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Running an open source app: Usage, costs and community donations

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Re: Running an open source app: Usage, costs and community donations

#121

Post by metabeard »

Cheer2171 wrote: post #101
mtlynch wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Almost always the data is the most important thing, so I like being able to expand/replace/trash the app infra at will with no worries. Have you used SQLite with Litestream? That's the beauty of it. You can blow away the app and deploy it somewhere else, and Litestream will just pull down your data and continue along as if nothing happened. At the top of this post, I show a demo of attaching Litestream to my app, a…

> No, my app never talks to a remote database server. > It’s a simple, open-source tool that replicates a SQLite database to Amazon’s S3 cloud storage. That was a very long walk to get to that second quote. And it makes the first quote feel deceptive.

S3 is acting as a backup, not a data store. The SQLite file is local to the app. This recent post discusses the tradeoffs in more detail and includes metrics. https://fractaledmind.github.io/2024/10/16/sqlite-supercharg...

Re: Running an open source app: Usage, costs and community donations

#122

Post by GreenWatermelon »

immibis wrote: post #86
horsawlarway wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So many people don't seem to understand how efficient modern machines are. As someone who is literally using old laptops to host things from my basement on my consumer line (personal, non-commercial) and a business line (commercial)... I can host this for under 50 bucks a year, including the domain and power costs, and accounting for offsite backup of the data. I wish people understood just how much the "cloud" is ma…

As DHH said somewhere, it's incredible that the modern cloud stack has managed to get PROGRAMMERS to be scared of COMPUTERS. Seriously, what's with that? That shouldn't even be possible? If you can understand programming, you can understand Linux. Might take a while to be really confident, but do you need incredible confidence when you have backups? :)

Far too late for the edit window, but the keynote[1] is an absolute must-watch for anyone who does anything related to web development

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cEn_83zRFw

Re: Running an open source app: Usage, costs and community donations

#123

Post by TRiG_Ireland »

maccard wrote: post #116
Vegenoid wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I believe a Droplet or VPS (virtual private server) from some other provider would be sufficient. Digital Ocean isn't the cheapest, but it's pretty frictionless, slick, and has a lot of good tutorial articles about setting up servers. You'd have a Linux machine (the VPS) that would have at least 3 programs running (or it is running Docker, with these programs running inside containers): - Node.js - the database…

I don’t think that the difference is $110/month, but surely reading that you realise there’s a lot more going on there than “point vercel at a git repo and you’re done”. I don’t know how long it would take me to install docker and configure the above, but it’s certainly a few hours. I tried vercel for the first time a few weeks ago, and I had a production ready site online with a custom domain in about 5 minutes. I’v…

I'm an old-school PHP web developer, and my immediate thought is to go to OVH or similar and get a VPS running Ubuntu. A quick run of sudo apt install lamp-server^ and I'm ready to go.

Re: Running an open source app: Usage, costs and community donations

#124

Post by hahahacorn »

JamesonNetworks wrote: post #106
hahahacorn wrote: post #105

The inefficiency is bonkers but understandable. I could host this app for like ~$60/year, generously, with little to no devops work. It's painful to see the creator paying out of pocket for such a great project because the Vercel marketing introduced such massive inefficiencies to the ecosystem. Even less when I pay for a dedicated machine running all of my hobby projects. Gratuitous Kamal 2 plug. Run your personal p…

Where would you host this for $60 a year?

hetzner cpx11 in Ashburn - 150 ms latencies to Europe are totally fine for this use case. with 15k groups and 162k expenses (guesstimating 30k users, email logs per-expense, etc.) , you're not even pushing 2 gigabytes of disk space (conservatively), nor are you doing anything computationally expensive or stressful for the DB under normal load. With decent app & db design, like proper indexing, 2 vCPUs and 2gb RAM is more than enough.

Re: Running an open source app: Usage, costs and community donations

#125

Post by binwiederhier »

mherrmann wrote: post #72

Re your question on saving costs: If you run it on a single Linux VPS, then I suspect you can get the costs down to 5-10$ per month. One thing I find interesting is the growth chart: It's linear. But given that the app clearly has some traction, and is viral in nature, how come it isn't exponential?

I was thinking exactly this. I am the maintainer of ntfy.sh and my costs are $0 at the moment because DogotalOcean is paying for it 100% because it is open source. It would be around $100, though I must admit it's quite oversized. However, my volume is much much higher than what is described in the blog.

I suspect that the architecture can be improved to get the cost down.

Re: Running an open source app: Usage, costs and community donations

#126

Post by mtlynch »

Cheer2171 wrote: post #101
mtlynch wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Almost always the data is the most important thing, so I like being able to expand/replace/trash the app infra at will with no worries. Have you used SQLite with Litestream? That's the beauty of it. You can blow away the app and deploy it somewhere else, and Litestream will just pull down your data and continue along as if nothing happened. At the top of this post, I show a demo of attaching Litestream to my app, a…

> No, my app never talks to a remote database server. > It’s a simple, open-source tool that replicates a SQLite database to Amazon’s S3 cloud storage. That was a very long walk to get to that second quote. And it makes the first quote feel deceptive.

Thanks for the feedback!

Can you share a bit more about why you feel it's deceptive?

The point I was trying to make is that database servers are relatively complex and expensive. S3 is still a server, but it's static storage, which is about as simple and cheap as it gets for a remote service.

Was it that I could have been clearer about the distinction? Or was the distinction clear but feels like not a big difference?

Re: Running an open source app: Usage, costs and community donations

#127

Post by AlienRobot »

carlosjobim wrote: post #88
aniviacat wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I write open source libraries I consider the ones benefitting to be the general public. Even if my libraries were used only by mega corporations (which they aren't) there would still be a benefit to the public: If companies have lower cost, they will charge lower prices, benefitting customers / the general public. (And yes, they will lower prices. Most markets are not monopolies.)

Open source never benefits the general public, because open source developers never make a product polished and user-friendly enough to be usable by the general public. Instead, open source mainly benefits other developers. But at the end of the chain there has to be a product that is of use for non-developers. Because developing isn't for developments sake. And the person who makes that product reaps all the monetar…

That's a very interesting perspective, thanks. :-)

Re: Running an open source app: Usage, costs and community donations

#128

Post by mtlynch »

rkwz wrote: post #103
mtlynch wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Almost always the data is the most important thing, so I like being able to expand/replace/trash the app infra at will with no worries. Have you used SQLite with Litestream? That's the beauty of it. You can blow away the app and deploy it somewhere else, and Litestream will just pull down your data and continue along as if nothing happened. At the top of this post, I show a demo of attaching Litestream to my app, a…

This is a well written guide, thanks!

Cool, glad to hear it was useful!

Re: Running an open source app: Usage, costs and community donations

#129

Post by wonger_ »

Vegenoid wrote: post #75
joshdavham wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> new generation of devs being raised in the cloud I unfortunately sorta put myself in this category where my PaaS of choice is Firebase. For this cost-splitting app however, what would you personally recommend if not Vercel? Would you recommend something like a Digital Ocean Droplet or something else? What are the best alternatives in your opinion?

Yes, I believe a Droplet or VPS (virtual private server) from some other provider would be sufficient. Digital Ocean isn't the cheapest, but it's pretty frictionless, slick, and has a lot of good tutorial articles about setting up servers. You'd have a Linux machine (the VPS) that would have at least 3 programs running (or it is running Docker, with these programs running inside containers): - Node.js - the database…

Could you continue on about security and availability? This is exactly the gentle intro I've been looking for.

I'm guessing rate limiting, backups, and monitoring are important, but I'm not sure how to go about it.

Re: Running an open source app: Usage, costs and community donations

#130

Post by [deleted] »

mtlynch wrote: post #126
Cheer2171 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, my app never talks to a remote database server. > It’s a simple, open-source tool that replicates a SQLite database to Amazon’s S3 cloud storage. That was a very long walk to get to that second quote. And it makes the first quote feel deceptive.

Thanks for the feedback! Can you share a bit more about why you feel it's deceptive? The point I was trying to make is that database servers are relatively complex and expensive. S3 is still a server, but it's static storage, which is about as simple and cheap as it gets for a remote service. Was it that I could have been clearer about the distinction? Or was the distinction clear but feels like not a big difference?

[deleted]
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