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Show HN: Open-source alternative to Retool, Internal.io, etc.

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Re: Show HN: Open-source alternative to Retool, Internal.io, etc.

#11

Founder here, ToolJet is a no-code platform for building & deploying custom internal tools. ToolJet is built using Ruby on Rails and ReactJS. ToolJet can connect to existing data sources of companies such as databases, Google sheets, API endpoints, external services, and more. ToolJet's drag and drop app builder can quickly create UI widgets such as tables, charts, forms, etc and connect these widgets with the data f…

Can you give a brief breakdown of what features are the same between ToolJet and a service like Retool, what features are different, which ones are intentionally left out, and how close to feature parity you're hoping to get?

Re: Show HN: Open-source alternative to Retool, Internal.io, etc.

#13
post #3

Before I could give more of a look into it, the license jumped at me. What's the idea behind using GPLv3? Who do you want to enable to use this, versus whom are you trying to prevent from using this?

GPLv3 has an elaborate preamble, which should be able to answer some of your questions. In particular, wrt "whom are you trying to prevent from using this", it mentions things such as:

we wish to avoid the special danger that patents applied to a free program could make it effectively proprietary

and:

if you distribute copies of such a program, whether gratis or for a fee, [...] You must make sure that they, too, receive or can get the source code

So, given that the GPL says these things, and the author has selected the GPL for this project, by a reasonable guess the answer to your question is, "people who would otherwise do/not do those things".

Rather than adding a TODO item onto the list of the person who has already gifted this to us, where that item would involve the labor of enumerating over a set of scenarios, composing a response to you, and hoping that it answers your question, how about helping both them and yourself by inverting the workload and elaborating on what you mean?

GPLv3 doesn't prevent anyone from using the covered software. Who do you think is prevented from using this? Do you consider the GPL to be a bad choice for some other reason, and you think there is a compelling reason to do something else? What are those reasons?

And ultimately, this is software that is being provided to you, generously, at no cost, and the author has gone out of their way to let you do stuff with it that you otherwise wouldn't be able to do. If it doesn't suit you and you don't want to "give more of a look into it", then don't.

Re: Show HN: Open-source alternative to Retool, Internal.io, etc.

#14
post #3

Before I could give more of a look into it, the license jumped at me. What's the idea behind using GPLv3? Who do you want to enable to use this, versus whom are you trying to prevent from using this?

Maybe your question should be more specific. What use case do you have for this project that you believe might be inconvenienced by GPL?

Without that, it sounds like you’re spreading FUD about GPL.

Re: Show HN: Open-source alternative to Retool, Internal.io, etc.

#16
post #11

Founder here, ToolJet is a no-code platform for building & deploying custom internal tools. ToolJet is built using Ruby on Rails and ReactJS. ToolJet can connect to existing data sources of companies such as databases, Google sheets, API endpoints, external services, and more. ToolJet's drag and drop app builder can quickly create UI widgets such as tables, charts, forms, etc and connect these widgets with the data f…

Can you give a brief breakdown of what features are the same between ToolJet and a service like Retool, what features are different, which ones are intentionally left out, and how close to feature parity you're hoping to get?

There are many similar features such as: a) The ability to fetch & merge data from multiple data sources b) Widgets such as tables, charts & forms

The goal is to build more connectors and widgets while ignoring features that will not makes sense for majority of the users. Example of a feature that's intentionally left out (for now) is the schema browser for databases.

Also, thanks for pointing out the typo, fixed it :)

Re: Show HN: Open-source alternative to Retool, Internal.io, etc.

#18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Appsmith is also open source, but this looks great. Can't believe you knocked it out in 7 weeks.

Same here, the website and product looks impressive. @navaneethpk how many hours a day have you been coding? Do you use some ready templates or boilerplates?

8-10 hours a day :) Using Tabler for builiding the user interface helped me speed up the development.

Re: Show HN: Open-source alternative to Retool, Internal.io, etc.

#19
post #12

"Setup" goes to 404: https://docs.tooljet.io/docs/setup/architecture

Aplogies, please use this link: https://docs.tooljet.io/docs/deployment/architecture I recently changed the structure of documentation, probably forgot to change the url somewhere. Will fix it in a while.

Re: Show HN: Open-source alternative to Retool, Internal.io, etc.

#20

Founder here, ToolJet is a no-code platform for building & deploying custom internal tools. ToolJet is built using Ruby on Rails and ReactJS. ToolJet can connect to existing data sources of companies such as databases, Google sheets, API endpoints, external services, and more. ToolJet's drag and drop app builder can quickly create UI widgets such as tables, charts, forms, etc and connect these widgets with the data f…

Wow! Building this in 7 weeks is an incredible feat. I am the cofounder of Budibase - an open source alt to Retool, Mendix, Outsystems - and have been building it for around 2 years now.

It's an incredible space and solves a burning problem for engineers, IT teams and business users.

We're seeing major benefits of being open source, with the like of the NHS, Amazon, Deloitte and other major orgs choosing Budibase over proprietary alternatives, so I would say your decision to offer self-hosting was a good one.

As much as we are probably seen as competitors, I wish you well and I am happy to share notes if you would like a call?

https://github.com/Budibase/budibase

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