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Comment by thinbeige | Hacker News Reader

Why do you want to selfhost Trello? Are you afraid that somebody at Trello might steal your secret cards, todos, specs, etc. and sells them?

I know self hosting is actually better but it is also work and is the typical information which people put on Trello confidential enough to justify self hosting? IDK and again Trello is free.

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There are legitimate reasons for wanting/needing to self-host. For example, in a regulatory environment, I could see managing PHI data (not for clinical treatment, but maybe tracking clinical research). In this case, Trello would either need to sign a BAA or you'd need to self host something.

There are many reasons why self-hosting is the only viable option for some use-cases.

And then there are also data longevity issues, where you'd need the ability to backup and restore your data. If Trello goes away (as a free service), then you have fewer options in the regard.

> For example, in a regulatory environment, I could see managing PHI data

This is exactly why I have a spare box running Wekan in my office at work. We run clinical applications for a hospital; sometimes project tracking+testing involves PHI that we have to be super careful about letting into the outside world.

who said anything about confidentiality? i'm talking about long-term viability. if i self-host, i don't have to worry about Trello's business model or changes to the product that i don't like/want. i have control. which is whole point.

Well...yeah. Trello is free, and the expectation is that if you're not paying, you're the product.

> the expectation is that if you're not paying, you're the product.

What are you talking about? In what way are Trello users 'the product'? Are you just repeating a catch phrase that people say about other companies or do you actually know this to be the case?

I don't use Trello myself, but unless something has changed there aren't ads being shown to users (the reasons for the 'you're the product' saying for services like Google or Facebook), I'm not sure what data they could sell that would be worthwhile for a to-do app. What else would make the users 'the product'?

AFAIK they make all their money from their premium services, and since being bought by Atlassian I doubt revenue is at the top of their priority list anyway. Atlassian is full of premium services and Trello seems like a way to introduce all of those users to Atlassian's suite.

It also allows them to sell your data for mining purposes. In the next year we are going to see many AI business buy access to many unique large datasets.

"It's hard to imagine that we would ever consider collecting, let alone sharing, sensitive information with a non-agent third party, but if such a day should come, we will first give you the opportunity to explicitly consent (opt-in) to such disclosure or to any use of the information for a purpose other than the one for which it was originally collected or previously authorized." https://trello.com/privacy

Trello is freemium https://trello.com/pricing, they make money from users upgrading

Trello has a free tier. They don't do data collection as far as I know.

The free tier is a cheap loss leader for the actual product which are the enterprise and team versions which are not free.

> I know self hosting is actually better but it is also work ...

Worth pointing out: they have a sandstorm version, which changes the amount of justification need rather a lot.

For some projects you need to self host because of the US protectionist and paranoid export laws for tech. Specially in aerospace, nuclear, some type of sensors, etc...

That or you need a contract that guarantees that the software is hosted outside the US, which Trello won't provide.

Integrations with third-party stuff perhaps? Plus Wekan's slight differences seem like improvements to me.

I couldn't implement trello in a few situations because of corporate paranoia

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