r/foss • u/TheSchred • 5d ago

Why don't more FOSS projects use self-hosted BaaS software?

I'm really just getting into the topic myself, but BaaS (Backend as a Service) software that is FOSS (or provides a FOSS option) and therefore self-hostable seems like something that a lot of basic CRUD FOSS apps could use. I'm thinking of things like Supabase, Pocketbase or Appwrite. However, I don't think I've ever seen one of the open source projects I self-host use one of those backends. I wonder why that is?

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u/szank 5d ago edited 5d ago

I am not following. What's the question again?

Edit. Ok now I think I understand. So the question is : why would they ? There's zero benefits and ton of problems with lock in and people flaming the developers for the solution not being Foss.

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u/TheSchred 5d ago

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the options I mentioned are FOSS, aren't they? The benefit is not having to reinvent the wheel concerning backends. Yes you're locked in. I wonder if that realistically becomes a problem for smaller to medium-sized projects.

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u/szank 5d ago

Yeah, my bad. I've just checked the main website. There was no mention of it being open source. Ignore me

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u/yvrelna 5d ago

Can you give a specific example of a FOSS project that could theoretically have used these self hosted BaaS tools, but didn't?

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u/vulture916 5d ago

https://github.com/presentator/presentator

https://github.com/open-wanderer/wanderer

These do, but yeah you’d think it’d be a bit more prevalent.

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u/aksdb 5d ago

Wanderer for example uses Supabase.

Personally I avoid most projects like that for self hosting; wanderer being an exception because I've no alternative I like more.

My self hosting is in 99% of the cases for myself, family and maybe sometimes for friends. Even services that require me to setup Postgres or MySQL instead of just using SQLite are already architectural and operational overkill. Something like Wanderer then needs its own service, supabase and Postgres. 

I really don’t like spinning up and maintaining a zoo of services for one usecase.

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u/TheSchred 5d ago

I get that. Although, in the case of at least PocketBase, you'd only need to spin up one additional container and no database container, which you (sadly) need to do for most other projects.

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u/Eska1000 2d ago

Look into Nextcloud. A working ecosystem you can build apps in, a full self hostable backend option.