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Focalboard – a self-hosted alternative to Trello, Notion, and Asana

694 points| stanislavb | 5 years ago |focalboard.com | reply

175 comments

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[+] it33|5 years ago|reply
Focalboard team here!

Huge thanks to everyone who's sharing feedback and comments. It is super exciting to be trending on HackerNews!

We've just put up a new Wiki page for people to share feature ideas, to join our Discourse forum, and to report bugs: https://github.com/mattermost/focalboard/wiki/Share-your-fee...!

Thank y'all so much for being interested in our project and our space!

We've been working super hard to make something people love, and we'll continue to do so with your input and ideas!

[+] _bz2r|5 years ago|reply
Can you respond to the point made by Sneak downthread that there is silent data transfer to your company in the background?
[+] sneak|5 years ago|reply
Note: this, although self-hosted, appears to transmit your usage data without consent (just like the selfhosted Mattermost server from the same people):

https://github.com/mattermost/focalboard/blob/main/server/se...

Anyone want to offer me odds on the likelihood of a patch removing this spyware getting accepted by the maintainer in this “open source” project?

[+] bluefirebrand|5 years ago|reply
Thank you for posting this.

I was very interested in this. There's no way I'm using it now. I'll never trust anything from Mattermost.

Maybe it still counts as open source but with this, plus their complex licensing, I feel it runs very counter to what the FOSS community actually wants

[+] fimdomeio|5 years ago|reply
Apparently there's a config option to turn off telemetry. https://www.focalboard.com/guide/admin/

While I understand the feeling, it's also truth that these kinds of projects appear to receive a lot more criticism than if they went completely closed source which feels a bit unfair.

[+] cooperadymas|5 years ago|reply
I have not significantly used Notion, but this isn't really a replacement for it is it?

Notion seems to be focused on wiki and notes, with built in structured data allowing you to setup things like boards and task lists.

This seems to just be the boards and task lists without the free form notes and wiki? It pretty clearly replaces Trello and Asana. Notion seems like a stretch from the 5 minutes I poked around in it.

[+] gpas|5 years ago|reply
I see it as a "faster" altrrnative to the kanban widget in Notion, clearly not a replacement. I use Notion to collect bookmarks, quotes, code, media, every bit of information I need for a project and despite its relative slowness and the lack of offline mode is serving me well.
[+] mandiantBob|5 years ago|reply
I just downloaded and tested the standalone desktop app. It has a very pretty and responsive interface compared to Kanboard.

I have been self hosting Kanboard on my rpi for my own work, and I think that Kanboard still has many 'poweruser' features that Focalboard is missing.

If there is an easy way for me to migrate my Kanboard data over to Focalboard, I would definitely give it a shot as a daily driver.

[+] raggi|5 years ago|reply
The licensing notions in this project are nonsense.
[+] orliesaurus|5 years ago|reply
I love Notion but the speed, or rather lack of, is killing me daily. Last Friday I was taking some notes, and suddenly the page refreshed and everything was gone. Went on twitter to see, I wasn't alone .. i feel like hosting my own notion clone is the way to go forward to use Notion...
[+] movedx|5 years ago|reply
I've actually just started using Notion and the UI is nice, as is the feature set, but yeah, I'm getting a little annoyed by the constant page loads.

I mean this kind of thing continues to fuel my beliefs that software is going backwards here because frankly, how hard can it be to render some text?

[+] tibu|5 years ago|reply
Same here. And I still did not find the perfect note taking app. I have so few requirements. WYSIWYG editing, easy image insertion, export function with open standard format, mobile app, some security.
[+] it33|5 years ago|reply
Focalboard team here.

You can try the "Focalboard Personal Desktop" to run locally where your performance won't be affected by other users.

We made it available in Windows Store and Apple AppStore to make it easy to try out.

This is just a v0.6 right now, and we would love bug reports and enhancement ideas.

It's the early days of the project and we are excited to hear input: https://github.com/mattermost/focalboard/issues

[+] KitDuncan|5 years ago|reply
I am not sure Focalboard has the features you are looking for, but outline wiki is a cool notion like wiki and pretty fast.
[+] kogepathic|5 years ago|reply
The installation instructions for the server install don't seem to work.

> wget https://releases.mattermost.com/focalboard/0.5.0/focalboard-...

> tar -xvzf focalboard-server-linux-amd64.tar.gz

The file is actually a zip with the tar.gz inside:

focalboard-server-linux-amd64.tar.gz: Zip archive data, at least v2.0 to extract

$ unzip -l focalboard-server-linux-amd64.tar.gz

Archive: focalboard-server-linux-amd64.tar.gz

Length Date Time Name

--------- ---------- ----- ----

12461347 02-02-2021 00:38 focalboard-server-linux-amd64.tar.gz

-------- -------

12461347 1 files

Running tar directly (as written in the instructions) will fail with:

$ tar -tzvf focalboard-server-linux-amd64.tar.gz

tar: invalid magic

tar: short read

It seems like there's something unintentionally producing a zip at the end of the build process.

[+] Aeolun|5 years ago|reply
This would be easier to test out if I could just run a docker image instead of doing a whole nginx configuration.
[+] unsungNovelty|5 years ago|reply
https://www.openproject.org/

I am always surprised when people don't mention Open Project. Cos isn't this fragmentation? Open Project...

- Have been there for a long time.

- Good motivated team AFAIK,

- Have forum software.

- Project board

- And even version control!

Everything self hosted or enterprise/cloud for serious stuff or people who want to support them.

Or is there some other reason why openproject is not known? Would love to hear more from the HN community on this.

[+] 4lun|5 years ago|reply
I tried a bunch of selfhosted alternatives to Trello a few months back and never registered OpenProject as an option.

I mainly used this list https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted#tas...

I did focus on "Task management/To-do lists", while OpenProject is listed under the "Project Management" section. This is likely why I missed it as I've been looking for something clean and simple (not JIRA) that is more akin to the earlier versions of Trello (rather than the feature bloated whale it has now become).

Looking at it now and to be honest it doesn't quite look like what I'm looking for when looking for a Trello alternative, I just want cards on a board I can move around (with a bit of metadata)

[+] Jnr|5 years ago|reply
On the licensing page of Open Project 'agile boards' is one of the paid features, so I don't see how it is relevant in this case.

Screenshots look good and it is nice to see that they have figured out a good business model for open source software.

But I don't like to see that 2FA is available only in the paid version still in 2021. Security should be at the core of these kinds of systems.

And I hope that maintaining it is much easier than other Ruby projects that I have encountered in the past. For example, I used to run Redmine project management system, and maintaining it up to date was painful due to fragmentation and differences between Ruby versions. Hopefully Docker and better migration scripts have solved those problems nowadays. Still, even with containerization available, when it comes to self hosted solutions I definitely prefer ones that get compiled to nice binaries. Go, Rust, C, etc.

[+] it33|5 years ago|reply
Focalboard team here, thanks for the comment!

We weren't aware of Open Project previously, and we're glad to hear about it.

I think you're right, Focalboard is a lot earlier than Open Project, and it doesn't have as many features.

Focalboard was starting during the Mattermost 2020 Hacktoberfest last year: https://mattermost.com/blog/hacktoberfest-2020-recap/

It's in the early stages of development, only v0.6 right now: https://github.com/mattermost/focalboard/blob/main/CHANGELOG...

That said, we're working on it constantly and excited about its future.

Of the features Open Project has now, are there one or two top priorities you'd suggest we consider adding to Focalboard?

We'd love to hear any feedback, feature suggestions or bug reports: https://github.com/mattermost/focalboard/wiki/Share-your-fee...!

[+] blowski|5 years ago|reply
What's the problem with fragmentation? I guess you're thinking of wasted effort, split mindshare amongst users.

But for me, fragmentation is one of the key benefits of open source. Let thousands of alternatives bloom!

[+] margor|5 years ago|reply
Last time I used it, it was generally a good experience, albeit slow sometimes when moving/editing stuff around but amount of features it offers even on free plan in my opinion compensates that. Also API is rather easy to use. I'm also surprised it doesn't get so much exposure, alongside https://www.phacility.com/phabricator/
[+] petecooper|5 years ago|reply
Big fan and active user of OpenProject here, I recommend it.
[+] ta988|5 years ago|reply
Agreed OpenProject is impressive. I used it for myself for a time. Then switched back to OrgMode. But if I come to manage a team with several projects I would clearly use that.
[+] rayiner|5 years ago|reply
It’s quite heavy and slow.
[+] say_it_as_it_is|5 years ago|reply
When has the fragmentation argument ever prevailed, in the history of technology? New flavors of practically everything, down to bare metal, release daily. The world may agree on communication protocols, but even that is nearly impossible to do together.
[+] mraza007|5 years ago|reply
I’m just surprised few weeks ago i was looking at self hosted notion/trello like alternatives and now I just came across this.

The project just looks really cool and I’m definitely going to download and try this.

I just wanted to thank the developers from the bottom of my heart for creating this.

Lastly I’m just curious is it possible to host this on a raspberry pi

[+] eps|5 years ago|reply
> Download Focalboard from the Microsoft App Store.

I am life-long Windows user and I am yet to meet someone who uses Microsoft App Store. A standalone regular installer is an absolute must.

[+] kissgyorgy|5 years ago|reply
I became a Windows user recently and I install everything I can from the Microsoft Store, so I don't have to individually and manually get updates for all the apps I installed.
[+] it33|5 years ago|reply
Focalboard team here,

Hi @eps, I've opened a ticket on this: https://github.com/mattermost/focalboard/issues/99

Would you be open to giving a "Thumbs Up" and/or a comment sharing more about the benefits?

Community feedback is super important, and we would love to hear more from you and others

[+] zeusly|5 years ago|reply
I use it, and I've bought apps worth ~$200 on it.
[+] kuschku|5 years ago|reply
I download all KDE apps (Kate, Kile, Okular, Krita, etc) from the store, if possible. The one big issue I discovered with that is that store apps can’t be set as default to open a file for a file format that the app didn’t specify itself (e.g., you can’t open an .NFO per default with Kate, as Kate doesn’t register itself as file handler for .NFO files)
[+] zaptheimpaler|5 years ago|reply
Its not very popular yet, but its 100% the future. I use it whenever an app is available on the store - easy, consistent auto updates is much better than each app nagging you to update independently. Better for devs as well because it gives you much more confidence that new versions will be adopted quickly.
[+] jerrygoyal|5 years ago|reply
I prefer it actually.. main reason is streamlined app auto updates
[+] jpambrun|5 years ago|reply
Most importantly, while I have admin privileges and can install some software, my corporate machine has the windows store disabled.
[+] mosselman|5 years ago|reply
Deleting a board is possible, but there is no confirm and no way to restore. Very dangerous!
[+] jasonjayr|5 years ago|reply
In the same category as 'self-hosted trello', I found "Planka" not to long ago, and as a self-hosted trello/kanban/todo board, it was pretty easy to boot up and has worked for my simple purposes for the last few months....

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24812900

[+] sali0|5 years ago|reply
This is awesome. This with good integration with Mattermost (or discord) would serve the needs for a lot of teams. Notion could as well but they are a slow moving beast with different priorities.
[+] AnonHP|5 years ago|reply
It would’ve been more convenient to me if this project provided standalone downloads for macOS and Windows. The current downloads for the Desktop version are only available through the respective app stores on these two platforms.