This might sound kinda crazy, but I define “self-hosted” as something that I host myself.
If the software can be switched to a rented or purchased hardware (I do not want Cloudflare's offering) then it is "self-host-able" IMO.
I think there are open source Cloudflare alternative hosting software.
The first sentence states:
"Self-hosting is the practice of running a website or service on a home server instead of a web hosting service outside of the administrator's own control."
And then basically contradicts itself in the next paragraph:
"The practice of self-hosting web services became more feasible with the development of cloud computing and virtualization technologies, which enabled users to run their own servers on remote hardware or virtual machines."
In any case, I think the generally accepted definition of self-hosting has expanded over the years to include software that you're running on rented hardware in someone else's data center.
Yes it's not the same as hosting as your own hardware but I would argue that it accomplishes the same goals. The goal is to get other people out of your data. With a "service" the underlying company has every incentive to look at your data and use that to improve it's service, but when you host something yourself with a provider, it's in that providers best interest to never look at your data.
For me it all comes down to the goals of the people your are doing business with. With Cloudflare at least, their goal is to just upsell me on hosting equipment, they couldn't give a rats ass what I'm hosting on that hardware so long it's not illegal.
You can self-host on-prem or in the cloud.
If someone else can fat finger a delete, it’s not self hosted.
I self-host a few projects on forgejo in my local homelab but the build deployed to Cloudflare or Heroku. The CI is on my homelab too.
I still have primary control over those projects in Heroku and Cloudflare though.
I hope AI will push infra, including good-enough AI itself, dirt cheap, so that everyone has "good enough" software for themselves. Tailscale is a game changer in this regard but only the first step.
This is probably considerably less true in countries with a smaller ip to population ratio e.g. india.
the complaint is the communication, not the literal words. because the title conflicts with itself, it causes confusion.
for example, saying, "come join us. I'm hosting a dinner party. It's at this restaurant," would be similar.
It's perfectly reasonable and understandable to say you're hosting the party even if you don't own the physical location (see also: weddings)
What reality are we in?! The name of the thing literally contradicts the term. You are using a HOSTING PROVIDER. Somebody other than yourself is providing the hosting!
If I use my old laptop to host stuff is fine. What if I live in an apartment building and a good neighbor has a big server and let's other poeple use it and host stuff on it. I have my own vm, etc. Does that count as self-hosting? I would say yes. What if I rent bare metal from a provider?
In my view self-hosting doesn't end at the boundary of my apartment.
As I said previously, everything comes down to trust. If I don't want to run my stack on someone else's computer because I don't know if they will be a good s steward of my data that's valid, and I should own my own hardware.
It scales for the intended audience.
Self hosting doesn't mean you need to build the next AWS.
I would describe it as externally hosted yet managed specifically because someone else is most likely, whether they admit to it or not, recording some sort of logs on my service and data and that is a choice that I do not own or, in some cases, have access to.
(You can manage it, the resources, replace the software, etc.)
Whether you use the cloud, or a vps, or a dedicated bare metal server, or your own equipment at home is all self hosting.