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Comment by Narretz | Hacker News Reader

Where do you draw the line? Some SaaS acceptable? VPS? Bare metal? Or your own server in your own home?

I think it's a pretty clear line. Self hosted means you can run it locally in your home, using a saas platform or vps is just a convenience, not a requirement.

What about FOSS SaaS alternatives that are meant for team collab? Like Plane (Jira replacement). Does that have to be ran locally at home for it to be considered "self hosted"?

Self hosted means you host it yourself. I.e. you run the software. Running on your own home machine is definitely self-hosted. Hosting it on a VPS in some datacenter still is. Running it in a cloud platform somewhere is stretching it but I'd say that sill is. SaaS definitely is not self hosting even if the software is open source. The important part is that you're the one in control of the software.

If you run Plane on your hardware, then it is self-hosted.

I think a VPS is acceptable because otherwise you just can't let the broader internet talk to you, then. The internet's structured that way.

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.

I don't have a VPS, I have a mini server in my house. I run bunch of publicly available services on it.

I might be stupid but I thought normal consumer internet didn't expose stable IP addresses?

never mind, ddns. huh.

Or cloudflare tunnels are even more effective for this

A surprisingly large number do, at least in america. They're not guaranteed to be stable, i.e. you don't "own" the IP but in practice I've found that buying a relatively high tier internet plan tends to come with IPs that change less than once a year.

This is probably considerably less true in countries with a smaller ip to population ratio e.g. india.

you have to read between the lines.

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 an interesting example because I think it proves the opposite point. There are places, large dense cities, where most people live in tiny apartments, and if you're having a dinner party it's not going to be inside a house.

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)

I think the line is obvious... If you can't unplug it, you're not self-hosting.

You should have the option to host it at home. Then you may choose to host in a vps. Must be vendor agnostic.

Agreed, in my mind it’s where the developer can’t unilaterally change your installation.

IMO physical hardware in your own material possession, so only the last of your examples.

It is very simple actually. The entity providing the host environment is the one doing the hosting. If I am hosting a VPS on my own hardware, I am providing the host environment, and it is called self-hosting. If a company is hosting a VPS from a data center (or wherever), they are providing the host environment, and it is not called self-hosting.

Yeah, I think we need to better define this term. To an extent people, call self-hosting using your own server in your own home. But I think using a VPS from hosting provider should also be an acceptable term. That offers a lot of convenience that will keep self-hosting out of reach of a lot of people.

“Using a VPS from a hosting provider”

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!

I think the most important part of self-hosting is YOU hosting the software you use. The tool/medium you are using is less important. If it's your own laptop, or a mini PC, or someone elses PC is less important. They are different.

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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-hosting_(network)

I would personally draw the line a the data centres. If your infrastructure involves data centres, this is not self hosting. In my opinion.

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