Selfhosted

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

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

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

You've decided without listening to the responses

https://botstopper.net/

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

It's not even expensive

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

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

It's like homophobia, but whimsyfunphobia

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

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

evelyn: .lol 😜

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

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

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

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

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

If you want serious and professional: Pay for it!

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

This is an exclusive choice.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What's it called?"

"Gnu Image Manipulation Program."

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

"...they do not."

I get it that you want to be a worker with a good idea, but after that reaction, I would not give a fuck anymore about what this company needs.

I worked at 'company' once that felt bad because it used Blender, not an expensive 3D software, so they bought 3DsMax license only for it to lie down and being unused, but the boss ego was a bit less scratched by using Free stuff. Like those people are fucked up.

This is the 2nd and last time I will ever recommend Anubis anywhere at work to deal with bots because of how unprofessional, un-serious and weird others perceive it.

tell them its professional enough for kernel.org, qemu.org, the freedesktop gitlab server and several other serious software projects.

but I understand it. I just find tye priorities funny.

what kind of company is this? do you believe your work benefits the public? if yes, have a look at gandalf from nerdvpn, but I guess they'll laugh just the same. if no, you are better off not recommending them effective bot blockers.

OP, anubis is not a catgirl. She is a jackalgirl.

I install gimp on my work PC. Anubis isn't weird enough.

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

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

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

There is a debranded version you can pay for

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

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

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

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

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

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

Life is too short to be all serious all the time, love Anubis logo!

tell them to grow up

2026

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

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

"You can change the logo bruh"

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

Your work environment is bad if they are so easily distracted by branding and can't deal with 'unporfessional' and 'weird' things.

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

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

Tell them what it is and what it is for.

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

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