[HN Gopher] Show HN: Kan.bn - An open-source alterative to Trello
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Show HN: Kan.bn - An open-source alterative to Trello
Author : henryball
Score : 318 points
Date : 2025-06-02 09:47 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| henryball wrote:
| Hey HN,
|
| I couldn't find an open-source alternative to Trello that I liked
| so I built my own.
|
| It's fast, free and fully-customisable. You can self host it, or
| use the cloud version if you don't want to manage your own infra.
|
| Repo -> https://github.com/kanbn/kan
|
| Cloud -> https://kan.bn
|
| Roadmap -> https://kan.bn/kan/roadmap
|
| I'd love feedback, bug reports, or any feature suggestions!
| stevekemp wrote:
| How does it compare to the existing open-source boards, such
| as:
|
| https://wekan.github.io/
|
| https://taiga.io/
|
| https://kanboard.org/
| walthamstow wrote:
| Also https://github.com/plankanban/planka
| rodnim wrote:
| I am using Planka for my personal projects. Works great!
| senorrib wrote:
| Planka is not open-source.
| organsnyder wrote:
| They don't appear to be using an OSI-approved license,
| but the source code is available. So depending on your
| use-case that may be an academic distinction.
| kstrauser wrote:
| Its license has strict limitations on what you can use it
| for.
|
| It's not open source in any reasonable sense.
| Izkata wrote:
| It is open source (the code is right there), but it's not
| Open Source due to what GP references. There is a
| distinction.
| kstrauser wrote:
| But since [oO]pen [sS]ource has a broadly understood
| meaning that's different, we shouldn't deliberately use
| the same description for both ideas.
|
| If you want to describe it as "source available", I'll
| happily go along with it. It's not open source, though.
| The source is visible, but it's not open to use. I mean,
| you can find the leaked Windows source code online, but
| it's not open source just because you can look at it.
| 7839284023 wrote:
| That's just called ,,source available".
| adastra22 wrote:
| That's not what open source means. That is generally
| called source available.
| diggan wrote:
| I'm not sure the same argument that Facebook's marketing
| teams use, hold a lot of water on a really programming-
| heavy forum like this :)
| j1elo wrote:
| We're talking in English, not in Go. The meaning doesn't
| change that much because of using uppercase initials.
| What you're referring to has already been consolidated as
| "source available".
| broken-kebab wrote:
| I'm not a native speaker, but to me "open" sounds like it
| fits to the case when I can see the code. Am I speaking
| in Go?
| kstrauser wrote:
| No, it's just not speaking idiomatically. The term "open
| source", with or without caps, has a commonly understood
| meaning that's widely used. Whatever the individual words
| mean in the dictionary, together they have a well defined
| meaning. Applying it to other situations that contradict
| that meaning just adds confusion.
|
| As an example, you could describe a spinning disk hard
| drive as "RAM" because it's a memory device you can
| randomly access. That would meet the dictionary
| definitions of "random", "access", and "memory". And yet,
| everyone would be annoyed with you for doing so. "I have
| 16TB of RAM in my computer!" "No you don't, Kebab. Stop
| saying that!"
| johnisgood wrote:
| He is a broken kebab. We will fix him!
| bmacho wrote:
| > Open source is source code that is made freely
| available for possible modification and redistribution.
| Products include permission to use and view the source
| code,[1] design documents,[2] or content of the product.
|
| > Generally, open source refers to a computer program in
| which the source code is available to the general public
| for usage, modification from its original design, and
| publication of their version (fork) back to the
| community.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source
| j1elo wrote:
| I'm sorry for the snark in my comment, it intended to
| just be a funny joke due to the capitalization thing (in
| Go that's what separates public from private fields,
| which is a weirdness of the language that surprises
| people the first time they get to learn it)
|
| As others said, while "open" does indeed mean "reachable"
| or "available" in this context of source code, it happens
| that "open source" is a well defined thing to allow not
| only access, but also modification, reuse, and
| distribution _without limitations_. So the "open" in
| "open source" has its meaning brought to the highest
| level of openness.
| bmacho wrote:
| OFF: Can we do something about this "open source" = "Open
| Source" usage? I _want_ the opposite, "open source" =
| "source available" usage, because -
| that's what the words mean. - the concept of
| Open Source is better denoted by a Proper Noun anyway
|
| I think the "open source" = "Open Source" usage will be a
| friction point forever if it stays. Can we ..
| - revert the usage to "open source" = "source available",
| or - decide that "open source" with small letters
| should not to be used (use "Open Source" or "source
| available" instead), or - defend "open source" =
| "Open Source" usage in a blogpost once and for all, and
| lessen this friction?
| kstrauser wrote:
| It's unnecessarily complicating things to require case
| sensitivity here. Words don't typically completely change
| their meaning just because of capitalization. And suppose
| I write that in a Slack channel where no one uses caps at
| all? Do I have to use caps anyone to make sure I'm not
| confusing everyone? How do I pronounce it correctly if
| I'm giving a speech such that listeners know which one I
| mean? What if the closed captioner writes the case wrong?
|
| Nah. "Open Source" = "open source", because any other
| interpretation goes against the norms of written and
| spoken English, and because it'd be an absolute freaking
| pain in the neck to create that brand new distinction
| that's not an issue today.
| huhtenberg wrote:
| The term should've really been "Libre source" and that
| would've been very much in line with the idea behind it.
| Alas, that boat has sailed.
| bityard wrote:
| Sure, if you invent a time machine and rewrite how things
| actually evolved.
|
| Early on, you mostly had only two kinds of code:
| Proprietary software whose source code is closely guarded
| as a trade secret, contrasted with open software where
| the source code is quite deliberately shared with the
| world as widely as possible. The former was code owned by
| companies, the latter was generally academics and
| hobbyists.
|
| It's only somewhat recently that there has been a fairly
| large gray area between those two, mostly from companies
| who want to capitalize on the warm fuzzy feels of Open
| Source in their marketing material while building a moat
| that doesn't allow others to do much without the missing
| proprietary bit, or because the license doesn't allow
| redistribution, to pick to random examples.
| croisillon wrote:
| and Nullboard: https://github.com/apankrat/nullboard
|
| i don't understand the wave of downvotes but whatever
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| Pretty obviously because this one is very different in
| philosophy (minimalism) than the one OP is working on while
| the other ones that have been posted aim for feature parity
| (at least) with Trello?
| croisillon wrote:
| OK, i see
| neuroticnews25 wrote:
| Thank you, hosted demo with no login required saving to
| local storage is exactly what i was looking for.
| pylotlight wrote:
| https://github.com/usekaneo/kaneo / https://kaneo.app
| adr1an wrote:
| Or this one that I've been self-hosting for my team:
| https://vikunja.io/
| diggan wrote:
| I've also been using Vikunja locally for myself, but the UX
| really isn't the best and it isn't keyboard-driven which is
| a bit of a shame. The mobile version also isn't really
| ready for real usage, seems to lose state every now and
| then, or disconnect in some manner.
| zikani_03 wrote:
| We have been using Vikunja for our team for about 2/3 years
| and it's good. It has it's quirks but generally works. What
| we haven't done well is keeping up to date with development
| as the version we installed did enough for us. We recently
| found out that they moved main development to github and we
| are keen to contribute where we can as we have found value
| in it.
| GlacierFox wrote:
| Your comment just made me think about the fact I
| installed Vikunja like 2 years ago and I haven't updated
| it since. D:
| busssard wrote:
| also Obsidian with Kanban plugin
| mogoh wrote:
| Obsidian is not open-source.
| progx wrote:
| Sorry, but I can't see what is better or other than every
| existing kanban-tool. I tried it, but you have only drag & drop
| lists with items and labels, that is all.
| cellularmitosis wrote:
| Nice project. Some of the workflows could be more keyboard
| friendly. I started an issue:
| https://github.com/kanbn/kan/issues/3
| jpc0 wrote:
| I would love to see webhook support add to this.
|
| For many users this isn't an issue but for use it's a must have
| feature.
|
| Will stick to trello for the time being.
| mbreese wrote:
| I think one thing that might help the discussion would be if
| you could explain a bit more about what you didn't like or
| thought was missing from other alternatives. IMO, there's
| nothing wrong with building an alternative because you wanted
| to, but if there is some feature that you're specifically
| trying to do support, it would be helpful to mention it here.
| AntiqueFig wrote:
| Shouldn't this be a "Show HN:" post?
| henryball wrote:
| You're right - I thought I had posted it to show HN but
| obviously not...
| Closi wrote:
| Just as a heads up, that roadmap you linked is broken.
|
| The formatting looks all off for me on chrome mac (black bars)
| and then if I click on a card it opens a window but then
| doesn't load any data.
|
| Also it looks like a bug that if you filter by some tags, then
| click a card, the filter gets reset.
|
| This is 5 secs of testing on the one board you have publicly
| shared, so there might be a few bugs to iron out!
| Closi wrote:
| A few other trivial bugs I have found:
|
| * Can create multiple workspaces with same name which then
| ticks both * Invite user seems to not work randomly or will
| not send the email * Cards with special characters like @
| will just not be created, and won't show error messages.
| Closi wrote:
| oop found a security issue - you can abuse profile pictures
| to upload any file (e.g. to host malware if you were a bad
| actor!)
|
| IMO don't think this is ready for production use in the
| slightest - but cool project!
| Xiol32 wrote:
| Would be interested to know if this was vibe coded.
| tiffanyh wrote:
| Feedback (since you asked) ...
|
| Using the kanban for your roadmap, https://kan.bn/kan/roadmap
| two things I noticed:
|
| 1. When I click a card, no data is present. It's just an empty
| card that says "Activity".
|
| 2. After you click a few cards, it hijacks your browser Back
| button.
| johnisgood wrote:
| +1
| kadutskyi wrote:
| Scrollbar in Safari looks wrong.
| andruby wrote:
| Really cool you built this!
|
| Can you elaborate a bit on what you were missing or didn't like
| from the other existing open source Trello clones?
|
| I'm curious what potentially different choices/trade-offs you
| made.
| abcd_f wrote:
| > Kanban reimagined
|
| In which way exactly?
|
| Also, is there a demo account to try it out?
| henryball wrote:
| Thanks for checking it out!
|
| Kanban reimagined to focus on speed, simplicity, and user
| experience - all while being open source.
|
| I haven't had a chance to set up a demo account yet (just added
| it to the roadmap), but you're welcome to sign up and try it
| out in the meantime :)
| abcd_f wrote:
| You may want to rethink your pitch.
|
| Virtually _all_ kanbans, being ultimately todo lists, focus
| on "simplicity, speed and user experience". You have an open
| source going for yours, but there is already a ton of O/S
| kanbans as well.
| rodolphoarruda wrote:
| > "I couldn't find an ... alternative ... that I liked so I built
| my own."
|
| Congrats! That's a brave move. I've been using Kanboard for
| years. Good luck with your project!
| henryball wrote:
| Cheers! Kanboard is a great project, but I found the UI/UX a
| bit lacking (just personal preference)
| rodolphoarruda wrote:
| I agree. UI/UX lacks some basic data like the project start
| date, which is kind of odd for a PM app.
| SwiftyBug wrote:
| Im curious about the choice of Next.js for an open source project
| as Next.js is notoriously painful to deploy to anything other
| than Vercel.
| herrkanin wrote:
| The difficulty to deploy Next.js is greatly exaggerated in my
| opinion. It's mostly if you care about some of the more
| advanced features, like image optimization and hosting static
| assets on a different origin it can become difficult, but these
| are features no Next.js alternative generally provide anyway.
| mstade wrote:
| Even with the optimizations it's not that difficult in my
| experience. Not terribly well documented (not worst-in-class
| either) but not that hard and mostly just works once you have
| a pipeline up and running. We set ours up about two years ago
| now and have had to make minor modifications maybe three
| times since then.
| diggan wrote:
| > hosting static assets on a different origin it can become
| difficult
|
| What's the alternative? Hosting the static assets on the same
| place as the backend? Usually adding the CORS headers is
| enough to solve that (on the backend side), the frontend is
| still just HTML,CSS and JS running from nginx.
|
| Is it common to do a different type of deployment with
| Next.js? It's a pretty basic deployment scenario (having the
| frontend on a different origin than the backend it
| communicates with), so not sure why that'd be so difficult
| with Next.js compared to basically anything else.
| freedomben wrote:
| Same. I've deployed a half dozen or so Next.js apps and it's
| no more difficult than any other node app unless you're using
| some of the more advanced features. In fact, if you only need
| something static and can do SSG then it's far easier than
| other node apps because all you need is nginx.
| TiredOfLife wrote:
| It's what v0 and similar tools choose as default.
| danabramov wrote:
| Next.js is not difficult to deploy on a long-lived server. It's
| just a normal Node app.
|
| What's more painful is deployment to other serverless providers
| because historically they've had to reverse-engineer a few
| details for more advanced features. This is being fixed now in
| https://github.com/vercel/next.js/discussions/77740 but that
| work is ongoing.
| hxtk wrote:
| This isn't something I've found with NextJS, but I also haven't
| tried a lot of other, similar frameworks because I'm mostly a
| backend and SRE person who just learned NextJS so I could throw
| together pretty UIs to demo my backend ideas, so maybe I'm
| missing things that are well known among front-end specialists.
|
| My experience is that a basic deployment is very easy--it's
| like a ten line Dockerfile to build a distroless nodejs
| container of the standalone build and if you deploy it, it just
| works.
|
| Then, as performance demands grow, there's increasingly more
| complexity in the efforts that must be taken to squeeze
| additional performance out of it. An easy win is to host the
| static resources more efficiently with a static file server or
| better yet a CDN.
|
| A more complex performance optimization is to implement
| caching.
|
| At some point you start thinking about how to separate the
| middleware execution from the app so that it can be hosted in
| more regions or at the edge.
|
| Vercel provides all of those optimizations for free in terms of
| operational complexity, and charges a lot for it monetarily,
| but it's not all that surprising to me that when I host an
| application it takes some effort to get performance and feature
| parity with a dedicated hosting provider for that service, just
| like how I am not surprised that RDS is a little more
| complicated, more performant, and more reliable than renting
| the equivalent EC2 and installing Postgres from the package
| manager.
|
| Caveat: as a backend dev, I've never written anything that
| relied entirely on NextJS as the server side, so I'm
| approaching this with a certain amount of baseline complexity
| already assumed. I've not touched NextJS static sites or
| incremental static regeneration.
|
| Do other frontend frameworks make it much easier to incorporate
| those performance optimizations? My impression is that it's not
| all that hard to deploy NextJS, it's just hard to manage the
| complexity of optimizing it to the extent that Vercel's hosting
| does.
| yc942 wrote:
| Maybe it's difficult to deploy to your platform of choice.
| Deploying to AWS amplify or deploying using sst is matter of
| minutes or hour.
|
| I have deployed several next.js projects within an hour (not
| hours) that were created by different teams. The hour includes
| settings up DNS, CI/CD using github and deploying to AWS
| Amplify.
|
| Edit: Why are you down voting it? Is this unbelievable? I have
| deployed 5/6 next.js projects and none of them are on vercel.
| RitzyMage wrote:
| Deploying next is difficult, but IMO that's because deploying
| anything substantial is difficult. I've had my share of nasty
| deployment debugging that took days and none of it was due to
| next. (the biggest offenders I've seen are (1) random open
| source software no one on my team is an expert on, (2) docker /
| kubernetes, (3) databases, and (4) integration hell)
| kashnote wrote:
| It's as easy as deploying any other app that can be Dockerized.
| Deploying to something like Fargate isn't _super_ trivial but
| can be done in <2 hours
| notyouraibot wrote:
| Just use Linear.
| bitsignal wrote:
| having mardown support for code blocks would be good.
| henryball wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback - this is a great shout! I've added to
| the roadmap :)
| hnthrowaway121 wrote:
| Hi! Your license link is a 404, just FYI
| henryball wrote:
| Great spot, thank you! Fixed :)
| mdtrooper wrote:
| Some years ago, I used Kanboard (it written in php):
| https://kanboard.org/ . It was ugly but useful (and easy to
| install because I remember that it didn't need any data base).
| kiney wrote:
| I still use it. Love the simplicity.
| rsolva wrote:
| I threw it on a shared host and was up and running in notime.
| The UI is dated, but it is very functional.
| calrain wrote:
| I've been testing using AI coding agents by asking an AI acting
| as a software designer to build a set of kanban style cards as
| .md files in a directory, designing the work we talked about into
| cards for AI developers.
|
| It works quite well, and then you can review the cards (as files)
| and then ask another AI agent running as whatever role is
| suitable for that card, to pick up the card by name and do the
| work.
|
| But there is no kanban board, it's just .md files in a folder.
|
| I am continuing to test this, as transfer of context between AI
| sessions is an interesting challenge, and leveraging md files as
| if they are kanban / agile style cards, is interesting.
| karn97 wrote:
| What is with you people and the quest of degrading your own
| while feeling really happy about it like it's some amazing
| thing?
| calrain wrote:
| AI is just a tool, it's no more useful than a non-complaining
| junior dev that constantly needs direction, but it sure can
| cut out a lot of repetitive work.
|
| I am more productive using it, but that is just me.
| karn97 wrote:
| I use ai myself as stack exchange but this sentiment is
| extremely common on HN where you have people trying to
| force ai to do things it's clearly shit for. Not to mention
| the rust your brain gathers by not doing these little
| 'mundane' things. LLMS are a useless dead end anyway all
| these billion dollar corpos building over it, even worse
| hype than crypto.
| capitalatrisk wrote:
| Chuckled at this, nice one.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| But degrading an other is ok? From the very beginning tech
| was about making jobs easier, and now it's easier to make
| jobs easier, including our own. So I think it's ethically
| consistent to be happy about both, even if our own jobs are
| at risk.
|
| My rational as to why this is a good thing in general was and
| remains a focus on generating consumer surplus, it's this
| surplus which we as a people derive our wealth. The hope was
| that the surplus would be sufficient to cover the loss of
| those that lost their jobs, either in wealth redistribution
| or in new opportunities.
|
| What's different this time is productivity increases are not
| being met with an increase in demand. This will drastically
| increase inequality and to a lesser extent civil unrest, and
| I think both are destructive. I think financialization of the
| economy did greater damage, and the combination of both is
| going to really suck. I would prefer we keep productivity
| improvements and reverse the financialization even if that
| means pensions are decimated - they are probably going to be
| decimated anyway. Better to do it in a way that causes less
| damage.
| stuartjohnson12 wrote:
| If automating your job is degrading yourself, then engineers
| are the most debased of whores.
| cloudking wrote:
| Try https://www.task-master.dev it handles this smoothly
| calrain wrote:
| Will try, thanks!
| XCSme wrote:
| Congrats, any plans to add it as a Collify app?
| henryball wrote:
| Cheers! Yes, I plan to make it as easy as possible to self-host
| so Coolify and Dokploy apps are on the roadmap
| esskay wrote:
| Feels like Trello alternatives are the next ToDo list. There's so
| many of them these days that I struggle to grasp why anyone
| thinks launching an opensource one and thinking they can turn a
| profit with a cloud version is ever going to work.
|
| In all likelihood the project will be abandoned in 6 months and
| the site offline in 12.
| dabeeeenster wrote:
| The market for an on-premise, developer maintained solution is
| way bigger for a product like this than the cloud version.
|
| We made the exact same, incorrect assumption with
| https://github.com/Flagsmith/flagsmith several years ago. The
| market for data sensitive on-premise delpoyments is a LOT
| bigger than most people would imagine.
|
| For Flagsmith, the majority of our revenue comes from on-
| premise deployments.
| ensemblehq wrote:
| Wholeheartedly agree. On-prem is still a major market to play
| in and have worked on many consulting engagements
| architecting software that plays nicely. Just curious - how
| do you guys deploy Flagsmith on-prem? I'm still trying to
| find a nice deployment pattern that aligns well with both
| client and vendor.
| dabeeeenster wrote:
| 99% of the time Kubernetes. Just hand over enterprise
| docker images and helm charts. If that's what you were
| asking?
| PunchyHamster wrote:
| From one deploying stuff on prem:
|
| Absolute best scenario is single binary with embedded
| static files (Go is very good at that) that just takes
| config and/or CLI options (preferably both if it isn't too
| complex of a config) and works. Or static file that just
| needs to be pointed at database with certain version
|
| It can be easily run on VM, it can be easily made with
| container, it can be easily made into package, or ran in
| cloud with cloud DB service. All those options are a plus,
| but the fact it is a single binary makes it easier to
| _make_ a package or container out of it and deliver that to
| customers.
|
| Second best is .deb package that deploys a single service
| or a container that just exposes a port and that's it.
|
| DB-wise there is a temptation to provide a bunch of
| containers that have all of app's dependencies (DB etc.)
| but that's a LOT of work on both side. On supplier side you
| have ton of stuff you need to take care of, providing
| method to do consistent backups, caring about log rotation,
| handling service restarts if something fails etc. and
| lastly procedures to recover it from the backup
|
| And on client side they can't just do same database backup
| they do for every single other database they know, they
| have to take app's custom way of backing up and integrate
| it, or just "copy whole container and hope for best".
|
| It can be worth it, if your setup is complex enough that
| asking client to install those dependencies would be a big
| obstacle (and especially if you need to use different
| versions than available under Debian/Ubuntu stable), but if
| you are just deploying container with app and plain
| PostgreSQL db without using anything special that would
| need latest version, just let user ship their own DB.
|
| Also supporting "small" deployment with just SQLite backend
| is great for demoing stuff to management
| airstrike wrote:
| Thank you for this
| rollcat wrote:
| How do you feel about SQLite, especially re:
| backup/restore? Do you just copy the live DB+WAL around,
| do you bring the service down first, perhaps ZFS
| snapshots, any horror stories?
| libraryatnight wrote:
| "The market for an on-premise, developer maintained
| solution..."
|
| This made me laugh because at work we've been joking, "We've
| finished moving to the cloud! What now? We must get out of
| the cloud!"
| bryanhogan wrote:
| The amount of high quality Kanban / Trello-like options is low
| while the need for these is very high. At the same time getting
| started in building such a tool doesn't require a lot of
| resources.
|
| I think it's a good thing and I hope to see one that can
| replace my Notion Kanban soon.
| kingkongjaffa wrote:
| What makes it high quality in your experience?
|
| (I'm doing customer research for my own kanban startup) /s
| bryanhogan wrote:
| Well, what makes such a product high quality is highly
| subjective :D
|
| But for me personally I'd love a Kanban product that can
| rival Notion's feature set and simplicity, can be used
| offline / is local-first, offers some custimzation options,
| does not force me into a subscription, works well on
| desktop (Windows) as well as on my phone (Android).
| mrbluecoat wrote:
| Agreed. The AGPL license was the nail in the coffin for me.
| hliyan wrote:
| I think what the industry is missing is some sort of
| interoperability standard/format for task management. I say
| this as someone who has been jumping from task tracker to task
| tracker since the early 2000's -- Trac, Jira, Redmine, Github
| Tasks, Trello, ClickUp, Linear, and several tools I developed
| myself. In each case, we rediscover/reinvent/redefine the same
| things: tasks, subtasks, summaries, descriptions, due dates,
| statuses, comments, milestones, dependencies etc. If there was
| some interoperability standard for task trackers, the tool
| churn wouldn't feel so tedious.
| rapnie wrote:
| Not exactly what you are after, but related. There is
| ForgeFed [0] as a standard for code forge federation. It is
| an extension of ActivityPub [1] social web protocol, and thus
| far includes all the basic elements to facilitate task
| management / kanban. The project is wholly volunteer-driven,
| and recently received NLnet support to mature the standard
| further. Recently the maintainers were asking for feedback to
| help improve the specs. Various forges such as Gitlab [2] and
| Forgejo [3] are adding support for ActivityPub and
| considering ForgeFed support too.
|
| [0] https://forgefed.org/spec/
|
| [1] https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/
|
| [2] https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/11247
|
| [3] https://codeberg.org/forgejo-contrib/federation
| akshayKMR wrote:
| I'm in search of something simple like this.
|
| I tried the demo at https://kan.bn/kan/roadmap but clicking on
| the card shows the skeleton placeholder, doesn't seem to load the
| card content.
| tspng wrote:
| Congratulation on releasing this project, despite some of the
| criticism mentioned here.
|
| One issue I encountered. I cannot seem to create lists containing
| works like Todo, Done, .... No error message is shown. Creating
| lists with random strings always work though.
| AnonC wrote:
| Suggestion to the OP: please consider adding a family plan at a
| lower monthly price point.
|
| On this topic, I really love Kanban boards, but a hosted version
| (or self-hosted) is not as appealing to me as a native app with
| some sync.
|
| Years ago, I used to use a closed source but free desktop app on
| Windows (now long discontinued though) and found that it worked
| very well for me to track my work.
|
| Apple's Reminders app has Lists that can be further divided into
| Sections and then viewed and used (kinda) like a Kanban board,
| but the UX is not great. The macOS apps, especially, are an
| abomination with Catalyst.
|
| I'm still looking for a native app that has a simple sync using
| iCloud or Dropbox. Plus no subscriptions (a one time price per
| version may be ok). The usage would be for one or two users.
| Jean-Philipe wrote:
| This looks really nice! I loved trello and I'm always happy to
| see alternatives. My two cents: I use the keyboard a lot, so when
| I hit "enter" on a form, e.g. to create a board, it closes the
| popup instead of creating that board.
| rollcat wrote:
| Yep, the "market" is littered with Trello clones. I was also a
| big fan - until they went downhill (basically everything post-
| Atlassian). What most of the clones miss, is Trello's enormous
| attention to details - like excellent keyboard navigation.
|
| What I also miss, is that with Trello, a board is a board, a
| list is a list, and a card is a card. The builtins are simple
| and flexible, the add-ons are optional. Most clones try too
| hard to guardrail boards into a ticket tracking system. We
| already have Jira for that.
| blackqueeriroh wrote:
| How has Trello gone downhill post-Atlassian, exactly?
| sfmike wrote:
| trello has gotten worse and worse actually could charge for
| features like n8n and more extensibility. Its gotten the opposite
| of kanban and zen where I just want clean cards it forces weird
| views and panels and overlays and difficult to find boards now it
| wants you to switch to other atlassian products from trello as a
| priority on the left over just trello unfortunately its the
| classic indie product amazing then eaten by Private equity until
| just crumbs are left and its just an acquisition vehicle until it
| turns rotten and shut down as a cost saver.
| tarasyarema wrote:
| Nice one, more of a random question: are you planning on having
| paid only features for the project, or have it fully self-hosted
| version be the same in terms of features as the hosted one?
| henryball wrote:
| The plan currently is to keep cloud and self-hosted exactly the
| same in terms of features. I'd only consider open-core if I
| can't find a reliable alternative source of income to support
| the development of the project :)
| submeta wrote:
| I absolutely love Trello. Visually super appealing, very fast
| interface with shortcuts, and an API that allows me to do all
| sorts of automations (although it offers automations out of the
| box).
|
| Will check out your solution.
| OsrsNeedsf2P wrote:
| > very fast interface with shortcuts
|
| Trello has either had some serious performance improvements
| since I last used it, or you have very few cards and no media.
| It used to take seconds for actions to process.
| rollcat wrote:
| IMHO many "open source alternatives to" should drop that tagline.
|
| This sentence is the first thing I read, and likely the last.
|
| I don't know what "Trello" is. I don't see what your project or
| app could do for me. Even if I knew Trello, I wouldn't know _why_
| does it need an alternative. (Trello was (is?) great for personal
| use, by non-technical people.)
|
| "A powerful, flexible kanban app that helps you organise work,
| track progress, and deliver results--all in one place." _This_ is
| your selling point, not what your app _isn 't_.
| imglorp wrote:
| Yeah the tagline is leaning on the context, saying what it
| replaces instead of what it does.
|
| Trello was a popular, free, simple sticky note kanban board. It
| was too nice, maybe competing with Jira, so Atlassian ate it,
| leaving a void again.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| If the marketing doesn't work for you, then it's not that it's
| bad marketing, it's that you simply aren't the target market.
| freedomben wrote:
| I would be careful suggesting this as a universal truth. I
| think it really depends on the receiver of the message. "An
| open-source alternative to Trello" is by far the best one-
| sentence pitch possible for me. It's something that I've wanted
| for years so I immediately noticed and clicked into it.
| Obviously I already know what Trello is, but my suspicion is
| the most interested people in this project are former Trello
| users.
|
| "A powerful, flexible kanban app that helps you organise work,
| track progress, and deliver results--all in one place." I would
| not have even clicked in. "An open source Trello" tells me
| _way_ more about the app.
|
| Consider also how many apps are described as "the uber for
| <xyz>". For people who don't know what Uber is that message
| falls very flat of course, but a lot of people do know what
| Uber is and saying, "The Uber for handymen" immediately conveys
| the point of the app.
| GlacierFox wrote:
| Random curious question. I was pondering the kanban backend. How
| do you store the order of the kanban cards in your database and
| keep that in sync with what's in the UI?
| loumf wrote:
| Here is the answer for Trello: each card and list has a field
| called "pos" which is a number. The initial values are spread
| out (e.g. 1000, 2000, 3000) and then when you move a card, it
| takes on the average of the two adjacent cards.
|
| So, if I move the 3rd card to the 2nd position, its "pos"
| becomes 1500. This means it doesn't have to constantly renumber
| the cards -- but, every once and a while, the server does
| reorder the "pos" fields for a whole list and send the new
| values down the socket.
| GlacierFox wrote:
| Thank you for this, that's so simple and I'd never stumble on
| that solution which is embarrassing haha. How do you know the
| Trello internals by the way? You work there?
| neucoas wrote:
| This concept is called "lexorank"
| oldgregg wrote:
| Great project, will give it a try, we've been using another open
| source trello clone that has been pretty solid and very closely
| clones the trello UI.
|
| https://github.com/plankanban/planka
| singiamtel wrote:
| The project seems nice, but how good is that domain name
| ulrischa wrote:
| https://kanboard.org ist better for self hosting. Runs on any
| cheap LAMP
| anonymous344 wrote:
| biggest problems with trello, having using it 14 years or so - if
| user deletes card/list/board it's gone forever for whole group -
| i want to share board with secret link(no login) but this user
| cannot have rights to open any card, maybe just comment. Not
| available at all in trello
| wood_spirit wrote:
| This will sound crazy but I wish there was an open source
| "everything" app. If this could grow into a slack alternative
| (where channels can host a kanban board) with http bot api and
| built in charting and dashboards and python notebook snippets etc
| etc so we can get things in one place... that would be great!!
| arcastroe wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scope_creep
| subpixel wrote:
| Trello pricing just got a lot more reasonable, but there is one
| feature that might get me thinking of moving: conditional logic
| in automations.
|
| Be advised that Trello is now $5/mo. It's gonna be hard to
| compete here.
| croes wrote:
| You can't trust US companies anymore, they easily can become a
| weapon in a trade war.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| What's an example of a US company being weaponized in a trade
| war?
| robinhood wrote:
| Beware of European companies too if there is a WWIII. Beware
| of Asian companies because China is not far away.
|
| What a weird comment.
| kjs3 wrote:
| Indeed...we are the only country that uses trade to influence
| others. You got us.
| antithesizer wrote:
| You can't trust companies. Indeed, you never could.
| artur_makly wrote:
| This may sound sarcastic..but have you considered retrofitting it
| with LLMs? The #1 problem with Kanbans is CARD-ROT. AI should fix
| that in a plethora of ways. Shouldn't be too hard to vibe-code
| that into existing on a mate-fueled weekend !/s
| capitanazo77 wrote:
| Spanish language would be the only missing piece for my org,
| great job!
| satellite2 wrote:
| I'll take anything that allows more than one assignee per task.
| Is that the case?
| jacktheturtle wrote:
| Hey this is awesome. It's exciting to see people launch side
| projects like this. The UI/UX looks very nice. Thanks for
| building and sharing.
| remram wrote:
| > Kanban reimagined
|
| "reimagined" is a weird tagline given that your list of features
| is the same as Trello's (and Taiga's, etc). Don't get me wrong, I
| love opensource alternatives, but you did not "reimagine" to make
| the same thing.
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