Can anyone tell me what tool can i use to track website visit statistics?
Running an open source app: Usage, costs and community donations
151–160 of 167 posts
Re: Running an open source app: Usage, costs and community donations
#152I would considering Firebase for database (best effort/cost ratio I found) or self-hosting the db.
Re: Running an open source app: Usage, costs and community donations
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
Selling a thing comes with greater obligations than giving it away. I am unwilling to accept those obligations, in most cases. I am, however, perfectly happy to share some of the work that I do back into an ecosystem which I have benefited from. I also volunteer for organizations I care about, and I pick up litter in public parks. :) I do not believe that I am being exploited. The Internet is and always has been buil…
> I am unwilling to accept those obligations, in most cases. This is the argument I keep hearing every time a discussion about open source boils down, and I think it is wrong. Because in truth there is no big commitment if you sell some software for $10 or $20. In worst case if it doesn't work for the customer, you give a refund. When you go out to buy a sandwich or a couple of beers for $10, do you think they are wo…
> there is no big commitment if you sell some software for $10 or $20
This ends up not being true. It creates headaches and contracts both explicit and implied. It creates legal requirements and a for-consideration nexus that is far too complicated to contemplate at this level. Also moral obligation, tax liability, _customers_ to serve. No thank you.
Money changes everything. I don't need that overhead in my life. I've done it before (accepting donations only), and I won't do it again.
> Would you pick up litter that a mega-corp is dumping
If a megacorp was diminishing my enjoyment of the park by their litter, then yes sure, if it was of a magnitude that I could solve myself.
I'd also encourage the application of whatever legal and financial penalties might be available -- just like conflicting use of open source. If a license is violated, then pursue for damages. If the license allows the use in question (e.g. BSD, MIT), then that's a decision made by the licensor.
Re: Running an open source app: Usage, costs and community donations
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
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That’s besides the point I’m making. Technology should develop towards simplifying humanity’s life, not making it more complicated. It’s a good thing we don’t have to use clever loop constructs anymore, because compilers do it for us. It’s a good thing we don’t have to obsess about the right varchar size anymore, because Postgres‘ text does the right thing anyway. It’s a systemic problem. You’re going to loose the ba…
> Technology should develop towards simplifying humanity’s life, not making it more complicated
I agree with this statement for normal people. Not for software developers. You're just begging for stagnation. Your job is literally dealing with computers and making them do neat stuff. When you refuse to do that because "computers should be making my life easier" you should really find another line of employment where you're a consumer of software, not a producer.
Re: Running an open source app: Usage, costs and community donations
#155Can anyone tell me what tool can i use to track website visit statistics?
They use Plausible. There are a few alternatives: https://alternativeto.net/software/plausible-insights/
Re: Running an open source app: Usage, costs and community donations
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did you know that every dollar a company makes gets taken away from someone? It's zero-sum if you aren't close to Jerome Powell. Why assume the dollar is better in the hands of the company owner than whoever had it before?
The economy is not a zero sum game. We (non-politicians/non-billionares) have significantly more resources than we had 100 years ago, and we will have significantly more resources in 100 years than we do now. And open source developers are a small part of why.
The economy is not a zero sum game because we produce more stuff. Money, however, is a zero sum game unless you are Jerome Powell. We produce more stuff because we work hard to produce it, not because venture capitalists have larger bank accounts.
Especially in relation to open-source software, this should be obvious. Software exists because someone wrote it, not because a company owner was paid for access to it. Programmers may be paid to write software. However when comparing two worlds, one in which a programmer wrote some software for free, and another in which a programmer was paid $1 by a venture capitalist who received $5 from a customer who is now out $5, it's not at all clear that the second world is better. Especially since in the second world, the customer has to keep paying and has to contend with software full of ads that make it slow.
Re: Running an open source app: Usage, costs and community donations
#157I tested the app and found it awesome that it doesn't require account creation! You just get a private link, share it with the group, and when they open the link, it asks who they are to 'log in' as themselves. Of course, users could game the system by logging in as other members, but I think it's a compromise the developer made, knowing the user base and how frictionless it makes the user experience. Neat.
I've used this really neat website called when2meet[0] for community organizing heavily. You make an event, get a url and share it. Users choose their name and they can even add a completely optional password to prevent impersonation I'm heavily inspired by it and working on an app for book clubs to host "elections" to choose their next book to read using a variety of voting systems (ranked choice, approval, scored,…
+1 for when2meet. It is gloriously cruft-free.
Re: Running an open source app: Usage, costs and community donations
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're right but I'll play devil's advocate for teaching purposes: * Usage won't be uniformly distributed and you may need to deal with burst traffic for example when a new version is released and all your users are pulling new config data. * Your application data may be very important to your users and keeping it on a single server is a significant risk. * You're users may be geographically distributed such that a u…
> may be geographically distributed such that a user on the other side of the world may have a severely degraded experience. Okay, am I crazy or can you not really solve this without going full on multi-region setup of everything ? Maybe your web server is closer to them but database requests are still going back to the "main" region which will have latency.
Personally I'm digging a hole through the center of the earth to send data via pulsing laser to the far side. But other people can choose to waste their money on multi region relocation, sure.
Re: Running an open source app: Usage, costs and community donations
#159I love spliit and use it regularly. Like many times per week.
One thing that drives me crazy is it works really poorly on slow mobile connections. I'd really love to try to add local first or offline first support but I know it would be a significant change. However, even just caching pages like the add expense page would be a nice improvement.
Re: Running an open source app: Usage, costs and community donations
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
Definitely considering a dedicated Postgres VPS. I've not looked yet, but I'd like to locate a decent cookbook around this. I've installed Postgres on a server before for playing around, and it was easy enough. But there are a lot of settings, considerations around access and backups and updates, etc. I suspect these things aren't overly thorny, but some of the guides/docs can make it feel that way. We'll see, as it'…
I went through this around a year ago. I wanted to postgres for django apps, and I didn't want to pay the insane prices required by cloud providers for a replicated setup. I wanted a replicated setup on hetzner VMs and I wanted full control over the backup process. I wanted the deployment to be done using ansible, and I wanted my database servers to be stateless. If you vaporize both my heztner postgres VMs simultane…
I've got a less robust version of this (also as Ansible -> Hetzner) that I've toyed with. I'm often tempted to progress it, but I've realized it is a distraction. I say that about me, and not too negatively. I know that I want to get some apps done, but the sysadmin-y stuff is pretty fun and alluring but it can chew up a lot of time.
Currently I'm viewing the $19 plan from Neon as acceptable (I just look in my Costco cart for comparison) for me now. Plus, I'm getting something for my money beyond not having to build it myself: branching. This has proved way handier than I'd expected as a solo dev and I use it all the time. A DIY postgres wouldn't have that, at least not as cleanly.
If charges go much beyond the $19 and it is still just me faffing about, I'll probably look harder at the DIY PG. OTOH if there is good real world usage and/or $ coming in, then it's easier to view Neon as just a cost of business (within reason).