this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2026
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Just a PSA.

See this thread

Sorry to link to Reddit, but not only is the dev sloppily using using Claude to do something like 20k line PRs, but they are completely crashing out, banning people from the Discord (actually I think they wiped everything from Discord now), and accusing people forking their code of theft.

It’s a bummer because the app was pretty good… thankfully Calibre-web and Kavita still exist.

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[–] lka1988@sh.itjust.works 9 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

accusing people forking their code of theft

AGPL 3.0 license

Too fucking bad, pussy.

[–] queasy@lemmy.world 8 points 10 hours ago

Wow, I was thinking about switching from calibre-web soon too... Thanks for the headsup!

[–] ki9@lemmy.gf4.pw 1 points 6 hours ago

I wonder if it's just an out-of-line openclaw deleting the discord to silence the humans that don't like its code.

[–] Kirk@startrek.website 29 points 14 hours ago

Damn 99% of the time someone says not to use an open source product it's because of some obscure drama unrelated to the actual program.

But in this case the dev appears to not just be using AI code (not great but debatable) but using mostly AI code and using AI to reply to bug reports. Not something the average person wants to be running in a live environment.

I haven't used Booklore but the excitement around it was nudging me there. I think I'll stick with CWAs slower rollout.

[–] lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.org 65 points 16 hours ago (4 children)
[–] antrosapien@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 hour ago

That list is depressing

[–] nfreak@lemmy.ml 19 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

Man this list is depressing. Good to have handy though. Sad to see SearXNG and a few others on here.

[–] northernlights@lemmy.today 11 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Seriously... kitty, rawtherapee, keepassxc, python, the freaking linux kernel!

[–] Auli@lemmy.ca 6 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (1 children)

Did you read about kernel they are experimenting with using it for reviews. They have some prompts for LLM to catch issues before it gets to maintainers so it frees up time. Don't see an issue if that is all it is.

[–] lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 8 hours ago

It might be, but for some people that might, understandably, be already bad enough, a line in the sand if you will.

I'm reminded of this statement about LLMs and the kind of people who use them in the first place. It's an early indicator that quality (and sovereignty) of the software is going to go the incline down.

[–] Atropos@lemmy.world 2 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Searxng? Fuck, guess I'm just not pulling a new container.

[–] nfreak@lemmy.ml 2 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

There is this that popped up the other day, but I haven't looked into it at all to see if it's vibecoded or not: https://github.com/fccview/degoog

[–] Atropos@lemmy.world 1 points 10 hours ago

Thanks, will dig into this!

[–] meathappening@lemmy.ml 13 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

Booklore is listed as an alternative to Calibre 😭

[–] traxex@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Wait Calibre is there????? Oh my god no.

[–] meathappening@lemmy.ml 1 points 3 hours ago

Fortunately this exists

[–] lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.org 6 points 14 hours ago

Damn it!!! 😵

[–] Andres4NY@social.ridetrans.it 2 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago) (1 children)

@lambalicious @jasonweiser Not sure seafile should be listed as an alternative. We couldn't include it on Debian due to copyright sketchiness/plagerism...

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=928975

[–] lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Geez... problems never end, do they.

I'm barely active in Codeberg. Unless someone beats me by, say, end-of-month, I might file an issue about it; that said, I'd like to be able to offer at least one (1) functional alternative rather than simply +1'ing to the complains that this or that is Never Good Enough.

[–] Andres4NY@social.ridetrans.it 2 points 6 hours ago

@lambalicious Syncthing is what I replaced seafile with, fwiw. Works great!

[–] shads@lemy.lol 11 points 15 hours ago (3 children)

And every time the use of LLMs for open source development comes up we get the same tired spiel from people about how it's just a tool and implications that anyone who doesn't embrace it with jpy in their heart is just a Luddite.

It seems to me that it's less a tool and more like intentionally infecting your project with cancer. Sure it shows all the signs of rapid growth, but metastasization isn't sustainable or desirable. Plus I am yet to encounter a strong advocate for LLMs who isn't a cunt.

[–] PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 hour ago

I think it kinda depends on the context. If someone is just making a tool for themselves and they slap on MIT or GPL3 just because who cares someone else can have it, then sure. Who cares if it's trash if the stakes are so low that they're scraping the ground and the user base is expected to be single digits.

But when you care about the reputation of your project, or if your project requires people trust it, then yeah for sure it's not appropriate to vibe/slop it.

I have ethical concerns about the realities of how this tech is used, mainly in what it's doing to the economic and power dynamics in society. But I don't have a problem with the tech itself. That said, I have to admit that it may not be realistic to separate the tech from its inevitable impact. Now I have become death, the destroyer of worlds, and all that.

[–] chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

I'll argue that it is a tool, and object to automatic zealous hostility towards anyone using it, but that doesn't mean criticisms of how that tool is being used aren't valid. It seems like that is what people are focusing on here, and they definitely aren't Luddites for doing so.

[–] shads@lemy.lol 1 points 2 hours ago (2 children)

I think I can provide you a great equivalent. Firearms, they have utility, but there are people who make them a lifestyle choice, and there are people who make them their whole personality. There are also a lot of people just desperate for an excuse to use one. I grew up with a couple of farmers in the extended family, I would never argue guns should be entirely banned, but I am so glad I live somewhere with sane laws around gun ownership. It would be so nice if we had similar consideration around regulating LLMs.

The danger to open source as I see it is that LLMs degrade the quality and ability of developers while increasing their throughput, and I have never once heard someone complain that open source lacks quantity, but I hear a lot of people complaining about the quality.

[–] PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca 1 points 56 minutes ago

I think that the problem, in both cases, is culture.

It's not that either of those are bad, or bad for people; it's bad for people of this culture or people of this society. It's how the two intersect that is the problem.

It could be a tool that lifts up the worker or creative, but instead it's a tool to devalue the creative and extract power and wealth.
It highlights that people with power get a different set of rules and laws than the rest of us, and they're using that to further entrench and enrich themselves.

[–] chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 hour ago

I will complain about quantity, many areas where open source projects are competing with closed source commercial products they have not achieved feature parity or a comparable level of polish, quantity matters. So does, as someone else touched on, quality of life improvements to the process of writing code like ease of acquiring and synthesizing information. That doesn't mean it's necessarily a worthwhile tradeoff, but how much is really being sacrificed depends on what exactly is being done with a LLM. To me one part of what's described here that's clearly going too far is using it to automate communication with other people contributing to the project, there's no way that is worth it.

As for the gun thing, I will support entirely banning LLM powered weapons intended to kill people, that's an easy choice.

[–] Vendetta9076@sh.itjust.works 2 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago) (1 children)

I find an LLM is a great way to shortcut the googling itd take for me to parse random error message #506 when I'm learning a new language but that's about it. I'm also in no way writing software meant for mass consumption.

[–] shads@lemy.lol 3 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Ergo its a tool, a search engine replacement, that we wouldn't need if search hadn't gone to shit due to neglect and active internal sabotage.

[–] Auster@thebrainbin.org 20 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Can't check now, but if there aren't forks named like BookTale and BookStory, I'll riot.

Jokes aside, if the license he used allows forking, dude's tripping, and could even get sued depending on the country for false accusation of crime.

And ah, Discord, great for nuking inconvenient chats. Imagine if it had happened over at a public forum so people's reactions could be backed up.

And dunno where I'd draw the line, but 20k lines imo is a bit past reasonable. How would anyone audit that many in a timely manner? But with the "dev" doing that daily, that'd be hard to even pretend.

[–] rtxn@lemmy.world 9 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago) (1 children)

The treekie in me wants BookData.

(edit) This made me remember The Measure Of A Man and now I'm fucking depressed. They had such high hopes for the future.

[–] Stern@lemmy.world 4 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

The trekkie in me wants BookData.

The extra bit about Lore being the one who could make shit up and say what folks wanted to hear while Data was based on facts and logic isn't lost on me either

[–] AnchoriteMagus@lemmy.world 4 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

"You want to seek out new life and new civilizations? Well THERE. IT. SITS!"

[–] lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 16 hours ago

Truly an actor of all time. Sometimes I think Oscars and Emmys and all that shit should be able to be granted retroactively (hellooooo, "you broke your little ships" scene).

[–] nfreak@lemmy.ml 13 points 17 hours ago (2 children)

I literally just got this all set up and was about to hook up my wife's kobo to it, good timing for this to come out so I don't waste any more of our time with this slop. What a shitshow.

I just spun up Komga instead last night (I was going to set up CWA but I've heard sketchy things about their lead dev that don't leave me optimistic). Very easy to get up and running, pretty basic but it seems to work well and does exactly what it needs to do. I was a bit hesitant since it seemed geared toward comics, but it's handling regular ebooks just fine.

[–] non_burglar@lemmy.world 3 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Wait, I use CWA... What do I need to be outraged about this time?

[–] nfreak@lemmy.ml 4 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

I don't have the full details, but I saw some mentions in that Booklore reddit thread about CWA's dev ignoring major issues in favor of new features and such, something like that. I admittedly didn't really do much research into that nor the tool itself, but Komga's Kobo support seems better, so I just went with it.

[–] non_burglar@lemmy.world 2 points 14 hours ago

Hmmm... Calibre web's kobo integration is good enough, but Komga seems to be able to sync progress as well?

I might have to try Kkmga after all.

[–] Kirk@startrek.website 0 points 14 hours ago

That's not a reason to consider CWA unsafe

[–] Bryan065@kbin.earth 1 points 16 hours ago

what happened with CWA? I was thinking of using it

[–] civ@lemmy.civl.cc 11 points 17 hours ago (2 children)

I self-host audiobookshelf, and it's working pretty well for me. It doesn't have tons of features, and the android app is a bit janky, but it does what I need and I'm happy with it.

[–] iamthetot@piefed.ca 1 points 12 hours ago

Use it every day and it's all I need.

[–] BentiGorlich@gehirneimer.de 2 points 14 hours ago

I use it daily and I love it :)

[–] Strawberry@sh.itjust.works 4 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

Thanks, that might explain the jank I got when spinning it up yesterday...I'll be back on calibre web or trying another option over the weekend.

[–] gigachad@piefed.social 3 points 16 hours ago

Don't know that software, but that was fun to read lol

[–] philpo@feddit.org 0 points 11 hours ago

Tbh, at the moment the maintainer seems to be have gotten the message - or at least tries to make it seem so. I would give him the benefit of doubt at this stage, at least for a while now.