Selfhosted
A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.
Rules:
-
Be civil.
-
No spam.
-
Posts are to be related to self-hosting.
-
Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or readme if you're providing a link.
-
Submission headline should match the article title.
-
No trolling.
-
Promotion posts require active participation, with an account that is at least 30 days old. F/LOSS without a paywall has exceptions, with requirements. See the rules link for details. Tags [CBH] or [AIP] are required, see the links in Rule 8 for details.
-
AI-related discussions and AI-involved promotional posts have additional requirements for tagging, as noted in Rule 7 and the AI & Promotional Post Expanded Rules post, and find example disclosures here.
Resources:
- selfh.st Newsletter and index of selfhosted software and apps
- awesome-selfhosted software
- awesome-sysadmin resources
- Self-Hosted Podcast from Jupiter Broadcasting
Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.
Questions? DM the mods!
view the rest of the comments
Self-hosted messaging was solved decades ago, it's called XMPP or Jabber depending on who do you ask. There are a number of services for it, such as Prosody or ejabberd, and there are both client apps (eg.: Conversations for Android, Gajim or Dino for PC) and a number of webclients (such as converse.js which can actually be shipped via a ejabberd install).
That said you could just set up an alternative Signal client that allows for custom servers, since the centralization of Signal only really exists at the level of the client only connecting to Signal's servers.. Signal's people have pointed this out themselves, when offering bridge setups so that people could connect from Iran or other countries where those countries blocked Signal's endpoints.
I unfortunately wouldn't call it solved. I host XMPP and Matrix, (and a STUN/TURN server, and a Livekit server for the modern matrix calls...), and nothing is perfect.
Prosody is really great because it's so no-nonsense. It doesn't hog resources or choke up like matrix servers do if you suggest to them that maybe they could deliver this text message? :3 Oh, no, it's "hold for 2 weeks despite the recipient being online" again? Ok...
But XMPP is still incredibly hard to recommend for me, because
Hence why I still mostly use Matrix... Even though it's such a stupid, stupid protocol.
@smiletolerantly @lambalicious "no way to read old chats on new devices,"
If you're talking about unencrypted messages, then prosody's mod_mam (https://prosody.im/doc/modules/mod/_mam) will store messages for a configurable amount of time and allow all devices to sync older messages.
If you're talking about encrypted messages, you have two choices. OMEMO is the standard means for encrypting XMPP messages, & only works in forward mode; you can't decrypt old messages. OpenPGP, however, decrypts old msgs.
https://prosody.im/doc/modules/mod_mam
Yes, encrypted (otherwise what's the point? 😄). I'll admit I haven't tried the PGP version yet. How's client support? For OMEMO it's pretty lackluster, from what I've heard not much different for PGP?
In any case, perfect forward secrecy is definitely a good thing / strength, but I'd like a way to re-encrypt messages from an old device, just as an example, during the setup process; or a standardized way to export all history; or just something beyond "either use worse or no encryption, or loose access to your history eventually".