> built on top of AWS SES. [...] can be considered as a self-hosted alternative to services
Someone doesn't really understand self-hosting.
Someone doesn't really understand self-hosting.
My guess is Plunk is for people who need a Mailchimp-like offering at a lower-than-Mailchimp price point.
- How will you make sure that only subscribed recipients will get your emails - How will you handle bounces and complaints - How will you monitor your sending
Don't beat around the bush and you will be approved in less than 1 day.
I'm curious to know where you draw your imaginary line.
Those apps using 3rd party auth providers almost universally have them as an optional plugin, allowing you to choose one of a dozen auth providers or your own self-hosted one. You're not tied to any specific 3rd party platform, and rarely tied to any 3rd party platform at all.
Once you have an external requirement and not option, it is no longer a self-hostable software.
For something to be considered self-hosted, If the bombs drop and civilization is over and me, and my home lab are the only survivors, can I still use that software? I'd probably have other concerns in that case, like how am I going to survive nuclear winter, but that's where the imaginary line is.
Other than that, what's your power supply like?
edit: prmoustache understood your comment better than i did.
> If the bombs drop and civilization is over and me, and my home lab are the only survivors, can I still use that software?
which rules out any software used to connect to non existant other servers or people.
Sure, the software "works" .. it just doesn't do anything .. ie. it can't be "used".
That ircd servers in the example above can still be used with a bot as an automation tool (at that point as the only survivor the security would be the least of your concerns), as a way to invent imaginary friends to pretend your life is less miserable, whatever.
Or say you have a mastodon or pixelfed instance. Sure no other instance will ever connect and no other user will ever be able to see your posts...but you. Which could include some fond memories you want to keep.
These semantic games are obfuscating the real issue here; tying the definition of "self hosting" to the "If the bombs drop and civilization is over and me, and my home lab are the only survivors" scenario is less useful than a two handed pit saw to a sole survivor.
I appreciate your assist to what I consider to be fragmede's "foot in keyboard" moment of poor definition, I suspect we're all better served with a better definition.
Comms software can't be used if there is nothing to Comm with.
It feels like pedantry to critique that aspect so heavily over spirit v letter.
In my utility room I've got a box running TrueNAS with a pile of hard-drives serving data over SMB and NFS. I've got a bunch of tiny business desktop PCs all set up in a k3s cluster hosting a variety of services for myself, family, and friends. Is this self-hosting?
The entire thing's half-useless without a tiny VPS that provides ingress since I'm behind CGNAT. Speaking of, I've got no way to get bits to and from the internet without my ISPs. I also rely on external services for off-site backups and some other storage. While I run my own IMAP/webmail services, I rely on AWS SES for sending email because managing email deliverability (especially from a shared residential address) is something I just don't have the time and patience for.
I think it's generally more useful to take it to mean "taking more control over your dependencies, data and privacy" without drawing a hard line. If someone migrates their social group off of Facebook and on to their own mastadon/something instance running on a VPS somewhere, I don't see any reason to gatekeep the term "self hosting". Making the goal unattainable just discourages people from making positive steps.
uh no. Only if you choose to.
"Full control over the whole stack, full stop, no exceptions" is not how people generally use or understand the term "self hosting", and if we were to prescriptively define it as that it would make self hosting unattainable and useless as a term.
I proposed a useful way to draw the line. How would you propose we define it?
IMHO, unless you have said hardware running in a location under your personal control (i.e. a room, building or house you either own or rent), it’s not “self-hosting”.
Both of these are not unattainable, or were not so in the relatively recent past.
But I will concede that it’s not always easy to distinguish in the gray zones. It’s like where you sleep. The differences are gradual from “owning”, “renting”, “apartment by the week”, “dorms”, “hotel room”, “airbnb”, “hostel”, “flophouse”, “tent”, “homeless”. Which of these constitutes a “home”? Opinions vary.
That said, however, resorting to “The meaning of words is defined by the people that use them” is also something which people arguing in bad faith almost always do.
What makes "the hardware and the physical location" anything but arbitrary in terms of that? Why is that "the whole stack"? Why is the hardware and location more important than how I, or anyone else in the world, actually accesses it, when basically all of us are relying on some external party for internet access? What justifies a line that prevents me from deriding anything as "not self hosting" if someone hasn't set up their own tier 1 network?
Why does putting a server in my house, but relying on an ISP, an external box for access, and a bunch of other stuff count as "self hosting" but sticking an old rack mount server at a friend's place because they have symmetric gigabit fibre and my acreage has 5/0.3 DSL not self hosting?
Why would purchasing a server and colocating it at a data centre with a fully encrypted drive be less "self hosting" than putting a raspberry pi in my utility room behind tailscale to bypass the CGNAT? How is putting a server in a data centre different than putting it in a rented apartment?
If I run a MUD on my laptop that's online whenever I check in to a hostel and have internet, am I self-hosting the MUD? If I'm not, who would you say is hosting it?
Circling back to my original comment--what is the actual benefit to "your own hardware on property you own"? Is it "taking control over your dependencies, data, and privacy"? Because then anything that accomplishes that should probably be included on a spectrum of self hosting. Somebody hosting a matrix server on an Digital Ocean VPS as a social network for their friends is still closer to that goal than somebody setting up a Discord server. Somebody hosting a Kubernetes cluster in their closet on a residental ISP is closer. Somebody racking a bunch of gear at a DC is closer.
There's no reason to tell any of these people "you're doing it wrong".
On a separate note: I feel I've got a fair point here, one that you've practically admitted in your own comment. Going on to strongly imply I'm arguing in bad faith really came across as a dick move.
> There's no reason to tell any of these people "you're doing it wrong".
I’m saying they’re not self-hosting. Everything else is you hearing things.
I would normally obey the rules of debate and answer your litany of questions, but I think that in this case it would not help anybody, as you already know the answers.
On the flip-side of that, there are those who want the extra amount of customization that can only truly come from owning the entire stack. Or perhaps they already have a high-reputation IP address they have been sending from for years, and a self-hosted solution is necessary to continue with that (barring some transfer of that IP address to the operation of another company). In that case, calling this self-hosted is being disingenuous.
In some ways I see the dependency on SES (or other third party provider) as being a benefit for email hosting, especially for a new venture/property. It's why there is some value in depending on other examples of managed services. But I would be clear about that and not call it self-hosted.