Focalboard open source, self-hosted alternative to Trello, Notion, and Asana | Hacker News Reader

Focalboard open source, self-hosted alternative to Trello, Notion, and Asana

github.com

82 pointsaxiomdata31627 comments

Focalboard – a self-hosted alternative to Trello, Notion, and Asana - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26499062 - March 2021 (175 comments)

This is marked as dupe. That's 10 months ago and this is the third time total it's been shared here - I though that the dedupe timeframe for projects has generally been a lot shorter previously?

(From someone who saw this for the first time)

The time frame has been the same for ages: we treat stories as dupes if they have had significant attention in the last year or so. This is in the FAQ: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html.

The way we handle dupes basically follows from a couple of core principles: (1) frontpage space is the scarcest resource on HN (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...), and (2) curiosity withers under repetition (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...).

Of course, no story counts as a dupe if you haven't seen it before! but we have to moderate for the statistical case.

Focalboard is made by the Mattermost people.

Mattermost embed silent, nonconsensual phone-home spyware from segment.io in their open source server app! I was astounded when I discovered this (nearly totally undocumented) misfeature that, in some ways, defeats the point of selfhosting an open source project.

I don't think I trust software from them without a significant audit for data leaks/spyware/phone-home, as it seems to me that they don't really care about user privacy even in selfhosted versions.

Citation needed.

https://github.com/mattermost/mattermost-server/blob/master/...

Which at time of writing states:

## segmentio/analytics-go

This product contains 'analytics-go' by Segment.

Segment analytics client for Go

* HOMEPAGE: * https://github.com/segmentio/analytics-go

The relevant env vars to disable are:

Disable silent phone-home for usage tracking:

    MM_LOGSETTINGS_ENABLEDIAGNOSTICS: 'false'

(The fact as to why marketing spyware is termed "diagnostics" is left to the reader to discover.)

Disable silent phone-home for version freshness check:

    MM_SERVICESETTINGS_ENABLESECURITYFIXALERT: 'false'

Grep the released binary for 'api.segment.io' if you don't believe me. I use a Dockerfile along the lines of:

    FROM mattermost/mattermost-team-edition@$$cap_mattermost_version
    RUN sed -i 's#api.segment.io#xx.example.com#gI' /mattermost/bin/mattermost
    RUN sed -i 's#securityupdatecheck.mattermost.com#xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.example.com#gI' /mattermost/bin/mattermost

https://github.com/mattermost/focalboard/blob/main/server/se...

Still no direct downloads for the "standalone" desktop version(without going through app stores), for which someone here kindly raised an issue [1] based on my comment here a year ago [2]. The issue was closed by providing a Windows zip on the GitHub releases page. I don't understand why the same link couldn't be updated on the main website downloads page. There is no direct download for macOS either.

For an open source project, working solely on app stores (for all the conveniences they provide for certain users) seems weird. I would really love to try this, but the app store requirement is a big barrier.

[1]: https://github.com/mattermost/focalboard/issues/99

[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26499443

You can't download from the Apple App Store without an Apple ID, which requires a phone number. I refuse to use an Apple ID for anything these days, so App Store apps are right out for me.

I think that's for a lot of people. Only 13 days ago we had a fairly big thread that was Apple ID related [1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29850665

Just a personal anecdote that might be useful to you: a bit more than a year ago, I was on Windows / Android and it felt wrong being spied on constantly.

I just installed Linux on my desktop and GrapheneOS on my phone and despite the loss of functionalities I felt liberated.

If you distrust big companies handling your data, make the jump it's absolutely worth it. I wouldn't go back.

I'm currently on my third week of waiting for a current-gen Pixel device to arrive.

Linux on the primary desktop is still mostly a nonstarter for me due to the lack of decent email apps (call me old fashioned but I won't do webmail) and, of course, no Word/Excel. Open/LibreOffice are unusable for professional work. Anyone who claims otherwise hasn't tried.

Strange about the Pixel: they're readily available here in France, I know I bought one Monday.

For Linux, I was speaking about your home setup: I use Windows at work too.

This can be an issue if building it is a hassle.

I just built the desktop app in <5min by checking it out and running:

  make prebuild; make linux-app

Substitute linux with win-wpf or mac. They also provide both linux and windows binaries from their GH releases.

It's only for OS X they do not provide a compiled binary, which you can presumably build easily.

Given that, it's quite entitled to say it's "working solely on app stores".

I'm not Mattermost, but if I made a desktop project in the future I probably wouldn't bother with providing OS X binaries for each release either (I'm a bit out of the loop on what the latest is but doesn't it require Apple hardware and/or a provisioned dev cert even for "sideloaded" apps these days? Is it as straightforward to set up in CI as normal builds?)

I’m just a user for whom “building” is too much of a burden. When this was posted, I went to the website to see if I could download the standalone desktop version for Windows. Since I knew that the lack of this was something I had experienced and commented on in the past, I was able to find the issue and see how it was (poorly, IMO) handled. Someone else may have just given up. How many users (not programmers) would even bother to go to GitHub to hunt for binaries for Windows or macOS? The Windows binaries seem to be on GitHub but there is no link on the site’s marketing page. It seems very shortsighted to not provide the links on the main site.

I also don’t think it’s entitlement to give feedback on open source projects, which typically have better feedback mechanisms and acceptance from external sources than from commercial vendors. It seems obvious now that Mattermost has other priorities and doesn’t know how and when to close tickets.

Hi, Focalboard team here! Thanks for the feedback! The missing link on the website was an oversight, and it's been fixed there (https://www.focalboard.com/download/personal-edition/desktop...) and in the readme, which is usually most up to date (https://github.com/mattermost/focalboard).

We published to the App Stores to see if that would lower the barrier to adoption. We learned that that while they are convenient for most folks, some can't access them, in particular the Windows Store, due to firewalls, corp policy, etc. So far, this seems to be a bigger problem for Windows than Mac in general.

To be transparent, we want to automate all the App Store publishing. It is currently a semi-manual process. It turns out that the Microsoft Store process is easiest (mostly uploading an MSIX file, which they sign for you). Signing for the Mac App Store was brittle for us, and became more manual. Notarizing for standalone builds has additional steps on top of that. Hopefully, Xcode Cloud will eventually solve all these problems.

BTW, another easier way to build might be to fork and use the GitHub actions:

1. Fork the Focalboard repo

2. Go to the Prod-Release Action in your fork (https://github.com/YOURID/focalboard/actions/workflows/prod-...)

3. Enable it if needed (the first time)

4. Run

5. Download the generated packages

I haven't seen this widely used, but might be a great way to try out new projects initially.

GP here. This is a late reply. As a user who cannot go through build processes and prefers direct downloads, I’d still like to see direct download links on the main site’s pages for the Windows and macOS versions (in addition to the app store links).

The UX of everything except the sidebar looks shockingly similar to Notion, like clone similar.

I looked at notion and this app and don’t see clone similarities? Do you have specific concerns?

Haha. Love the toxicity here. Downvoting my simple question about what looks like they cloned notion. They have different color schemes, icons, wording, menus. I don’t see anything that struck me as a clone. Just high level similarities.

Would there be anything wrong with a clone?

Can someone know if exsist a tool that can replicate the sidebar/organization of notion (and this tool) but use google drive files (gdocs)? in the company we use google drive and their docs, but the organization highly depends on who creates the folder. I just want a bookmark tool basically that is a standalone app. nothing fancier. i'm struggling in finding it out.

With all respect …. Do people care about self hosted for productivity apps?

What about a startup with more than hundred contributors on a make-the-world-better mission and tight budget?

More and more people are beginning to care because of data privacy. There’s even a group of people who cared from the beginning.

The rise of “privacy friendly” or “we don’t share your data” marketing messages IMO is a sign of growing desire towards privacy preserving methods of consuming software.

i would choose self hosted for almost everything is it was an option. privacy and security are only a small part of it for me. i like how reliable/efficient it is not having to worry about whether someone else's servers are working or not. or the same with the crap ton of infrastructure in between the server and my computer. or whether i have a good internet connection. i only buy data for my phone maybe once or twice a year as well so any apps on my phone that don't work offline are a no go for me

Reply on news.ycombinator.com