[HN Gopher] Focalboard - a self-hosted alternative to Trello, No...
___________________________________________________________________
Focalboard - a self-hosted alternative to Trello, Notion, and Asana
Author : stanislavb
Score : 614 points
Date : 2021-03-18 02:06 UTC (20 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.focalboard.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.focalboard.com)
| fangorn wrote:
| Just one letter changes and this whole project goes to sh*t.
| mkrishnan wrote:
| seems like a good tool but docker version would be nice.
| raggi wrote:
| The licensing notions in this project are nonsense.
| paxys wrote:
| I need to hire a lawyer just to figure out if I can use this
| thing or not. The opening of
| https://github.com/mattermost/focalboard/blob/main/LICENSE.t...
| mentions 4 separate licenses.
|
| And is it just me or does this part mean absolutely nothing:
|
| > We promise that we will not enforce the copyleft provisions
| in AGPL v3.0 against you if your application (a) does not link
| to Focalboard directly, but exclusively uses Focalboard's Admin
| Tools and Configuration Files, and (b) you have not modified,
| added to or adapted the source code of Focalboard in a way that
| results in the creation of a "modified version" or "work based
| on" Focalboard as these terms are defined in the AGPL v3.0
| license.
| em-bee wrote:
| doesn't (a) mean the admintools should not be under the AGPL?
| i wonder why they couldn't just specify an appropriate
| license instead.
|
| and does (b) mean that when i host focalboard myself, i would
| be allowed to hide the fact from my users?
|
| what other benefit is there from not enforcing the AGPL
| against me?
|
| if the AGPL is in applied to the unmodified version, then my
| users would get the original source and whether they got it
| from me or from upstream. so i don't see the benefit of
| nonenforcement
| dybber wrote:
| So it's like: MIT for compiled application, AGPL if you build
| it yourself, or you can pay for less strict licensing. Seems
| similar to the model used e.g. by Qt
|
| https://github.com/mattermost/focalboard/blob/main/LICENSE.t...
|
| EDIT: Use of dual licensing for open source software was
| previously discussed here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24677481
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| "We promise that we will not enforce the copyleft provisions in
| AGPL v3.0 against you if [....]"
|
| Does a promise like this actually stand up in a license file /
| in court? Is this sentence actually meaningful?
| paxys wrote:
| That whole paragraph is pretty nonsensical. To me it sounds
| like "we promise not to enforce this license if you comply
| with the license".
| mosselman wrote:
| Deleting a board is possible, but there is no confirm and no way
| to restore. Very dangerous!
| bachmeier wrote:
| Only for people that make mistakes.
| zze wrote:
| A good self-hosted alternative is https://kanbantool.com/kanban-
| tool-on-site - it launched back in 2009, has time tracking and
| allows for a lot of customization through SDK.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| Do you offer hosted service? Is there a demo to try it without
| installing/subscribing?
| avinassh wrote:
| Would it be nice if it was possible to import existing data from
| Trello and Notion
| deftnerd wrote:
| They have scripts to import from Asana, Notion, and Trello
| https://github.com/mattermost/focalboard/tree/main/import
| [deleted]
| thnok wrote:
| This looks pretty cool! Any chance of seeing a demo? Also do you
| have any recommended specs for self hosting?
| redsummer wrote:
| Any CLI based solutions? Using ncurses or similar?
| 1cvmask wrote:
| Looks cool. But you have split up the licenses as Apache and
| AGPL. Why the split? You could prevent the likes of AWS
| competition with a blanket AGPL etc... Am I missing something? Or
| is Apache license OSS some derivative work and from another
| project?
| paxys wrote:
| From what I can understand, if you host Focalboard on your
| server and update some configurations and templates to suit
| your needs, you are not required to open source these updates
| (which you would otherwise have to under AGPL) since those
| specific files are Apache 2.0 licensed.
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| i think AGPL only makes that requirement if you give out YOUR
| version to users. If you are just using for yourself or
| internal team, AGPL does not require you to publish those
| changes.
| paxys wrote:
| AGPL doesn't make any distinction between public vs private
| use. If software you write depends on or extends AGPL code,
| it must also be licensed as AGPL, period. You do only need
| to offer the source code to users of the software, but that
| is still a burden, especially when all you are doing is
| updating config files.
| kdmytro wrote:
| If I use the software privately, can we just say that I
| as the only user distributed the modified code to myself
| automatically?
| em-bee wrote:
| as far as i understand the license requirements don't get
| triggered by your own employees because they are bound to
| you by the employment contract, so it's like sharing with
| yourself
| jdc wrote:
| Maybe it's a means of last resort to prevent the work from
| effectively going to waste in case of bankruptcy/low adoption?
| [deleted]
| ganessh wrote:
| This looks great! Can we have a docker image or instruction?
| it33 wrote:
| Focalboard team here, please see:
| https://github.com/mattermost/focalboard/issues/96
| sali0 wrote:
| This is awesome. This with good integration with Mattermost (or
| discord) would serve the needs for a lot of teams. Notion could
| as well but they are a slow moving beast with different
| priorities.
| orthoxerox wrote:
| I would be surprised if it doesn't integrate natively with
| Mattermost, given that it's made by the same company.
| AnonHP wrote:
| It would've been more convenient to me if this project provided
| standalone downloads for macOS and Windows. The current downloads
| for the Desktop version are only available through the respective
| app stores on these two platforms.
| sneak wrote:
| It's a major bummer when devs don't even let you download the
| app from their own website, instead suggesting that you dox
| yourself to Apple to use their software. :(
|
| Mattermost (the company behind this) also builds spyware into
| Mattermost (which is not well documented) and I would be
| unsurprised to find the same nonsense going on with this.
|
| Is there a term for companies that are "open source in license
| only" that ignore all of the values of the free software
| community?
|
| If you download the app store version, and you edit the source
| code of the downloaded app to, say, scratch an itch, it will
| not run any longer because the app bundle signature
| verification will fail. Distributing unmodifiable applications
| defeats the whole purpose of a free software license.
| manigandham wrote:
| Did you check the repo? You can download and build your own
| app easily, they have instructions for all 3 platforms:
|
| https://github.com/mattermost/focalboard#building-and-
| runnin...
| sneak wrote:
| I am aware that one can build the app from source; my
| comments were orthogonal to that.
|
| It is customary for open source projects that involve
| complicated or proprietary build processes to provide
| binaries which one can simply download and run. App Store
| releases are decidedly not this: they include DRM, and have
| as a requirement the provision of personal information to
| (and agreement to an onerous legal contract with) a third
| party: the app store vendor. You can't get free apps from
| the mac App Store without giving Apple your phone number
| and email address.
|
| In the case of interpreted software (such as this) those
| interpreted (but nonetheless runnable) files should be
| modifiable. You shouldn't have to set up a toolchain (which
| on macOS is proprietary and requires its own EULA) to try
| out this software if you don't have or want an AppleID.
|
| If you do jump through the App Store hoops, you can't edit
| the app and then run it.
| it33 wrote:
| Focalboard team here. Added a feature idea on providing
| binaries:
| https://github.com/mattermost/focalboard/issues/99
|
| Thanks for your feedback!
|
| We'd love to hear more. We just setup this page with
| links on how to get more involved:
| https://github.com/mattermost/focalboard/wiki/Share-your-
| fee...!
| sneak wrote:
| Rip out your spyware first, it's a bigger problem than
| forcing users to the App Store.
| manigandham wrote:
| https://github.com/mattermost/focalboard#building-and-runnin...
| pbreit wrote:
| Downloading from app store is about as easy as it gets.
| eps wrote:
| No, it's not.
|
| Requires a sign-up and comes with other cruft unrelated to
| the actual download.
| bickeringyokel wrote:
| Last time I used it was to test that my companies app could
| be downloaded from it. Well it wouldn't let me sign in
| using my existing outlook account apparently because we use
| our company domain name. So I had to create a completely
| separate microsoft domain account. Pretty annoying.
| paxys wrote:
| I take it you have never tried using the Windows Store.
| it33 wrote:
| Focalboard team here. Thanks for the feedback! Opened feature
| idea ticket on this here:
| https://github.com/mattermost/focalboard/issues/99
| thepra wrote:
| Same here, I don't want to use any Microsoft account on windows
| 10, I was already burned by it once ._.
| murermader wrote:
| You don't need a Microsoft account to download from the
| Microsoft Store.
| riho wrote:
| Welp.
| it33 wrote:
| Focalboard team here.
|
| Hi @riho, thanks for your feedback. One key piece of feedback
| we've heard is that other SaaS-based project management tools
| can run slow.
|
| Because of this, one concept we're testing out is "Focalboard
| Personal Desktop" where you can run the software locally.
|
| You can download the v0.6 version from the Windows Store or
| Apple AppStore to try it out. We would love your feedback.
|
| Also, if you're interested in influencing the project, please
| consider submitting a ticket with type `enhancement` with what
| you'd like to see:
| https://github.com/mattermost/focalboard/issues
| riho wrote:
| That's fair enough, "x, but actually fast" is definitely a
| strong selling point and a differentiator in my book. That
| wasn't mentioned on the landing page.
| it33 wrote:
| Focalboard team here, agree with your feedback! Updated
| README on this: https://github.com/mattermost/focalboard/co
| mmit/5c802347be8a...
| yumraj wrote:
| I wonder why the Mac OS desktop app requires 10.15? I'm assuming
| it's just an electron app.
| mynegation wrote:
| Not sure about version requirement but you can find that Mac
| app is written in Swift:
| https://github.com/mattermost/focalboard/tree/main/mac and
| Windows application in C# uses WPF:
| https://github.com/mattermost/focalboard/tree/main/win-wpf
|
| Linux app seems to be just a local server supposedly with web
| browser as an interface.
| yumraj wrote:
| Yes, github repo also mentions Catalina (10.15) and XCode
| 12+.
|
| So, Swift would explain that..
| yblu wrote:
| Both these apps contain a few source files and all they do
| seem to be rendering and handling a webview. The "real" app
| seems to be this:
| https://github.com/mattermost/focalboard/tree/main/webapp.
| s_dev wrote:
| Focal is the Irish for 'word'.
|
| Is that the etymology? 'Wordboard'?
| curryst wrote:
| I think they mean it as the adjective form of the English word
| "focus", as in "focal point". Instead of "focal point" it's a
| "focal board".
| CRConrad wrote:
| It's also the English for ~"having, being in, or related to
| focus". So a meaning of "a board where important tasks are in
| focus" (or some such) seems at least as likely.
| [deleted]
| mraza007 wrote:
| I'm just surprised few weeks ago i was looking at self hosted
| notion/trello like alternatives and now I just came across this.
|
| The project just looks really cool and I'm definitely going to
| download and try this.
|
| I just wanted to thank the developers from the bottom of my heart
| for creating this.
|
| Lastly I'm just curious is it possible to host this on a
| raspberry pi
| it33 wrote:
| Focalboard team here, thank you so much for the recognition!
|
| We're working super hard to build something that benefits our
| community.
|
| While there's not formal support for Raspberry Pi right now,
| we'd welcome a the feature idea, here's more on how to share
| feedback: https://github.com/mattermost/focalboard/wiki/Share-
| your-fee...!
| mraza007 wrote:
| hey man, thanks for replying I loved the product and I would
| love to try it out on raspberry pi and I will add that as a
| feature request
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Looks like this needs Go, Webpack and an SQL server (with
| sqlite3 being the out-of-the-box default). That all should run
| on the RPI.
| nickysielicki wrote:
| It's easy to miss that this is by the same people making
| Mattermost, the open-source self-hosted slack alternative you
| might have heard of.
|
| https://github.com/mattermost/focalboard
| [deleted]
| Reventlov wrote:
| So should we expect them to roll out some community edition
| lacking essential features to kind of force people to use the
| (paying, closed-source) entreprise edition ?
|
| Some basic features have been wanted for years in the
| mattermost CE edition, while being implemented in the EE
| edition, like the capability to prevent users to kick other
| users from channels ( https://forum.mattermost.org/t/users-can-
| kick-other-users-of... ).
| CodeMage wrote:
| I'm curious about something: would there be any hidden
| gotchas involved if someone forked the Mattermost repo, and
| added features like that? I understand not wanting to spend
| the effort on implementing and maintaining these changes, I'm
| just trying to figure out if there's any other reason for not
| doing it. From what I can see, the license is APL 2.0, which
| I think shouldn't forbid that, but IANAL (or expert on
| working in open source).
| andrewSC wrote:
| The one I got bit by yesterday was team-edition not offering
| basic HA/cluster functionality. Oh well, vertical scaling
| here I come! Also, i'm not sure if the helm chart is
| officially maintained or a community-only effort, however,
| I'd love to see the addition of being able to configure/use
| imagePullSecrets. Also, general fixes to the values yaml.
| rtpg wrote:
| Yeah this seems like a pretty serious initiative, kind of
| surprised they're not offering their own hosting though.
| unixhero wrote:
| It's pretty obvious they are planning that. I read through
| the license and it's mostly AGPL and MIT, but its top level
| is a MATTERMOST-license.
|
| Anyways, good on them for sharing the code.
| johnx123-up wrote:
| FWIW, more alternatives are listed here
| https://alternativeshub.gitlab.io/kanban-board/ with comparison
| ranking. IIRC, they're sourced from the awesome list
| diacritica wrote:
| A pity that website looks very outdated.
| Aeolun wrote:
| This would be easier to test out if I could just run a docker
| image instead of doing a whole nginx configuration.
| igetspam wrote:
| What's stopping you? Run nginx in a container and mount the
| config dir as a volume.
|
| [EDIT] Someone did it already:
| https://github.com/PaperStork/focalboard/pull/1/commits/6452...
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| Yeah the server install instructions are a bit out of date it
| seems. It doesn't mention you need to run the 'make webapp'
| task to run webpack and generate the bundled HTML page. It also
| has you download an old version (0.5) and the docs on the
| config don't match what's in the repo now (with version 0.6.1).
|
| Anyways, here's a Dockerfile I whipped up that builds and runs
| a local version configured to use sqlite. No nginx or other
| stuff, it's just simple localhost config (not production
| ready): # Focalboard v0.6.1 requires node 10+
| FROM node:15-buster-slim # Focalboard source to
| clone. ARG
| FOCALBOARD_REPO="https://github.com/mattermost/focalboard.git"
| ARG FOCALBOARD_BRANCH="v0.6.1" # Focalboard v0.6.1
| requires make. RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y \
| gcc \ git \ make \ && rm -rf
| /var/lib/apt/lists/* # Focalboard v0.6.1 requires
| go 1.15+ COPY --from=golang:1.16-buster /usr/local/go
| /usr/local/go ENV PATH="/usr/local/go/bin:$PATH"
| # Clone focalboard. WORKDIR /opt/focalboard RUN git
| clone --depth 1 --branch $FOCALBOARD_BRANCH $FOCALBOARD_REPO .
| # Build focalboard. RUN make prebuild \ && make
| webapp \ && make # Setup a localhost
| configuration with sqlite. RUN echo '{\
| "serverRoot": "http://localhost:8000",\n\ "port":
| 8000,\n\ "dbtype": "sqlite3",\n\ "dbconfig":
| "/data/focalboard.db",\n\ "useSSL": false,\n\
| "webpath": "./webapp/pack",\n\ "filespath":
| "/files",\n\ "telemetry": true,\n\
| "session_expire_time": 2592000,\n\
| "session_refresh_time": 18000,\n\ "localOnly":
| false,\n\ "enableLocalMode": true,\n\
| "localModeSocketLocation":
| "/var/tmp/focalboard_local.socket"\n\ }' >
| /opt/focalboard/config.json # Uploaded files are
| stored here. VOLUME /files # Sqlite database
| is stored here. VOLUME /data CMD
| ["/opt/focalboard/bin/focalboard-server"]
|
| It will need a volume at /files for uploaded file storage, and
| /data for its sqlite database. It exposes a server on port
| 8000, and an admin API unix socket on
| /var/tmp/focalboard_local.socket (read their docs for what it's
| useful for, like resetting passwords). The Dockerfile should be
| multiarch, but I can only test on amd64. Low spec hardware
| (raspberry pi) might struggle a bit with the build as it's a
| non-trivial go server build, and then production webpack
| bundle... weird failures might be OOM issues.
|
| Here's an example of a basic build and run, saving the files
| and db to a local directory: <copy Dockerfile
| contents above to file> docker build -t focalboard .
| docker run --rm -p 8000:8000 -v $PWD/files:/files -v
| $PWD/data:/data focalboard
|
| Access http://localhost:8000 and it will let you create a new
| user account.
|
| (go wild with the Dockerfile above, I release it in public
| domain)
| aidenn0 wrote:
| nginx? I did the following and it ran just fine:
| make webapp make bin/focalboard-server
| Aeolun wrote:
| The server installation instructions start with configuring
| nginx to do something. That's where I bounced.
| unsungNovelty wrote:
| https://www.openproject.org/
|
| I am always surprised when people don't mention Open Project. Cos
| isn't this fragmentation? Open Project...
|
| - Have been there for a long time.
|
| - Good motivated team AFAIK,
|
| - Have forum software.
|
| - Project board
|
| - And even version control!
|
| Everything self hosted or enterprise/cloud for serious stuff or
| people who want to support them.
|
| Or is there some other reason why openproject is not known? Would
| love to hear more from the HN community on this.
| Jnr wrote:
| On the licensing page of Open Project 'agile boards' is one of
| the paid features, so I don't see how it is relevant in this
| case.
|
| Screenshots look good and it is nice to see that they have
| figured out a good business model for open source software.
|
| But I don't like to see that 2FA is available only in the paid
| version still in 2021. Security should be at the core of these
| kinds of systems.
|
| And I hope that maintaining it is much easier than other Ruby
| projects that I have encountered in the past. For example, I
| used to run Redmine project management system, and maintaining
| it up to date was painful due to fragmentation and differences
| between Ruby versions. Hopefully Docker and better migration
| scripts have solved those problems nowadays. Still, even with
| containerization available, when it comes to self hosted
| solutions I definitely prefer ones that get compiled to nice
| binaries. Go, Rust, C, etc.
| petecooper wrote:
| Big fan and active user of OpenProject here, I recommend it.
| rayiner wrote:
| It's quite heavy and slow.
| Jnr wrote:
| I wish someone would make a modern project management system
| that was not working against the user all the time.
|
| I use Jira heavily in different projects and I am baffled at
| how slow it is. Such a popular product but the user
| experience due to frontend slowness is terrible.
| blowski wrote:
| Can you go into detail on "modern"?
|
| The problem with project management systems is that you
| have four important levers:
|
| * configurability (enforcing rules, custom workflows,
| triggers)
|
| * usability of the UI (speed, simplicity)
|
| * multi-user (including consistency between users)
|
| * scale (number of projects, users, tickets)
|
| You can't have all those at the same time. If you want it
| to be very configurable, you have to choose whether to
| prioritise scale (Jira), or usability (Trello, Asana), or
| drop the multi-user (Excel, Google Sheets).
|
| In my opinion, the problem with most project management
| systems is the problem with project management management
| itself - trying to do too many complicated things at the
| same time. It's pretty easy to manage even a fairly large
| programme of well-scoped projects on just about any
| software.
| Jnr wrote:
| By 'modern' I was thinking about system with most of the
| features that Jira and others have, but with fast backend
| and fast javascript UI.
|
| I don't think that speed is dependent on simplicity. One
| could make an advanced system with all the features that
| is still optimized for speed. There are other programs
| that check all the boxed, just not one for project
| management. I guess everyone is used to it. :)
| diacritica wrote:
| We developed Taiga (taiga.io) with that in mind. It's
| meant for cross-domain teams but a lot of people use it
| for their own personal projects. At the moment, 50% of
| new Taiga users come from Trello or Jira (in that order).
| Check it out https://resources.taiga.io/getting-started/
| unsungNovelty wrote:
| Hey, curious. What exactly do you use from Open Project?
|
| Would love to hear a better definition of "heavy". :)
| rayiner wrote:
| I tried it as a self hosted alternative to Trello for
| Kanban. It's got a ton of features compared to Trello and
| updating things and moving cards is quite slow.
| unsungNovelty wrote:
| Thanks for sharing @rayiner. I haven't looked at it.
| NotPavlovsDog wrote:
| Seconded. For reference, have multiple websites with 10K to
| 100K visitors monthly on a DO droplet, with a wiki and a
| dynamic blog working just fine.
|
| Trying this project out made it quite slow and not practical,
| would need a beefier machine / setup. I decided not to invest
| time in testing it further, but it may work for others.
| pagutierrezn wrote:
| It looks like a forked non-free version of redmine but with
| less flexibility https://www.redmine.org/
| rhodozelia wrote:
| I've been using redmine for project management for a decade.
| It is reliably excellent.
| say_it_as_it_is wrote:
| When has the fragmentation argument ever prevailed, in the
| history of technology? New flavors of practically everything,
| down to bare metal, release daily. The world may agree on
| communication protocols, but even that is nearly impossible to
| do together.
| 4lun wrote:
| I tried a bunch of selfhosted alternatives to Trello a few
| months back and never registered OpenProject as an option.
|
| I mainly used this list https://github.com/awesome-
| selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted#tas...
|
| I did focus on "Task management/To-do lists", while OpenProject
| is listed under the "Project Management" section. This is
| likely why I missed it as I've been looking for something clean
| and simple (not JIRA) that is more akin to the earlier versions
| of Trello (rather than the feature bloated whale it has now
| become).
|
| Looking at it now and to be honest it doesn't quite look like
| what I'm looking for when looking for a Trello alternative, I
| just want cards on a board I can move around (with a bit of
| metadata)
| gala8y wrote:
| > I just want cards on a board I can move around (with a bit
| of metadata)
|
| If I may, what did you finally settle on?
| 4lun wrote:
| Still on Trello for now.
|
| Tempted to try building something from scratch since I can
| always see myself using such a system.
| diacritica wrote:
| Have you tried Taiga?
| https://resources.taiga.io/features/5minkanban/ and it's
| open source (AGPL3)
| midasz wrote:
| Not OP but I settled on Deck which is a NextCloud plugin,
| good enough for me and my wife.
| JeremyNT wrote:
| Another thing on that list that is easy to pass over is
| gitlab. The community edition is slowly but steadily adding
| more project management features, one of which is the "issue
| boards" - a kanban style issue view [0].
|
| I feel like people may overlook gitlab when evaluating this
| sort of product because they think of it as "just" a git
| hosting solution, or because they assume that PM type
| features might all be paywalled. I'm sure real power users
| will find it lacking, but for simple workflows it does the
| job very well, and it ticks so many boxes in one solution.
|
| [0] https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/issue_board.html
| input_sh wrote:
| > I just want cards on a board I can move around (with a bit
| of metadata)
|
| Yeah you won't find that in OpenProject. I mean, they do have
| kanban boards, but they're in an enterprise version that I'm
| assuming you're not interested at.
| AstroJetson wrote:
| I use and like https://nullboard.io/preview nullboard which
| runs in the browser. Because it uses local data, you need to
| save it or the data is lost when you close the browser
| window.
| blowski wrote:
| What's the problem with fragmentation? I guess you're thinking
| of wasted effort, split mindshare amongst users.
|
| But for me, fragmentation is one of the key benefits of open
| source. Let thousands of alternatives bloom!
| alpaca128 wrote:
| Absolutely. I have grown to dislike this often repeated
| "don't reinvent the wheel" stance. After some thought you
| realise 100% of mastering any art is based on imitating and
| rebuilding existing achievements, because that gives us the
| basis for aiming even higher with our own ideas.
|
| When we blindly copy our own "Hello World" program into a
| text file nobody bats an eye. When a group of musicians play
| a metal song on classical instruments it's called a cover.
| But when someone builds their own database to have some fun
| and get better in-depth understanding of the tech you will
| always find someone whining about the not-invented-here-
| syndrome.
|
| Effort isn't wasted just because it didn't change the world.
| tfehring wrote:
| Also confusion and decision paralysis for new users, as well
| as limiting new features to only a subset of users unless
| someone takes the time to re-implement them. And lots of FOSS
| projects end up as abandonware, and consolidation can
| increase the share of users whose software is actively
| maintained. Split mindshare is also a big deal for
| applications with strong network effects, though probably not
| for something like this.
| blowski wrote:
| So, reductio ad absurdum, we shouldn't have bothered with
| Ruby when we already had Python. Or Linux since we had
| Unix. Or React since we had Angular.
|
| I agree that launching similar products has its own
| downsides, but the upside is that competition acts like
| evolution - it strengthens the best products, and destroys
| the weak ones.
| ta988 wrote:
| Agreed OpenProject is impressive. I used it for myself for a
| time. Then switched back to OrgMode. But if I come to manage a
| team with several projects I would clearly use that.
| margor wrote:
| Last time I used it, it was generally a good experience, albeit
| slow sometimes when moving/editing stuff around but amount of
| features it offers even on free plan in my opinion compensates
| that. Also API is rather easy to use. I'm also surprised it
| doesn't get so much exposure, alongside
| https://www.phacility.com/phabricator/
| it33 wrote:
| Focalboard team here, thanks for the comment!
|
| We weren't aware of Open Project previously, and we're glad to
| hear about it.
|
| I think you're right, Focalboard is a lot earlier than Open
| Project, and it doesn't have as many features.
|
| Focalboard was starting during the Mattermost 2020
| Hacktoberfest last year:
| https://mattermost.com/blog/hacktoberfest-2020-recap/
|
| It's in the early stages of development, only v0.6 right now:
| https://github.com/mattermost/focalboard/blob/main/CHANGELOG...
|
| That said, we're working on it constantly and excited about its
| future.
|
| Of the features Open Project has now, are there one or two top
| priorities you'd suggest we consider adding to Focalboard?
|
| We'd love to hear any feedback, feature suggestions or bug
| reports: https://github.com/mattermost/focalboard/wiki/Share-
| your-fee...!
| aquir wrote:
| I am using Atlassian's free plans for Jira, Confluence and
| Service Management. They are great!
| johnx123-up wrote:
| FWIW, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25590846
| hpen wrote:
| Ha I have an open source Trello alternative called kanception.io
| or https://github.com/hpennington/kanception
| hpen wrote:
| The twist is that it's recursive (nested)
| kogepathic wrote:
| The installation instructions for the server install don't seem
| to work.
|
| > wget
| https://releases.mattermost.com/focalboard/0.5.0/focalboard-...
|
| > tar -xvzf focalboard-server-linux-amd64.tar.gz
|
| The file is actually a zip with the tar.gz inside:
|
| focalboard-server-linux-amd64.tar.gz: Zip archive data, at least
| v2.0 to extract
|
| $ unzip -l focalboard-server-linux-amd64.tar.gz
|
| Archive: focalboard-server-linux-amd64.tar.gz
|
| Length Date Time Name
|
| --------- ---------- ----- ----
|
| 12461347 02-02-2021 00:38 focalboard-server-linux-amd64.tar.gz
|
| -------- -------
|
| 12461347 1 files
|
| Running tar directly (as written in the instructions) will fail
| with:
|
| $ tar -tzvf focalboard-server-linux-amd64.tar.gz
|
| tar: invalid magic
|
| tar: short read
|
| It seems like there's something unintentionally producing a zip
| at the end of the build process.
| it33 wrote:
| Focalboard team here,
|
| Hi @kogepathic, sorry about that, adding your report as a
| ticket here: https://github.com/mattermost/focalboard/issues/94
| Aeolun wrote:
| It's impressive they knew of this (original bug is 20hr old)
| but still decided to go ahead and post on HN.
| cyberlurker wrote:
| Thank you, I was trying to figure this out.
| orliesaurus wrote:
| I love Notion but the speed, or rather lack of, is killing me
| daily. Last Friday I was taking some notes, and suddenly the page
| refreshed and everything was gone. Went on twitter to see, I
| wasn't alone .. i feel like hosting my own notion clone is the
| way to go forward to use Notion...
| movedx wrote:
| I've actually just started using Notion and the UI is nice, as
| is the feature set, but yeah, I'm getting a little annoyed by
| the constant page loads.
|
| I mean this kind of thing continues to fuel my beliefs that
| software is going backwards here because frankly, how hard can
| it be to render some text?
| jfim wrote:
| > how hard can it be to render some text?
|
| It really depends. If the only thing you care about rendering
| is US ASCII with a monospace bitmapped font, that's not too
| hard.
|
| However, a general purpose text renderer will have to handle
| things like directionality (left to right versus right to
| left text orientation), wide/half text rendering (for CJK
| characters), combining characters (for some European, South
| East Asian languages, and zalgo), line break rules (handling
| characters like soft hyphens and non breaking spaces), and so
| on.
|
| On the font rendering side of things, there's kerning (some
| letters are closer to one another), font ligatures (certain
| fonts handle things like fi ffi fl ffl differently, not to
| mention things like hasklig), antialiasing, sub pixel
| rendering, and the fact that fonts are actually programs
| running on a stack based virtual machine [0].
|
| That's also ignoring more advanced text rendering features
| like ruby characters and vertical text rendering. Or that
| apparently Turkish has different small caps than English ones
| [1].
|
| In practice, it's probably not the text rendering that's the
| issue, it's probably just features that are implemented
| inefficiently.
|
| [0] https://developer.apple.com/fonts/TrueType-Reference-
| Manual/...
|
| [1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
| us/typography/opentype/spec/tt...
| isitdopamine wrote:
| All of this can be done quite efficiently on a native
| widget. The problem with Notion is that it uses Electron.
| Griffinsauce wrote:
| Which makes rendering text extremely simple.
|
| It's a fun meme to blame Electron for everything but the
| problems with Notion are obviously with its state and
| data management. Booting/rendering performance is not the
| bottleneck here, and having used lightning fast Electron
| apps, I'm sure it never will be.
|
| Put differently: what _measurements_ do you have of the
| performance issues of Notion and is Electron performance
| the root problem of them?
| isitdopamine wrote:
| Let's just say that the fact that Electron needs to
| allocate hundreds of MB in memory to display a single
| "Hello world" text does not depose in Electron's favor.
|
| Compare it with the few MBs needed by an equivalent
| native app with exactly same functionality.
|
| By any standard and by any metric, Electron is bloated.
| Some applications (like VSCode) can disguise it quite
| well and give a an acceptable user experience.
| madpata wrote:
| Maybe that's because Electron isn't made to just display
| a single line of text?
|
| Text Rendering, CSS Layouts, Accessibility, being good at
| cross-platform, Canvas/WebGL and a myriad of other APIs
| make Electron pretty powerful. I don't know exactly, but
| I think QT would be it's main competitor when it comes to
| those features. But QT isn't always that easy to develop
| with.
| isitdopamine wrote:
| For what is worth Electron could solve all the problem in
| the worlds. My point is that in order to display rich
| text, images and basic UI elements (what Notion and for
| instance Slack need) it requires an abysmal amount of
| memory with respect to a native implementation.
| capableweb wrote:
| Your complaint is basically saying "Hey, I don't need
| this professional workstation just to run Notepad, what
| is going on in the world?!" while professional
| workstations are not for running just Notepad, they are
| for doing a lot more things than that.
|
| Here you are complaining that a "hello world" uses a lot
| of memory. Yes, that's true, but the use case for
| Electron is not to display just "hello world", it's to
| build full, accessible applications in languages who are
| usually native on the web.
| isitdopamine wrote:
| No, my complaint is: I am very annoyed that this
| professional workstation runs Notepad ten times slower
| than my old 486.
|
| What counts is the final user experience.
| Griffinsauce wrote:
| Apart from the notion (heh) that we should compare a
| hello world app to determine real world performance,
| memory usage is really not that relevant to the
| discussion of speed, responsiveness etc.
|
| There is a level of optimization where that is relevant
| and it's relevant in a bigger context of responsible
| resource usage but that's not what we're talking about
| here.
|
| This was exactly my point as to the "memes" of Electron
| criticisms, your point is completely off topic but
| because someone mentioned "Notion" someone has to make
| your point nearly verbatim every time.
|
| It does not add anything valuable to the discussion.
| Talking about caching strategies, offline/online
| functionality and layout thrashing is much, much more
| interesting here.
| mr-karan wrote:
| I've been Obsidian since a few weeks and it's the most
| fastest Electron app I've ever used. It's so snappy, it
| feels like a native app. So, yes I agree with parent
| comment, Notion is slow and sluggish but Electron is not
| the one to blame here. The web version is pretty slow as
| well.
| Griffinsauce wrote:
| Yes! Good point, web Notion is exactly as slow because
| the problems aren't the engine.
| capableweb wrote:
| "how hard can it be to render some text" as the previous
| author is a valid complaint, if Notion only rendered text
| but they do not. There is a lot of data structures around
| what looks like "just text", including images and
| everything else.
|
| I agree that Notion has big performance problems, and I
| myself left it for logseq a long time ago just because of
| the performance issues and the non-flexible architecture
| overall. But Notion's performance issues are not about
| rendering text, it's rendering everything but text.
| kuschku wrote:
| Not just small caps - turkish has different case mapping
| for iI iI vs the ascii mapping iI.
|
| There's also situations like German, where, until 2017, a
| single lower case letter could map to two upper-case
| letters (but they wouldn't map back to that single lower-
| case letter):
|
| toUpper(ss) == SS, toLower(S) == s, toLower(SS) == ss,
| toLower(toUpper(ss)) != ss
|
| (Since 2017 that's been fixed, although not adopted by
| every publication or software yet, by using Ss. toUpper(ss)
| == Ss, toLower(Ss) == ss, toLower(toUpper(ss)) == Ss)
| scq wrote:
| I'm sure it was a lot snappier when I started using it, but
| it has been getting quite slow over the past couple of years.
|
| Really makes me want a lightweight alternative because I love
| its editing model.
| movedx wrote:
| I honestly think I'll just use Vim, a "~/notes" directory
| and my already powerful file searching functionality built
| into Vim (fzf powered I think it's called)
| KitDuncan wrote:
| I am not sure Focalboard has the features you are looking for,
| but outline wiki is a cool notion like wiki and pretty fast.
| it33 wrote:
| Focalboard team here.
|
| You can try the "Focalboard Personal Desktop" to run locally
| where your performance won't be affected by other users.
|
| We made it available in Windows Store and Apple AppStore to
| make it easy to try out.
|
| This is just a v0.6 right now, and we would love bug reports
| and enhancement ideas.
|
| It's the early days of the project and we are excited to hear
| input: https://github.com/mattermost/focalboard/issues
| tibu wrote:
| Same here. And I still did not find the perfect note taking
| app. I have so few requirements. WYSIWYG editing, easy image
| insertion, export function with open standard format, mobile
| app, some security.
| hardwaresofton wrote:
| Have you tried Joplin? I switched to it and have been loving
| it. Planning on launching a backup service for it this week
| actually (Backups +/- encryption to OneDrive, Dropbox, AWS S3
| and WebDAV support are all built in):
|
| https://joplinapp.org/
| wlk wrote:
| Compared to Obsidian, Joplin suits me much better and it's
| way more features. I have given Obsidian a fair trail, but
| now I'm using Joplin
| rayiner wrote:
| Try moo.do
| smusamashah wrote:
| Typora is best WYSIWYG Markdown app
| gala8y wrote:
| I recently moved (almost) all of my note taking into Obsidian
| [0]. They just released a closed beta mobile app (they are
| very active in development and great community), but they are
| local first app.
|
| [0] https://obsidian.md
|
| edit: To clarify, using they mobile app will require paid
| subscription in all scenarios, I think (not sure, as I don't
| need that).
| input_sh wrote:
| > To clarify, using they mobile app will require paid
| subscription in all scenarios, I think (not sure, as I
| don't need that).
|
| Nope. They've said they'll support opening a folder on a
| phone. Therefore, as long as you sync the folder using some
| cloud software, the mobile app will work just fine.
|
| But of course, you can pay them for the convenience and
| they'll sync them for you.
| gala8y wrote:
| That's cool. Thanks for clarification. They Sync and
| Publish services look promising, too (Publish shows a
| mini graph of connected pages, which is a refreshing
| approach to showing relations of published notes/pages).
| mandiantBob wrote:
| I just downloaded and tested the standalone desktop app. It has a
| very pretty and responsive interface compared to Kanboard.
|
| I have been self hosting Kanboard on my rpi for my own work, and
| I think that Kanboard still has many 'poweruser' features that
| Focalboard is missing.
|
| If there is an easy way for me to migrate my Kanboard data over
| to Focalboard, I would definitely give it a shot as a daily
| driver.
| it33 wrote:
| Focalboard team here, thanks for the idea!
|
| Added an enhancement ticket for this:
| https://github.com/mattermost/focalboard/issues/95
|
| Open to other feedback as well!
| https://github.com/mattermost/focalboard/wiki/Share-your-
| fee...!
| sneak wrote:
| Note: this, although self-hosted, appears to transmit your usage
| data without consent (just like the selfhosted Mattermost server
| from the same people):
|
| https://github.com/mattermost/focalboard/blob/main/server/se...
|
| Anyone want to offer me odds on the likelihood of a patch
| removing this spyware getting accepted by the maintainer in this
| "open source" project?
| fimdomeio wrote:
| Apparently there's a config option to turn off telemetry.
| https://www.focalboard.com/guide/admin/
|
| While I understand the feeling, it's also truth that these
| kinds of projects appear to receive a lot more criticism than
| if they went completely closed source which feels a bit unfair.
| sneak wrote:
| > _Apparently there 's a config option to turn off
| telemetry._
|
| The option should be to turn it on; automatically "opting
| users in" (a euphemism; really, it's assuming consent which
| does not exist) to spyware is at best unethical and in some
| jurisdictions actually illegal.
|
| Co-opting a user's own hardware and connection to (silently!)
| spy on them is a total dickhead move whether your product is
| free software or proprietary.
| Aeolun wrote:
| Every single time someone asks me if they can turn on
| telemetry I'm perfectly ok with it. But if they default to
| _on_ I know what I'm dealing with and I don't want them to
| have it.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| Thank you for posting this.
|
| I was very interested in this. There's no way I'm using it now.
| I'll never trust anything from Mattermost.
|
| Maybe it still counts as open source but with this, plus their
| complex licensing, I feel it runs very counter to what the FOSS
| community actually wants
| [deleted]
| it33 wrote:
| Focalboard team here!
|
| Huge thanks to everyone who's sharing feedback and comments. It
| is super exciting to be trending on HackerNews!
|
| We've just put up a new Wiki page for people to share feature
| ideas, to join our Discourse forum, and to report bugs:
| https://github.com/mattermost/focalboard/wiki/Share-your-fee...!
|
| Thank y'all so much for being interested in our project and our
| space!
|
| We've been working super hard to make something people love, and
| we'll continue to do so with your input and ideas!
| adontz wrote:
| I have posted an enhancement
| https://github.com/mattermost/focalboard/issues/103 But cannot
| attach labels :-(
| it33 wrote:
| Whoops, updating instructions:
| https://github.com/mattermost/focalboard/wiki/Share-your-
| fee...!
|
| Now asking folks to add `Enhancement:` prefix on tickets, and
| we can label after
| it33 wrote:
| Okay, updating instructions to just prefix with "Feature
| Request:" and we'll take care of the labelling from there.
| qorrect wrote:
| Thanks I love it!
| cooperadymas wrote:
| I have not significantly used Notion, but this isn't really a
| replacement for it is it?
|
| Notion seems to be focused on wiki and notes, with built in
| structured data allowing you to setup things like boards and task
| lists.
|
| This seems to just be the boards and task lists without the free
| form notes and wiki? It pretty clearly replaces Trello and Asana.
| Notion seems like a stretch from the 5 minutes I poked around in
| it.
| gpas wrote:
| I see it as a "faster" altrrnative to the kanban widget in
| Notion, clearly not a replacement. I use Notion to collect
| bookmarks, quotes, code, media, every bit of information I need
| for a project and despite its relative slowness and the lack of
| offline mode is serving me well.
| eps wrote:
| > _Download Focalboard from the Microsoft App Store._
|
| I am life-long Windows user and I am yet to meet someone who uses
| Microsoft App Store. A standalone regular installer is an
| absolute must.
| jpambrun wrote:
| Most importantly, while I have admin privileges and can install
| some software, my corporate machine has the windows store
| disabled.
| The_rationalist wrote:
| Nonsense, package managers enable trivial and fine grained
| update policies
| nightowl_games wrote:
| They didn't say anything about the quality of the service,
| they mentioned the low popularity.
| mjthompson wrote:
| You might want to add a qualifier to 'package managers', like
| 'good package managers'... which the Windows Store is not. It
| barely fits the bill as a package manager.
| indigodaddy wrote:
| Scoop is the way to go
| zaptheimpaler wrote:
| Its not very popular yet, but its 100% the future. I use it
| whenever an app is available on the store - easy, consistent
| auto updates is much better than each app nagging you to update
| independently. Better for devs as well because it gives you
| much more confidence that new versions will be adopted quickly.
| sprkwd wrote:
| I've used it to get Minecraft.
| jerrygoyal wrote:
| I prefer it actually.. main reason is streamlined app auto
| updates
| kuschku wrote:
| I download all KDE apps (Kate, Kile, Okular, Krita, etc) from
| the store, if possible. The one big issue I discovered with
| that is that store apps can't be set as default to open a file
| for a file format that the app didn't specify itself (e.g., you
| can't open an .NFO per default with Kate, as Kate doesn't
| register itself as file handler for .NFO files)
| zeusly wrote:
| I use it, and I've bought apps worth ~$200 on it.
| kissgyorgy wrote:
| I became a Windows user recently and I install everything I can
| from the Microsoft Store, so I don't have to individually and
| manually get updates for all the apps I installed.
| curryst wrote:
| Just FYI, there are several CLI tools that more closely
| resemble a Linux package manager that you can use. Scoop and
| chocolatey come to mind (I'm a scoop user myself). I think
| NuGet is supposed to be a CLI software repo tool by
| Microsoft, but I'm only tangentially aware of it so I might
| have that wrong.
|
| I mostly dislike the Microsoft Store because it requires an
| account, even for free downloads. I'm a little loathe to hand
| Microsoft control over a higher layer of my stack, for fear
| that they do some kind of "you can't control when you patch"
| thing like they did with Windows. I've also got a little bit
| of leftover disdain because it used to basically only have
| Metro apps, which were awful. That's not a good reason, but I
| won't lie and say it doesn't exist.
| btgeekboy wrote:
| Hi! I've used it for a few things, such as purchasing Microsoft
| Flight Simulator, and various WSL distros.
| aitchnyu wrote:
| Krita earned an estimated $4850 from Microsoft App Store vs
| $2000 in donations and finally allowed a full time maintainer,
| per this 2018 article https://krita.org/en/item/krita-in-the-
| windows-store-an-upda...
| it33 wrote:
| Focalboard team here,
|
| Hi @eps, I've opened a ticket on this:
| https://github.com/mattermost/focalboard/issues/99
|
| Would you be open to giving a "Thumbs Up" and/or a comment
| sharing more about the benefits?
|
| Community feedback is super important, and we would love to
| hear more from you and others
| Brendinooo wrote:
| Nice. I was using Wekan for awhile until I ignored Heroku telling
| me that they were getting rid of the free MongoDB service, then I
| lost all of my data. Maybe I'll have to try this instead.
| selcuka wrote:
| Can't you use MongoDB Atlas free tier?
|
| https://www.mongodb.com/pricing
| Brendinooo wrote:
| Perhaps, but my data's already gone.
| johnx123-up wrote:
| Restyaboard is having import option for other software
| including Wekan. So, you may easily migrate from Wekan to
| Restyaboard to avoid that.
| jasonjayr wrote:
| In the same category as 'self-hosted trello', I found "Planka"
| not to long ago, and as a self-hosted trello/kanban/todo board,
| it was pretty easy to boot up and has worked for my simple
| purposes for the last few months....
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24812900
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-03-18 23:02 UTC)