Baserow challenges Airtable with an open source no-code database platform | Hacker News Reader

Baserow challenges Airtable with an open source no-code database platform

techcrunch.com

67 pointsyuvalhazaz20 comments

Not what I could call 'open source'.

Basic features (e.g. 'XML and JSON export') require a subscription to the 'premium' or 'enterprise' plans, even when self-hosting.

It looks like you can export to, at minimum, CSV with the self-hosted edition: https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/nqj9ni/just_rel...

Also the free plan isn't the same as the Open Source edition, which doesn't have data limits.

Founder of Baserow here. Exporting to XML and JSON are the first features that we're going to move into the free plan of Baserow as soon as we have new premium features to replace them with.

Baserow looks really good! Thanks for making it!

Right, so it’s open core, not open source

GitLab, as an example, has been clear about having an "open core" business model[1] I appreciate that level of transparency. It gives me confidence that they understand their market and customers.

Naming matters. If a company can't or won't use the agreed-upon-by-the-software-development-community terminology on how the project is operated, it's souring to me. I also wonder if they (the company) understand what Open Source "is," specifically the responsibility that inherently comes with having an Open Source development/product model. In that circumstance, it feels like they have come to understand Open Source in the same vein that society once understood phrenology[2].

[1] https://about.gitlab.com/company/stewardship/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrenology

I want your company to be successful as airtable needs competition.

The TechCrunch article classified you as full open source but this doesn’t seem accurate.

It’s ok to be proprietary and charge money for licenses. The confusion is when the label “open source” is used for non open source software.

Have a looksie at BudiBase[0], another open source low-code platform. I believe SSO is still functional in the open source version, but roles do not exist.

[0] https://budibase.com/

For reference, here is the github link for Budibase: https://github.com/Budibase/budibase

I'm getting really tired of the companies using "open source version of X" as pure marketing when all they release is a gimped version that is basically unusable while shilling their SaaS version that has full features

I've seen an explosion of these types of companies cloning already popular tools and using open source as their primary differentiator

Some negative comments in the thread but Baserow has worked great for me -- XML and JSON export might be missing but I actually back the entire database up on a regular cadence so I'm perfectly happy with it :). Not too worried about XML/JSON export when I have full access to the DB and regular backups (that yes, I have tested).

The Baserow usecase I most enjoy is currently a backend for a landing page -- I'm only scratching the surface but even that is pretty useful for me.

I've use both Baserow and NocoDB and they're both great but Baserow is certainly more polished UI wise -- it was lagging in features but they've both made strives since I did the active comparison. It looks like NocoDB generally leads Baserow but it feels more like a cathedral/bazaar situation to me -- both producing great software but with different tradeoffs.

Even if you are self-hosting your own, you will need to subscribe to either the "premium" or "enterprise" plan in order to use even the most fundamental capabilities, such as "XML and JSON export."

I want an open source competitor to airtable. I use airtable very minimally, but what I do is on my phone, and makes use of barcode reading via the camera. I don't think any of the open alternatives support mobile, and I'm fairly certain none of them handle barcode reading (yet?). So far I think I'm stuck with airtable.

Budibase will have barcode / qr scanning functionality at the end of the month. It'll also have: single docker image deployment, new UI update, automation logs, user groups, snowflake integration and more.

https://github.com/Budibase/budibase

Thanks. I'll have to keep an eye on that.

Discussion of no-code options back in April 2021, when Baserow ranked roughly in the middle of the discussion:

Ask HN: Best low-/no-code solution for simple web-based database frontends

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26657803

Ugh, looked into Baserow for exactly 10 seconds a while ago until I found out that selfhosting needs Docker.

We offer many ways of self hosting, but most of the solutions are indeed Docker based. It makes it easier for us to roll out updates that way. We also have a deprecated, but still working, guide how you can install Baserow step by step on Ubuntu without using Docker. https://baserow.io/docs/installation/old-install-on-ubuntu

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