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Posthog – open-source analytics and UX research tool

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Re: Posthog – open-source analytics and UX research tool

#4

Post by encodedrose »

ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #2

Why is the self hosted version framed as a "hobby"? Is this another one of those enshittification of open source where open source is used more as a marketing gimmick instead of following it's true ethos?

Fairly accurate, you can only get support if you're using their cloud product.

"We no longer support paid, open-source deployments and it is no longer possible to buy licenses for self-hosted versions - we instead recommend migrating to PostHog Cloud." - from: https://posthog.com/docs/self-host

Re: Posthog – open-source analytics and UX research tool

#7

Post by kelsey98765431 »

i was very sad to see posthog enabled by default with a hardcoded key in open-interpreter, with a tiny disclaimer that telemetry had been added just with a new feature flag quietly introduced to disable it. Sad to see this sort of thing getting shipped by default, surprised to see my local llm calls leaving my PC. I don't know why developers consider logging a challenge for some reason and default to using MSP for everything including internal logs. Seems unwise in this age of valuable data to just give it away for free when you can just write to a data layer you own...

Re: Posthog – open-source analytics and UX research tool

#8

Post by ezekg »

encodedrose wrote: post #4
ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #2

Why is the self hosted version framed as a "hobby"? Is this another one of those enshittification of open source where open source is used more as a marketing gimmick instead of following it's true ethos?

Fairly accurate, you can only get support if you're using their cloud product. "We no longer support paid, open-source deployments and it is no longer possible to buy licenses for self-hosted versions - we instead recommend migrating to PostHog Cloud." - from: https://posthog.com/docs/self-host

Why are they obligated to provide support for a free open source project?

Re: Posthog – open-source analytics and UX research tool

#9

Post by kelsey98765431 »

ezekg wrote: post #8
encodedrose wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fairly accurate, you can only get support if you're using their cloud product. "We no longer support paid, open-source deployments and it is no longer possible to buy licenses for self-hosted versions - we instead recommend migrating to PostHog Cloud." - from: https://posthog.com/docs/self-host

Why are they obligated to provide support for a free open source project?

it's not a free open project if only part of it is open and the development is done by a central company that sells the other half.

Re: Posthog – open-source analytics and UX research tool

#10

Post by danr4 »

ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #2

Why is the self hosted version framed as a "hobby"? Is this another one of those enshittification of open source where open source is used more as a marketing gimmick instead of following it's true ethos?

That’s a pet peeve of mine so I’ll chime in.

I’ve actually used it self hosted pretty much since posthog launched and moved to their cloud after a couple years. Our product blew up and it was difficult to scale, as well as a few hosted only features that we needed (by then we raised and could afford it).

I also contributed code (and got some swag) which was promptly merged.

They’ve also open sourced how they run the company and onboarding (similar to GitLab).

All in all I think posthog is one of the most balanced open source product in the market, in terms of the easiness of self hosting, the feature set, the engineering culture, openness and business model.

If you don’t have a lot of traffic self hosted is excellent and can take you very far.

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