“This started with three things: wanting Slack to do more, a growing resentment of SaaS bills, and getting slightly too obsessed with self-hosting.”
Maneek21, on reddit.com ↗
Slack bills you per head, per month, forever. Deft puts chat, tasks and notes on your own server and bills you nothing.
Evernote wants $14.99 a month for your own notes, plus ads for free. EdgeEver is the three-pane notebook you run on Cloudflare's free tier or your own Docker box, apps included.
“Data export is cumbersome, free tiers are heavily restricted, and AI/MCP features require costly subscriptions.”
Mattermost started paywalling features it used to give away and sells the rest by the seat. Antimatter is the fork with the licence checks pulled out: SSO, LDAP, no nag screens, no invoice.
“Unfortunately, after a few disappointments at a previous company actually trying (and giving up) to buy a licence, and after their latest actions, which I could only call backstabs (paywalling previously available features, putting arbitrary limits that previously didn't exist, or recently adding nag screens to push people into either buying their licence or just away from their platform altogether), I've ended up fed up with their BS and started to work on a fork.”
Obsidian charges $5 a month to move your own Markdown between your own devices. Cairn syncs it through your own server and charges nothing.
“Obsidian made me pay them for syncing so I made an open-source implementation”
Built something because a company wanted your credit card for a feature that fits in a single file? That's spiteware. Submit it and join the hall of fame.
