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Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: Why This Network Runs on Open Source
The six reasons this network runs on self-hosted open-source software, plus the time it really costs.
People sometimes ask why I run this network on open-source software and host it myself instead of renting a ready-made platform. The short answer: I like knowing where our data lives, and I like that the people who use a tool can also improve it. The longer answer is below.
What open source gives a small community
- Ownership. Members' posts, photos and conversations sit on a server we control. If a vendor changes its pricing or shuts down, we don't lose years of community history overnight.
- A head start. UNA gives us groups, events, timelines and messaging out of the box, so our time goes into the community instead of rebuilding login forms.
- Other people's fixes. Bugs I'd never find on my own get reported and patched by people running communities very different from ours.
- Room to experiment. When we want to try a new onboarding flow or a different feed, we can change it ourselves and roll back if it flops.
- Transparency. Anyone can read the code. That's a feature, not a risk: more eyes, fewer surprises.
- No licence fees. The money we'd spend on seats goes into hosting, moderator training and the occasional meetup pizza.
What it costs instead
Open source isn't free in time. Somebody has to apply updates, watch the backups and answer the "why won't my photo upload" questions. Right now that somebody is mostly me, with a lot of help from our moderators.
Giving back
If you run a community on UNA, you can help without writing a line of code: report bugs clearly, translate a language pack, answer a question in the UNA forums, or write up what worked for you in UNA Builders. That's how the shoulders we all stand on get a little taller.
P.S. A few of you asked about the logo drafts for this network, so both are attached below: the plain white mark for dark backgrounds and the warmer version we're testing as the app icon. Opinions welcome.
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Comments (12)
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Open source is great for so many reasons, but you already know my favourite 😉 Hint: it's the last one on your list, the one about where the budget goes 😎
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Ownership is the one that matters to our food bank. We lost three years of volunteer records when the free sign-up site we used shut down with a week's notice. Never again.
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A question from the health side. A few members of our patient support group asked whether "anyone can read the code" means anyone can read their posts. How would you explain the difference to people who aren't technical?
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They were worried it would hurt sign-ups. It didn't: 41% of visitors who reached the join page signed up before the change, 43% after. Small sample, so I wouldn't call it a win, but it clearly wasn't a loss.
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The bigger change showed up in week one. When people knew only members could see their profile, more of them filled in a bio and posted an introduction.
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To put a number on the introductions point above: the share of new members who posted an introduction in their first week went from roughly one in five to one in three.
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Separate thought on the cost section of this post: the hardest thing to explain to clients is that free software still has a running cost. Someone has to update it, back it up and answer the support questions.
