this post was submitted on 16 May 2024
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As you can easily notice, today many open source projects are using some services, that are… sus.

For example, Github is the most popular place to store your project code and we all know, who owns it. And not to forget that sketchy AI training on every line of your code. Don't we have alternatives? Oh, yes we have. Gitlab, Codeberg, Notabug, etc. You can even host your own Gitea or Forgejo instance if you want.

Also, Crowdin is very popular in terms of software (and docs) translation. Even Privacy Guides and The New Oil use Crowdin, even though we have FLOSS Weblate, that you can easily self-host or use public instances.

So, my question is: if you are building a FLOSS / privacy related project, why using proprietary and privacy invasive tools?

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

You misunderstood me. My reason isn't "get more users". My reason is "my day only has 24h and maintenance itself is a full time job, without adding on hosting, administration, etc for code repository or communication infrastructure".

I have to choose my fights if I don't want to burn out. I've been a full time maintainer for 10 years now, 8 of those self employed.

That being said, I do in fact self host a web forum for my project (which I can only do because I have a volunteer admin taking care of the day to day and a whole ton of mods helping with moderation), and I do have a nightly mirror of everything on the project's GitHub org to my private NAS just in case.