Open Source

Cal.com Went Closed-Source in 2026: What's Actually Left in Cal.diy, and Should You Still Self-Host It?

In April 2026 Cal.com moved its production code private and relicensed the public repo from AGPL-3.0 to MIT as Cal.diy. The license got more permissive and the product got smaller — here is exactly what was removed and what is still worth self-hosting.

2026-09-14 5 views

Open Source

Jitsi Meet: The Self-Hosted Video Conferencing Stack — Plus the TURN Server Nobody Tells You That You Need

30k stars, Apache-2.0, no per-seat fee. Jitsi Meet is the strongest self-hosted Zoom alternative — but it is a six-component SFU stack, self-hosting does not inherit 8x8's SOC 2, and without a TURN server some people simply cannot connect.

2026-09-14 6 views

Open Source

Joplin: The Open-Source Note App Where Your Notes Are Just Markdown Files — and the Master Password You Cannot Afford to Lose

56k stars, AGPL-3.0, offline-first, end-to-end encrypted. Joplin is the strongest self-hosted Evernote replacement — but its encryption master password is unrecoverable, and losing it means your notes are gone permanently.

2026-09-14 4 views

Open Source

Zulip: The Open-Source Team Chat With No Open-Core Catch — and a 10-User Push Notification Limit

Most 'open-source Slack alternatives' put SAML, LDAP, and guest access behind a paywall. Zulip is Apache-2.0 with all of it free — but self-hosted mobile push notifications stop at ten users unless you build your own app.

2026-09-13 10 views

Open Source

Metabase: The Open-Source BI Tool That Ends Per-Seat Analytics Licensing — Read the License Files First

Tableau charges per creator, per month, forever. Metabase is a 48k-star self-hosted BI platform with unlimited users — but it ships four license files, gates SSO behind a paywall, and its default database will lose every dashboard you own.

2026-09-13 10 views

Open Source

AdGuard Home: The Self-Hosted DNS Filter That Blocks Ads on Every Device You Own — Even the Ones You Can't Install Anything On

Browser extensions only protect the browser. AdGuard Home moves filtering down to DNS, where every device on your network is covered — a 36k-star GPL-3.0 Go binary with encrypted DNS and DHCP built in. Here is what it blocks, what it cannot block, and the one setting that quietly sends your data to AdGuard.

2026-09-13 10 views

Open Source

Ghost: The Open-Source Publishing Platform That Lets You Actually Own Your Audience

Substack takes a cut and owns the relationship. WordPress gives you everything and the maintenance to match. Ghost is a 55k-star MIT-licensed middle path — but production self-hosting has real requirements nobody lists.

2026-09-11 17 views

Open Source

Audiobookshelf: The Self-Hosted Audiobook Server That Finally Replaces Audible

You do not own your Audible library — you hold a revocable licence to it. Audiobookshelf is a GPL-3.0 server that streams the files you actually control, with progress sync that works across every device.

2026-09-11 20 views

Open Source

ntfy: The Self-Hosted Push Notification Server That Stops Routing Your Alerts Through Google

Every push notification you receive went through a company's servers before it reached your phone. ntfy is a 33k-star, Apache-2.0 pub-sub server you can run yourself — but the iOS story has a catch nobody mentions.

2026-09-11 15 views

Open Source

NocoDB: The Open-Source Airtable Alternative — Check the License Before You Build

NocoDB is the 64,000-star open-source Airtable alternative that turns any SQL database into a smart spreadsheet. Here's the setup, the bring-your-own-database advantage, and the January 2026 license change from AGPL to Sustainable Use that most lists still miss.

2026-09-10 19 views

Life