piotrkulpinski

Campfire (the self-hosted group chat) just became free and open source!

https://lemmy.world/post/35502519

Campfire (the self-hosted group chat) just became free and open source! - Lemmy.World

Hi! DHH (co-founder of Basecamp) announced [https://x.com/dhh/status/1963675999012552970] yesterday that they’re making their group chat software open source and free for everyone to use. This is fantastic news, especially considering this piece of software previously required a $299 payment just to access the codebase (far too expensive, in my opinion). It looks like we now have another excellent open source alternative to Slack and Microsoft Teams [https://openalternative.co/campfire], thanks to this move. I really hope more companies will follow this trend soon. What are your thoughts?

Sep 5, 2025 at 10:07pmWeb
Show threadshnizmuffinSep 5, 2025
This isn’t nearly enough to change my opinion of DHH, an out-and-proud piece of shit.
Show threaddamnthefilibusterSep 5, 2025

Please tell me more about this. I don’t know enough to know what to dislike him about.

I only saw him recently talking about his Omarchy thing. Seemed too opinionated.

Show threadFBJimmySep 5, 2025

I also wasn’t aware so had a search.

If you don’t mind Reddit, this thread is interesting… reddit.com/…/can_someone_explain_what_happened_wi…

Or there’s this… theverge.com/…/basecamp-all-hands-meeting-employe…

Show threadneclimdulSep 6, 2025
That’s a more recent flare up but DHH has been “ruffling feathers” for a while to put it politely. tomstu.art/the-dhh-problem
The DHH Problem

Show threadLifeInMultipleChoiceSep 5, 2025
Not sure what I’ll use this for yet, but I’m going to see if I can host it tonight I guess. Didn’t have anything else planned
Show threadCanacondaSep 5, 2025
Siiiiiighhh *unzips (rar file)
Show threadfrongtSep 6, 2025
Where do you see that? The repo says you should be able to clone and run it.
Show threadLifeInMultipleChoiceSep 6, 2025

I used the link listed on the post above, and it brings you to their website. (once.com/campfire) Then I tried to search for an install for Linux and was finding

/bin/bash -c “$(curl -fsSL auth.once.com/install/YOUR_LICENSE_KEY)”

Can you link me to what you found?

Campfire

Super simple group chat, without a subscription. And you get the code, too.

ONCE
Show threadfrongtSep 6, 2025
github.com/basecamp/once-campfire
GitHub - basecamp/once-campfire

Contribute to basecamp/once-campfire development by creating an account on GitHub.

GitHub
Show threadLifeInMultipleChoiceSep 6, 2025
Thanks man, I’ll probably end up giving that a shot later tonight or tomorrow afternoon then, nothing to lose, and it keeps me from spending money I don’t have on a day off
Show threadundefinedSep 5, 2025

Here’s the link to the GitHub repo.

I’ve got X blocked on all my personal devices but I opened the tweet on my work computer to find this URL.

GitHub - basecamp/once-campfire

Contribute to basecamp/once-campfire development by creating an account on GitHub.

GitHub
Show threadOtterSep 6, 2025

There are some other projects in this space already, with varying levels of open source / selfhostability / features

zulip.com

revolt.chat

mattermost.com

www.rocket.chat

Zulip and Revolt looked the most promising for Slack and Discord replacements respectively

Zulip — organized team chat

Zulip is an organized team chat app for distributed teams of all sizes.

Zulip
Show threadnull_dotSep 6, 2025

I’m been trying to stand up a zulip instance. It’s working but I haven’t used it much. I want a feature complete jitsi instance to go with it and that’s only partially implemented right now.

That said, zulip does seem like the best option for me presently.

Haven’t tried revolt.

Mattermost seems to be perpetually entangled but being disentangled from some other suite. Confusing and frustrating.

I haven’t tried rocket chat for 5 years or so. I think last time I read about it people were complaining that the FOSS plan is very limited.

Show threadEncrypt-KeeperSep 6, 2025
Revolt can’t be considered viable in my mind until the mobile app stops hardcoding the official instance and lets users connect it to selfhosted instances.
Show threadfemtekSep 6, 2025
That and SSO.
Show threadnull_dotSep 6, 2025
Are there any restrictions on a FOSS instance? Is there a pay wall?
Show threadlime_redSep 6, 2025
Sigh, why build this with Ruby on rails :/
Show threadHopeCraftSep 6, 2025
They, the owning company, also created Rails. So everything they have is made with it.
Show threadundefinedSep 7, 2025
Ruby on Rails developer here, why is that bad? Honestly Python feels like old a shitty, PHP is a joke, and I can’t think of any other language I’d prefer.
Show threadlime_redSep 8, 2025
(It was a joke about DHH creating ROR, and a company owned by DHH creating a product using ROR.)
Show threadⓂ3️⃣3️⃣ 🌌Sep 6, 2025

How does it compare to mattermost or rocketchat?

I was a mattermost admin on a pretty big corporate instance ages ago, it faded out not because of teams but because of lacking integration with productivity software.

Actually we were denied integration efforts because trust issues OSS vs corpo. How ironic today when pretty much everything is tied to a foreign cloud ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Show threadKynnSep 8, 2025
I don’t see how it replaces anything without audio & video calls. Doesn’t mattermost already cover this scope…? And a lot of other open source softwares… For me, the rarest and dearest feature is these fixed call channels you have in discord. Matrix and element have them, but their ui is shit. I’m waiting for it to be implemented on Cinny, there is a PR for that.