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? - eviltoast

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?

  • obrb77@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    The premise of the question is to open a discussion about software that lives in a de facto state of being completely open source.

    just because you and maybe two others here thought Tailscale was “fully” open source doesn’t make it a “de facto” thing ;-)

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    As opposed to asking whom on a hodgepodge full of strangers?

    That was my point. The question itself makes very little sense, as the answers are not representative. (see above). Unless of course you just want to have a a discussion, for the sake of the discussion, which is of course fine :-)

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    As opposed to not opening a discussion where erroneous information is not brought to attention…

    Well, the problem is that your premise is purely anecdotal. Or to put it another way, you could list any closed source software here because someone in the whole wide world has probably mistaken it for OSS ;-)