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Who are you aiming this at? Unfortunately I’d never advocate for something like this at my work. Self-hosting doesn’t make sense in terms of total cost of owne

Who are you aiming this at? Unfortunately I’d never advocate for something like this at my work. Self-hosting doesn’t make sense in terms of total cost of ownership. I’d rather engineers spent time solving problems in our core business than making sure our wiki is online.

_puk 2y ago
That's a very negative take, and seemingly unfounded. As with a lot of modern open source, the monetisation comes from providing a hosted/ supported cloud version so your engineers can spend their time solving your core business problems rather than making sure the wiki is online. That said, it's a Beta, and they've put 12 months into it already to get it where it is. It's great to have open source competition in this area, so the current lack of a cloud option should put it in the "awesome, I'll check it out, then wait for a cloud option" category.
devwastaken 2y ago
Other engineers can do hosting just fine. Even a middle schooler copy pasting commands. Sounds like a problem somewhere between the keyboard and the chair.
- tomwphillips 2y ago
  There’s a lot more to running an application than that.
- jraph 2y ago
  I disagree with your parent comment but what you present is far from enough to host something reliably.
jraph 2y ago
Being able to self host means you control your infra, so that's a very good property of the tools you use and should probably be a criterion for choosing what you use, even if you don't use the capability yourself. The ability to self-host increases the chances there's something to migrate your data in and out. The ability to self host also doesn't prevent someone, including the original developers, to also proving hosted services. And since the presented tool is open source, it's also possible for another company to provide hosting.
- tomwphillips 2y ago
  All those things are true, but there’s risk associated with going with such a new project with no current monetisation path (especially for something that my colleagues might be putting information into that we might need to access/modify for many years or even indefinitely). Open source isn’t a business model.
  - jraph 2y ago
    > All those things are true, but there’s risk associated with going with such a new project with no current monetisation path (especially for something that my colleagues might be putting information into that we might need to access/modify for many years or even indefinitely). Right, though that's orthogonal to the self-hosting aspect. > Open source isn’t a business model. Indeed but you can build a solid business model around open source. What do you mean?
LinXitoW 2y ago
So you've never been screwed over by an online-only product becoming horribly shitty, or incredibly expensive? To me, the ability to counteract any insane company policies is a big reason that the ability to self host is incredibly important. Even if it's just a stop gap solution while we find a better solution to migrate to.
mirzap 2y ago
You would be surprised. Many companies have strict requirements for self-hosting. I worked for a couple of these companies, and managed service was a no-go from the start. They (usually) pay far more for that option than what they would usually pay for the managed service.

_puk 2y ago

That's a very negative take, and seemingly unfounded. As with a lot of modern open source, the monetisation comes from providing a hosted/ supported cloud version so your engineers can spend their time solving your core business problems rather than making sure the wiki is online. That said, it's a Beta, and they've put 12 months into it already to get it where it is. It's great to have open source competition in this area, so the current lack of a cloud option should put it in the "awesome, I'll check it out, then wait for a cloud option" category.

devwastaken 2y ago

Other engineers can do hosting just fine. Even a middle schooler copy pasting commands. Sounds like a problem somewhere between the keyboard and the chair.

tomwphillips 2y ago
There’s a lot more to running an application than that.
jraph 2y ago
I disagree with your parent comment but what you present is far from enough to host something reliably.

jraph 2y ago

Being able to self host means you control your infra, so that's a very good property of the tools you use and should probably be a criterion for choosing what you use, even if you don't use the capability yourself. The ability to self-host increases the chances there's something to migrate your data in and out. The ability to self host also doesn't prevent someone, including the original developers, to also proving hosted services. And since the presented tool is open source, it's also possible for another company to provide hosting.

tomwphillips 2y ago
All those things are true, but there’s risk associated with going with such a new project with no current monetisation path (especially for something that my colleagues might be putting information into that we might need to access/modify for many years or even indefinitely). Open source isn’t a business model.
- jraph 2y ago
  > All those things are true, but there’s risk associated with going with such a new project with no current monetisation path (especially for something that my colleagues might be putting information into that we might need to access/modify for many years or even indefinitely). Right, though that's orthogonal to the self-hosting aspect. > Open source isn’t a business model. Indeed but you can build a solid business model around open source. What do you mean?

LinXitoW 2y ago

So you've never been screwed over by an online-only product becoming horribly shitty, or incredibly expensive? To me, the ability to counteract any insane company policies is a big reason that the ability to self host is incredibly important. Even if it's just a stop gap solution while we find a better solution to migrate to.

mirzap 2y ago

You would be surprised. Many companies have strict requirements for self-hosting. I worked for a couple of these companies, and managed service was a no-go from the start. They (usually) pay far more for that option than what they would usually pay for the managed service.