this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2023
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What is a self-hosted app/os/service/ect that is widely "known" as being fully open source, but it actually relies significantly on closed source software? (alien.top)
submitted 11 months ago by AllTheModzAreCancer@alien.top to c/main@selfhosted.forum
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I was looking into Tailscale which I thought to be complexly open source, but it turns out that their coordination server is closed source. If you want to run your own open source coordination server, Headscale is the go-to option.

This is no fault of their own (as they freely express this in their FAQ) it's just that I had always been told by people that Tailscale was fully open source. This got me wondering what else is not as open source as people widely accept it to be?

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[–] azukaar@alien.top 0 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Tailscale is using "being opensource" as a marketing term and it's working. The coordination server is a center piece of the architecture, the client being open is meaningless

Another example of this is Plex, many people don't actually know the fact that it went closed and that only the client is open source

[–] hernil@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

There is however an open source implementation (Headscale) and they even have employees working part time on that code base.

[–] ck_@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 11 months ago

This is a non-sense argument. The client does all the heavy lifting while the "coordination server" is basically a glorified REST server you can in most parts replace with a web server hosting a bunch of static JSON files.

Tailscale is open source in all aspects that really matter, that being the protocols used and all aspects regarding security.