Selfhosted

I want to remind everyone to keep on topic. Disparaging people for whatever reason is not on topic.

If you see something problematic, please report rather than respond. Your comment in response will be nuked along with the original problem comment.

I've also seen some sites use POWBlock, though, don't know anything about it.

Well you can pay 50 USD / month to remove the anime jackal girl and apply your own branding. I think its a fair system: hobby & FOSS projects don't have to mind being cringe and profit-oriented operations that need to look professional can spare some of their profit for this cool service.

I think people are right that the solution here isn't to try a different project.

Instead of being confrontational about it, though, I'd recommend a different aproach.

evelyn: .lol 😜

you: I know! I know. The branding is pretty silly. But this really is the right tool for the task. Unesco and Wikimedia use it. And we can do our own branding for $50/month. 🤷

A lot can be fixed by just acknowledging people. They're trying to evaluate something they don't understand, and having a reaction. It's not even unreasonable. The right thing to do is just acknowledge and move on.

Usually that's all it takes. Don't let yourself be embarrassed when you're being reasonable. If they won't move on, that's the point where I start thinking about job applications somewhere else.

Anubis is not out to make money, as such it has absolutely no obligation to try to appeal to corpos who would use it without contributing back to it.

Either your coworkers have to get over their hangups (have they not noticed that some of the best software that exists is made by furries?) or you'll have to re-implement something yourselves.

Anubis is open source. You COULD fork it and modify it for your own purposes.

If your coworkers can't separate what a piece of software is able to do from how it is branded, that's their problem.

"Look, we don't need to use Photoshop for our shop. There's an open source option that matches our use case perfectly."

"What's it called?"

"Gnu Image Manipulation Program."

"That's an awfully long name. They should have a shorter one that's less of a mouthful to say."

"...they do not."

@Ek-Hou-Van-Braai Hi, tomska's law is in play and I have been linked this thread. I am the Anubis dev. I am having my agent work on a soulless generic corporate website for BotStopper with one of the most painfully boring layouts imaginable, including a random WebGL effect on the homepage for no reason.

I couldn't get a .com so I hope the corporate drones you work with will not balk at the sheer horror of a .net domain.

I imagine Anubis looking like that is because professional settings really should sponsor when using open source.
https://anubis.techaro.lol/docs/admin/botstopper/
https://github.com/sponsors/Xe

The type of folks who avoid Anubis because of the mascot don't deserve good bot protection anyway. Its like reverse gate keeping, the corpo dorks filter themselves out.

I also find the logo weird. They call it Anubis, but use an anime girl instead of a sexy, shirtless jackal man like Neferu.

Look, you suggested software that does the job. The issue is not the software, its that your colleagues are being dismissive and disrespectful.

Instead of looking for other alternatives, you need to be more assertive in your job and career. Tell them you offered an option that does the job and if they have better options its on them to offer them. And also tell them you dont appreciate "lol" as a response to a work suggestion.

Scrambling to find an alternative because your work colleagues are too immature or arrogant to get past an animal character really doea not reflect well on you. Instead you can tell them the company can pay a small amount to have their own branding, or they can go with a more expensive option like cloudflare, just because they can't be bothered to engage with the cheaper option.

But whatever you do, do not accept this dismissive treatment by your colleagues. You're just setting the standard that they can just laugh at you and insult you. That is the unprofessional behaviour by them, not some projects mascot. Do not tolerate that BS.

You've been perfectly williing to argumentative with people here. Apply that attitude to your colleagues who are the real issue.

If you want serious and professional: Pay for it!

If you want it free, you get the anime girl.

This is an exclusive choice.

tell them to grow up

The Issue: When I send my coworkers to https://anubis.techaro.lol/docs/admin/botstopper they find the mascot and URL weird.

You've decided without listening to the responses

https://botstopper.net/

Botstopper doesn't have the .lol domain, and doesn't use the anime cat girl splash

It's not even expensive

You don't have to tell your peers it is just a rebadged version of the same website, just say "look I've found another one that does the same thing but without the domain and splashscreen probs you complained about"

the insane smugness and inability to comprehend that money isnt everything for the creator is astounding "Waaahhh Anubis isn't gonna get my money cus they chose to look UNPROFESSIONAL" this is why everyone hates corpo guys

edit: I forgot to add the comments elsewhere downright accusing the creator of being a pedo for having an anime furry mascot yeah you guys arent subtle at all

There is a debranded version you can pay for

2026

mistrusting a firewall because of a changeable anime catgirl when there's technofascist executing and leading technofascism on IT all abroad

Your teammates are stupid (not to mention they are probably projecting their own fetishes, denialists and negationists are like that) and they deserve to be derided. Changing the logo of a program these days is, like, two lines in a script.

Look buddy I understand that URL has the same issue you mention in your post but it is the official Anubis URL.

Thus if you really want to be professional you load up the URL past the anime girl, organize a meeting and share your screen.

Tell them what it is and what it is for.

Explain what is opensource and the fact that this is free only if they accept that anime girl. Otherwise it'll be 50 bucks and they can put their own ai designed logo instead.

If they are still acting like childs treat them like childs. Recenter the meeting on what it is for. Do a proof of concept. I don't know, do something instead of stating that the official website is not how you would like it to be ?

"You can change the logo bruh"

Anubis is open source under the MIT license. If the branding is an issue, fork it, change the branding, call it good.

The MIT license makes it, effectively, a whitebox solution. You can change the branding to whatever you want it to be.

If your colleagues are people of a technical inclination they should understand that. If they don't I would question their competence and literacy. If they're not technical in nature I would question why any such proposal is reaching their desk without having first been rebranded, implemented in a test environment, thouroughly tested, and then (and only then) being presented as a proof of concept.

https://codeberg.org/wheresalice/go-away
Even if you didn't have the issues with branding, this is just generally better than Anubis.

Sounds like you need to explain the difference between a serious tool and a serious looking tool. They can frump about it being weird but it is the foss option.

Botstopper.

Litterly the same thing but you can customise the image.

https://anubis.techaro.lol/docs/admin/botstopper

You're a business, support the project.

If the UNESCO and Wikimedia websites can use it, so does your company. Not an issue of the software, grow up.

It's like homophobia, but whimsyfunphobia

The mascot is part of the repellent. It will repeal the tech and finance bros.