The 8232 Project

I trust code more than politics.

Last Notes

2025-01-27 00:33:58 UTC

Selfhosting is useful when you either need a lot of storage or a lot of processing power. For example, [Kiwix](https://kiwix.org/en/) is useful to selfhost on a server because a lot of its content can take up terabytes of storage, which a phone may not have. LLMs are also useful to selfhost because they require a degree of processing power that, again, a phone may not have.
In both cases, there is also a need for perpetual access. If you simply hosted an LLM on your home computer, it wouldn't be very useful to access from your phone since your computer won't be running all the time. So, a separate always-on server is needed.
However, there are some selfhosted software that I don't see a use for. For example, [Immich](https://immich.app/). Immich *requires* to be run on a server to function, but a lot of (or even all) of its functions are things that could reasonably done entirely on-device. [Aves](https://github.com/deckerst/aves) combined with some automatic backup solution such as [Nextcloud](https://nextcloud.com/) gets (from what I can tell) most of the functionality Immich offers. Obviously, some features like AI image tagging are missing, but you get the point. AI image tagging is also something that could be run on-device as well, since it's mostly lightweight (iPhones are capable of it). Having a setup like that also comes with the benefit of automatic backups being completely optional, rather than required.
There's no reasonable need for extra storage or extra processing power needed for that use case, from what I can tell. (Disclaimer: I haven't actually used Immich before, so this is speculation. I apologize if I'm missing something obvious) There's a lot of other selfhosted tools like [spotDL](https://github.com/spotDL/spotify-downloader) which have a selfhosted web UI, but no GUI that can be installed outside of a web browser.
I guess my question is why there are so many selfhosted tools that unnecessarily require being run on a separate device. I do understand the legitimate use cases some of them have, but others seem better off on-device airgapped. This especially became an issue trying to find a notes app for Android that requires no account and runs fully locally, or an RSS reader that loads from the device itself. I found [Joplin](https://joplinapp.org/) and [Feeder](https://github.com/spacecowboy/Feeder) or [Read You](https://github.com/Ashinch/ReadYou) as the software for each of those. I don't like "server-based" selfhosting for things that could be done from the device itself.
I'm sorry if this turned into a rant. If someone could help me understand, I would appreciate that very much.
Cheers!
Edit: The comparison here isn't between selfhosting and using a cloud provider. The comparison here is between selfhosting on a server and running explicitly on-device (besides where extra storage or processing power is required)

2024-06-14 19:28:06 UTC

I was researching WebMail providers, and noticed that most WebMail providers recommended in privacy communities are labelled as proprietary by [AlternativeTo](https://alternativeto.net/ ).
I made a list of WebMail providers, private or not, to see which ones were actually open source:
###
Proprietary
[AOL Mail](https://mail.aol.com/ ): Free
[Cock.li](https://cock.li/ ): Free
[CounterMail](https://countermail.com/ ): Paid
[Fastmail](https://www.fastmail.com/ ): Paid
[GMX Mail](https://www.gmx.com/mail/ ): Free
[Gmail](https://gmail.com ): Free
[HEY Email](https://www.hey.com/ ): Paid
[Hushmail](https://www.hushmail.com/ ): Paid
[iCloud Mail](https://www.icloud.com/mail ): Free
[Mail.com](https://www.mail.com/ ): Free
[Mailbox.org](https://mailbox.org ): Paid
[Mailfence](https://mailfence.com ): Freemium
[Outlook.com](https://outlook.com ): Freemium
[Posteo](https://posteo.de/en ): Paid
[Rediffmail](https://businessemail.rediff.com/ ): Paid
[Riseup](https://riseup.net/ ): Free
[Runbox](https://runbox.com/ ): Paid
[Soverin](https://www.soverin.com/ ): Paid
[StartMail](https://www.startmail.com/ ): Paid
[Yahoo! Mail](https://mail.yahoo.com ): Freemium
[Yandex Mail](https://mail.yandex.com ): Freemium
[Zoho Mail](https://www.zoho.com/us/mail/ ): Freemium
###
Open source
[Criptext](https://www.criptext.com/ ): Free
[Disroot](https://disroot.org/en/services/email ): Free
[Forward Email](https://forwardemail.net/en ): Freemium
[Infomaniak kMail](https://www.infomaniak.com/en/hosting/service-mail ): Freemium
[Kolab Now](https://kolabnow.com ): Paid
[Lavabit](https://lavabit.com/ ): Paid
[Mailpile](https://www.mailpile.is/ ): Free
[Proton Mail](https://proton.me/mail ): Freemium
[Roundcube](https://roundcube.net/ ): Free
[Skiff](https://skiff.com/ ): Freemium
[Tuta](https://tuta.com ): Freemium
Unless I’m missing something, it seems like people overlook this when deciding on WebMail providers. Is it a distinction between a proprietary backend server and a proprietary app, or is there a different way to decide if a WebMail provider is proprietary vs. open source? Lavabit was labelled proprietary by AlternativeTo, but open source by Wikipedia.
#
Note
If I have labelled an open source WebMail provider as proprietary by mistake, please provide evidence by linking to the source code, and I will happily change it.