We have all bought into using free and open source software for our money...but we still use gmail or zoom or dropbox or mailchimp or slack. What's up with that? Is it actually tough to run software well over time? to keep the data backed up? to keep the software up-to-date? to ward off the threats on the internet?
Federated Computer's FOSS-as-a-service provides Nextcloud, Jitsi, Element/Matrix, Baserow, Vaultwarden, Gitea, Wordpress, Castopod, Wireguard, Listmonk, email server, spam protection, backup/restore, 100% private, protected. All this for $39/month per domain.
If you have stacked 50,000 sats on Stacker News, we'll give you free service. No cost.
So this company is basically giving most of us the chance to try its product for one year for free, and we're all shredding the guy? This is like marketing by fire. The old "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" thing?
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Yes.
I don't like to add dependencies that will soon make me pay for it. It's basically similar to what big companies like Google, Microsoft, Amazon, etc do all the time. Try it for for free for a bit, and then when you get used to it, and you depend on the service, they start charging you.
No thanks.
I mean, OP doesn't want you to run your own servers, he just wants you to pay them instead of big tech:
we still use gmail or zoom or dropbox or mailchimp or slack. What's up with that?
As in, "just pay to me instead"
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If you don't like the Federated Service, because it is all open source (Nextcloud, Jitsi, Element, Matrix, Vaultwarden, Wireguard, Caddy, etc etc et) you can move to another open source provider...even yourself.
There is a cost for running a server. Your time (how do you value that?) or the service from another provider, etc.
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I certainly agree that the costs are justified. I'm interested now that you mention that the individual services are all movable to your own server. No downside, really.
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Valid point. I'm right on the brink of doing the Start9 thing myself. As @DarthCoin mentioned, running your own server is not for everyone. I'm still researching my options. My big fear, of course is equipment failure. I have run a NAS for years with redundancy without a problem, so I'm not too worried.
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You're eligible for free service, @siggy47 ;)
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checks profile to see how many sats I’ve stacked
Almost!
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That’s all I got man! Good luck!
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Wow, Thank you! Not necessary at all
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Glad to see you made it. Haha
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You're now eligible for service! :)
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Stackers are so generous!
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great idea to add in the deal for those who have stacked lots of sats on SN.
i imagine all sorts of brands will do something similar in the future to target “pro” users of apps and services with their promotion.
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$39/month? Sounds like fiat to me..
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You can pay with bitcoin. :)
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so why is priced in usd?
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That's the world we live in.
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The title of the post literally says: why do many bitcoiners still trust the fiat software.
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It says "FOSS" that means free open source software, but is charging 39 bucks/mo... right. Is really free.
I am not saying that is bad idea/service. Not at all. Not every user is capable to self host all those services, even if they use some of those bundle nodes like Umbrel. Is not that easy for many people.
I myself I self host all those service in dedicated machines, for myself, my own domains, for free c(only paying the domains and electricity. But that doesn't mean everybody can do it.
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As they say in FOSS, Free as in Freedom != Free as in free beer.
Being FOSS doesn't mean you can't charge to use it.
Also yeah, I don't think everybody can setup their own server and they probably shouldn't unless they understand how to secure it properly. I feel anxious even having a public ssh instance running even though you can only login to it with an ssh key + password
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there is nothing wrong with making a profit on FOSS. that is what the freedom part of foss means, the freedom to use the software/code how you see fit, even if that means profiting off of it
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Yes, but at least don't say is FOSS, is only OSS...
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Yeah, English is not great to describe that concept. Spanish is better:
Libre is a better concept for Free.
Gratis would be the Free you are referring to.
Open Source is Libre, but not necessarily Gratis.
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It's FOSS. The F refers to the software, not the hardware/network/power.
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free as in freedom not as in free beer
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Sooo you tell me not to use fiat but you go and recommend me to use a service that charge me in dollars... Right. Very good fiat mindset.
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You can pay in bitcoin. :)
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Don't trust them, forced into using them. As an independent contractor, if my clients use Zoom for weekly update calls, what can I do. Yes I do attempt to indoctrinate them with my line of thinking, but at the end of the day they sign my paychecks. I'm all ears.
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Does it include 'calendar'? Hard to switch from Gmail without the whole suite: calendar, drive, meets
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It seems a bit disingenuous to harp on about 'FOSS-as-a-service' when Federated Computer itself is not FOSS (the linked github organisation has no public repos).
Cloudron by comparison is $15 a month for unlimited domains, and you can run on your own machines
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cloudron is $15 paid annually or $30 monthly but there's no email hosting only clients like roundcube. it's more like umbrel in the cloud which makes federated a great deal with email/data hosting and sso.
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That's completely untrue, there is a fully-fledged built in email server, with catch all, works for all your domains, you can configure group access to mailboxes, etc etc
You won't see it on the list of apps because it's not an app, it's core functionality and you will find it under the main system menu
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It's up to the user to configure. If the user doesn't configure the domain correctly, email doesn't work. That's not the way Federated works. Everything works from the very beginning without the user having to configure anything. Different approaches. Different types of customers.
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Actually no, you just give them your cloudflare API token and all the configuration is done for you.
It's not like setting up a custom domain on, say, protonmail where you have to set DMARC records etc
You just "add domain" then click "new mailbox".
Anyways - I would like to change tack and offer you guys some encouragement, I like what you are doing (encouraging the move away from centralised big tech), and $39 isn't actually that bad when you consider the cost and hassle of hosting, I just think you should be a bit more honest and straightforward in your marketing that's all.
Claims like "free for stackers" (actually, just one year), "FOSS-as-a-service" (but the service isn't FOSS) and "100% private" (when this part cannot be verified, and ultimately still runs on servers you control) are misleading at best.
The service honestly sounds good just don't sell it as (or make it sound like) something it isn't, that's literally my only beef anyway.
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Cloudron is a great service. It's like Umbrel (another great service) in the cloud.
Confused, however, about the github point. Does Cloudron open source it's software? Or just the open source packages it offers?
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Cloudron is not open source, but it is source available - https://git.cloudron.io/cloudron
They also support many of the open source packages they rely on:
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Urbit is also an option.
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a lot of bitcoiners are larpers. look at nvk for example and his foss larp
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If you have stacked 50,000 sats on Stacker News, we'll give you free service. No cost.
Misleading. It's only for a limited time:
Only for twelve months
It's still a nice $468 giveaway, but it assumes you would continue using the service at $39/month after the first year as most people would get used to using it.
And funnily enough, OP service is charged in fiat while complaining about users trusting fiat in this topic.
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You can pay in bitcoin.
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Here's how I see the word "fiat" with re: software. Comes from Saifedean Ammous. "Fiat software" is software where you can't move your data to another provider of the solution. You can't move from Google Workplace to Google Workplace "by Oracle", for example. But you can move from Nextcloud from vendor A to Nextcloud from vendor B. It just so happens that there is a high overlap between non-fiat software and opensource. But this doesn't have to be the case.
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Fiat means by decree. You’re just using the term fiat to market to bitcoiners
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I thought the same thing. This is the first SN ad experiment. Federated did not create the account.
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