of tried that (https://sandstorm.io https://sandstorm.io).
- viraptor 6y ago
  AWS is a few layers below that service. You can't tell AWS "give me a domain with baserow installed". Or at least not without going through the layers of describing how it's mapped to actual compute resources and how is deployed.
  - ncallaway 6y ago
    Yea, but you can tell AWS "give me a domain my (MySQL | Postgres | Elasticsearch | ...) installed, which I think was the parent poster's joke
    - viraptor 6y ago
      It requires a lot of work and very low level configuration to go beyond the infrastructure elements. Databases? - sure. Managed apps? - here's a book on vpcs, subnets, and eni attachments in AWS.

edjrage 6y ago

I wasn't aware of Athens, thanks! There's also Logseq: https://github.com/logseq/logseq https://github.com/logseq/logseq and a few others, but I forgot their names.

mkl 6y ago
More info on Athens and alternatives in this discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26316793 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26316793

ShakataGaNai 6y ago

I think it's great that it's happening. Sure (for example) Baserow will never be as awesome as Airtable... but for users with extremely small use cases, hobbyists, or tiny startups - it works out. They aren't the niche Airtable wants and they can't afford it either.

hanniabu 6y ago

I've noticed this as well and I really think there's a market for a simple self-hosted cloud server. Many people aren't comfortable with managing a server and all the tech aspects that come with it. What I envision is a bring-your-own server solution that provides recommended specs (or buy from the company as a funding source) and similar to the app store you can download containerized app, let's say from docker, with 0 technical knowledge. Just a nice UI and all the functionality automated so the user doesn't have to do anything but click a button and maybe a settings page for really basic stuff. There can be an open library that just links to docker hub or whatever other platform as well as a curated library. It should all be encrypted and secure by default. It should all serve on localhost with an option screen to specify UI or hookup your own domain to access remotely. Again, UX is key here to abstract everything away from the user and make it stupid simple to use. From what I've seen, people would love to host their own services but either don't have the technical know-how or don't want to deal with managing their own server or AWS or whatever other droplet solution.

popinman322 6y ago
Isn't this the PaaS model?
- hanniabu 6y ago
  Sort of but not really. On thinking about it some more for the average user, you'd really want to sell a ready-to-go unit so they don't even have to deal with the initial computer setup and platform download/install because I know that's still way more than a lot of people would want to do or feel comfortable doing. They want something that they own, with good privacy, that just works, and is maintenance free. I imagine this company selling a visually appealing unit similar to how xbox and playstation aim to be more of an elegant accent piece than a clunky electronic box. This way when the user gets the product they just open, plug it in, create an account and password, wait for it to initialize, and then you're good to go and can start immediately downloading apps. Then just download an accompanying app on your phone/desktop/computer and connect to your own personal cloud where you own all your software and data. Could even sell upgradeable units for a premium that have an easy access panel to just swap or plug in additional RAM or SSD modules.

flylib 6y ago

anyone know of a GitHub list of open source clones of popular products?

ianwalter 6y ago
This is kind of close to that: https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted

knubie 6y ago

I'm reminded of Jonathan Blow's rant about open source software at the beginning of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLVjSeusPYg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLVjSeusPYg

elyobo 6y ago
That video's oddly edited; is there some context which makes him seem less... nuts?
alisonkisk 6y ago
Blow is a great programmer but his criticism makes no sense to me. "It's elitist and undemocratic that someone gets to decide whether they want to ship you code". what??
- nuggien 6y ago
  he was criticizing the idea of pull requests. You could spend a lot of time adding code and submit a pull request and the maintainer of the project gets to decide whether they want your code or not. If they don’t, then you just wasted all your time.

tangjeff0 6y ago

Hey! Founder of Athens here, we just launched on HN 2 weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26316793 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26316793 Agree with your comment. What we've found is that most people don't actually want to self-host, even technical users who can. But they all want the optionality to self-host, which you don't have with most SaaS's like Notion or Roam. This is doubley important for "second brains", apps where you brain dump your closest thoughts. As Balaji has said, given the choice, "you'd always pick open source over a comparable proprietary equivalent." https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1365212646945923074 https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1365212646945923074

toyg 6y ago

> an interesting trend of open source clones of popular products Well, it's a "trend" as old as dirt, really. The "Linux desktop" was, for years, little more than a series of clones of closed-source Windows apps. Arguably even the original GNU programs started as clones of existing Unix tools. It's unsurprising that this would later happen for web-based services too. > The business model is always that people who really want it for free can self host, and people who don't want to deal with the hassle will pay for hosting. Again, pretty old news - Wordpress is almost 20 years old at this point. The problem of this setup, though, is that the commercial version will typically set the roadmap and priorities, while the open version will end up lagging.

dexter89_kp3 6y ago

There is also Obsidian, which does not compete with Roam Research directly on all features (but comes pretty close), but is locally hosted. Great option for those seeking privacy of their notes and thoughts.

ncallaway 6y ago
The thing I love about Obsidian is it's just a directory of markdown files. Still totally useful if Obsidian disappeared tomorrow. I also just setup a cron job to daily check for changes, and if there are git commit and git push and now I can access my notes from any device with a browser.