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Show HN: Vince – A self hosted alternative to Google Analytics

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Re: Show HN: Vince – A self hosted alternative to Google Analytics

#61

Post by rkuodys »

huhtenberg wrote: post #58
dewey wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because everyone is using: https://tailwindui.com/components#product-marketing

It's not just the looks that are the same. The UX / mechanics are way too similar too, e.g. how you can apply filters (by URL, by referrer, by browser, etc.) to narrow down the stats view.

I would say pretty much the idea is as follow: "Let's do it so User would know how to use it before we are big", and once you're big enough - you can set the trend. But at the beginning it's just not worth it and highly risky

Re: Show HN: Vince – A self hosted alternative to Google Analytics

#63

Post by reincoder »

gernest wrote: post #3
cebert wrote: post #2

If you haven’t checked it out yet, Serverless Website Analytics, is a great solution for this too. It’s easy to deploy and very inexpensive to run. I’ve been using it and am quite happy with it. https://github.com/rehanvdm/serverless-website-analytics

Interesting, I just checked the readme. Very similar but looks like it only works with AWS and has a lot of moving pieces. How do you deal with location data, do you purchase maxmind db license or use their free versions. Both maxmind and db-ip free versions of city data miss city geo id values, rendering city data useless for many cases. With vince, I had to index embed the whole city data from geonames database to…

> How do you deal with location data, do you purchase maxmind db license or use their free versions.

> Both maxmind and db-ip free versions of city data miss city geo id values, rendering city data useless for many cases.

I work for IPinfo.

I think you might find my conversation with Goatcounter's dev interesting: https://github.com/arp242/goatcounter/issues/765

I pitched him to use our free country database because of MaxMind's EULA issues. MaxMind does not permit distribution of the database and requires end users to use their own token. Moreover, they actually charge thousands of dollars when you distribute the "free" database with a commercial intent.

Now, we have a free IP to Country database that we offer under a straight CC-BY-SA 4.0 license without an EULA. It is free, comes with daily updates, has full accuracy, and you can even commercially redistribute the database (via providing us an attribution).

I understand we do not have a free city database to offer, nor is our database lightweight because we have full accuracy. But you can check it out if you are interested. We do have a version with ASN (ISP) information as well.

Re: Show HN: Vince – A self hosted alternative to Google Analytics

#65

Post by gernest »

vextea wrote: post #62

There seems to be some mentions of selling licenses (and pricing) in the source. What are the plans around that? https://github.com/vinceanalytics/vince/blob/f0c2c3cc38cbd8c...

When I started working on vince, I thought I could bootstrap a sustainable business, that was about 3 years ago.

My dream for a business is practically dead now. That snippet is a relic of early days of vince and I will remove it.

I am currently looking for work, and will be maintaining vince as usual (I do a lot of open source stuff) since I also use it with my hobby projects.

I'm struggling finding remote roles now, since remote now means Remote US or Remote EU and I'm stuck here in Tanzania.

So, don't worry, I also use vince so I will keep hacking on it.

Re: Show HN: Vince – A self hosted alternative to Google Analytics

#66

Post by gernest »

written-beyond wrote: post #54

Code quality is pristine, really great job! I see that you've used protocol buffers, can you expand on why? I am aware of the benefits it offers but I think it adds a bit of mental overhead initially due to it being an additional type system you have to understand. Also why are you using pebble exactly? I was interested in seeing how you're managing your geo databases because that's usually the most mind numbing part…

Thanks,

> Why protocol buffers ?

They are very good for defining API boundaries, in vince we only use them for configuration and admin structure. We use Roaring Bitmap based storage, so fundamental units persisted are Bitmap containers.

> Also why are you using pebble exactly?

Well, vince is write heavy and any LSM based key value store would have been nice. It happens pebble is the best option for us.

Also, we don't use transactions (We batch writes and use snapshots for reads). Combining with the fact we rely on pebble batch Merge api.

The merge api allows us to do efficient updates. Since we only store bitmap containers, when doing update we just do a container union of observed values of a key.

Bitmap unions are pretty fast and efficient.

I hope I covered all your questions.

Re: Show HN: Vince – A self hosted alternative to Google Analytics

#69

Post by written-beyond »

gernest wrote: post #66
written-beyond wrote: post #54

Code quality is pristine, really great job! I see that you've used protocol buffers, can you expand on why? I am aware of the benefits it offers but I think it adds a bit of mental overhead initially due to it being an additional type system you have to understand. Also why are you using pebble exactly? I was interested in seeing how you're managing your geo databases because that's usually the most mind numbing part…

Thanks, > Why protocol buffers ? They are very good for defining API boundaries, in vince we only use them for configuration and admin structure. We use Roaring Bitmap based storage, so fundamental units persisted are Bitmap containers. > Also why are you using pebble exactly? Well, vince is write heavy and any LSM based key value store would have been nice. It happens pebble is the best option for us. Also, we don't…

It answered them alright, but really opened a few hundred more. I appreciate your time!

Re: Show HN: Vince – A self hosted alternative to Google Analytics

#70

Post by vextea »

gernest wrote: post #65
vextea wrote: post #62

There seems to be some mentions of selling licenses (and pricing) in the source. What are the plans around that? https://github.com/vinceanalytics/vince/blob/f0c2c3cc38cbd8c...

When I started working on vince, I thought I could bootstrap a sustainable business, that was about 3 years ago. My dream for a business is practically dead now. That snippet is a relic of early days of vince and I will remove it. I am currently looking for work, and will be maintaining vince as usual (I do a lot of open source stuff) since I also use it with my hobby projects. I'm struggling finding remote roles now…

Makes sense, wish you the best of luck!
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