Dobase – Open-source, self-hosted workspace with installable tools

https://dobase.co/

Comments

samdixonMar 27, 2026, 1:49 AM
Clickup is kinda like this (trash software btw) where it combines all these things. Its super cumbersome to deal with all of them in the same UI. For example, you will be chatting with someone, need to look at ticket, you have to completely leave the context of the chat to find the ticket. Yeah you can have multiple tabs, but still cumbersome. Would rather have a chat app for chat, documentation in documentation... so on.
szszrkMar 27, 2026, 8:33 AM
That's exactly how I feel Teams want's me to use it. It's just... dumb, all those "apps" that are integrated, but in reality it's just another super heavy website that you can't easily jump into/out of.
ramon156Mar 27, 2026, 7:50 AM
Has anyons (except 37sign) used Basecamp in a small/medium/large corp? I'm really curious how well it works
argeeMar 27, 2026, 1:57 AM
Could you elaborate on what makes Clickup "trash software", is it something specific to Clickup or your opinion around this entire "class" of all-in-one workspace?
samdixonMar 27, 2026, 2:13 AM
Here are a few things off the top:

- horrible optimization

    - video calls will easily bloat 1-3gb of ram
- buggy, things that should work sometimes don't

    - e.g. sometimes you click to write... you get a spinner, wait 10 seconds
- poor ux. I have been using it for 4+ years at work, still have trouble finding things

- yeah, all things in one interface

These are opinions. People can have different. To me, its just a slow and difficult to navigate mess that doesn't know what it wants to be.

esafakMar 27, 2026, 2:31 AM
It does know: it wants to be everything -- they remind you in every ad!
pasMar 27, 2026, 2:07 PM
we evaluated them in 2023, because we wanted to move off JIRA, and their name came up, and we did the initial import, and I spent some time trying to understand what's where and how, and the whole experience was lame. it was aggressively confidently pushing its own features (always be upselling!) but the basics were just not there. It's like Microsoft.

We moved to Linear, which is 2 years younger than ClickUp, but it's solid in what it offers.

BoorishBearsMar 27, 2026, 5:56 AM
ClickUp is known to be extremely slow and buggy, in a way that technical people can infer is a reflection of their mission to literally do everything an organization needs.

https://www.reddit.com/r/clickup/comments/1s0tkz8/disappoint...

https://www.reddit.com/r/clickup/comments/1rxbtla/im_so_tire...

Who ever built a piece of quality software by setting out to build multiple otherwise unrelated pieces of software with extremely tight coupling to satisfy enterprise bargain hunting?

anilgulechaMar 27, 2026, 2:51 AM
IMO we need more sovereign systems like this (this is too simple IMO). Other sovereign systems are complex to deploy. if good FOSS commodity options come up, then we can expect a hosting/deployment infra and companies to setup and offer it for non self-hosters as well - ala WordPress.
pscanfMar 27, 2026, 8:44 AM
That would simplify things, but in my opinion that is still too high a hurdle. I'm all about privacy and FOSS, but I don't self-host anything (except for my personal website).

I wish that more apps would instead move the logic to the client and use files on file syncing services as databases. Taking tasks as an example, if a task board were just a file, I could share it with you on Dropbox / Drive / whatever we both use, and we wouldn't need a dedicated backend at all.

The approach has limitations (conflict resolution, authorization, and latency are the big ones), but it is feasible and actually completely fine for lots of apps.

JnrMar 27, 2026, 6:55 AM
Except this is not FOSS. If it was open source, they would have chosen at least AGPL.

And also I don't think their architecture is any good for such a product.

For me personally, it would be sufficient to avoid it based on the license alone. But altogether it just looks very unappealing.

kkfxMar 27, 2026, 7:49 AM
Since we have a single mind, we need "everything apps", this one shows various issues but the idea of an everything app is damm good.
yellowappleMar 27, 2026, 4:55 AM
> No licensee or downstream recipient may use the Software (including any modified or derivative versions) to directly compete with the original Licensor by offering it to third parties as a hosted, managed, or Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) product or cloud service where the primary value of the service is the functionality of the Software itself.

No thanks. These “almost-but-not-quite-FOSS” licenses are a blight.

hperrinMar 27, 2026, 8:27 PM
Don’t worry. The license is unenforceable, since the code is written by AI. It’s in the public domain.
ptmanMar 27, 2026, 7:31 AM
Some will argue that it is Open Source. But Open Source came from commercial interests against Free Software.

It's clearly not free software, since the user freedom is restricted.

It's not libre, since that also refers to freedoms.

It's not really Open Source.

Source-Available has been used to describe this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source-available_software

nick-staMar 27, 2026, 6:03 AM
I don't see the issue - the creator is reserving the right to create their own paid hosted version?
EvanAndersonMar 27, 2026, 6:46 AM
That's absolutely fine for them, but they shouldn't call it "Open-source" and "Fully open source" (like they do on the linked page).

This software is source-available. Open Source licenses don't discriminate on the basis use of the software.

Using the term Open Source for license like this is dishonest. It seeks to profit from the goodwill from actual Open Source software.

gardnrMar 27, 2026, 6:57 AM
I appreciate your view but consensus reality does not agree: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source
EvanAndersonMar 27, 2026, 7:00 AM
I can link to community-edited articles, too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Source_Definition

We make the consensus reality. I'm part of the faction that wants this particular reality, so I advocate for it.

eudoxusMar 27, 2026, 7:03 AM
OSD !== Open Source. All OSD is Open Source, not all Open Source is OSD. You are free to disagree, but the OSI has chosen (more accurately forced to choose) very explicitly to only define and trademark OSD. There's really not much more to the conversation then that.
prohoboMar 27, 2026, 8:39 AM
Maybe you're right, but FSL/BSL is arguably "more open source" than GPL. We all know GPL is a poison pill that kills commercial use, while FSL/BSL just blocks competitors from stealing your app.
OryginMar 27, 2026, 10:02 AM
That's not even remotely true. GPL does not prevent any commercial use, when others (like BSL or the O'Sassy license here) explicitly prevent commercial use...
prohoboMar 27, 2026, 5:39 PM
Are you kidding me? If you link against a GPL library in a proprietary commercial app, the GPL's copyleft infects that code and you'd have to release it under GPL.

Explain to me how that doesn't prevent commercial use? Are you going to say "well technically it doesn't prevent it"? No one cares. Commercial projects avoid GPL like the plague.

smgdkngtMar 27, 2026, 11:56 AM
Fair point, I've actually just switched to MIT as of today. This is a personal project I've been building for myself and I want to share it with anyone who finds it useful.
rock_artistMar 27, 2026, 7:17 AM
The confusing thing for me related to that was Try Free which leads me to look for pricing. But with only Try free I get suspicious of even private or small team.

If it’s free for use. Try is a confusing term.

Off topic, I’d really wish any service or product with tiers would have pricing in a discoverable way.

yodonMar 27, 2026, 1:22 AM
Can I drag an email directly onto a Kanban or a Todo list, and prioritize it like a task, and then click on the card or task to go directly to the mail message, in the context of its thread?
smgdkngtMar 27, 2026, 12:08 PM
No, and probably won't be. Each tool is intentionally standalone. You can link to things manually but there's no cross-tool wiring. I'd rather keep the codebase simple and each tool easy to understand on its own.
warkdarriorMar 27, 2026, 2:59 AM
I wanted to try a demo, but they require you to sign up for an account and configure it with email access, etc. Too painful for a demo.
mrtesthahMar 27, 2026, 10:47 AM
That’s the kind of thing Apple’s software explicitly tries to support. There’s a reason this stuff works better with native apps.
esquire_900Mar 27, 2026, 8:14 AM
This seems exactly not what you want. If fully invested in this, you never have the freedom to switch tools, ie go to a different team chat solution. The benefits of having these apps in one UI / ecosystem are relatively small: files - teamchat makes sense, but todo-email, kanban-recpies doesn't add any value.

Like samdixon mentions with ClickUp, the downside is quite large UX wise: you'd be constantly switching context witin dobase. Having 10 pinned tabs for all your tools is very convenient, checking a todo while working on an email in dobase feels messy.

vanviegenMar 27, 2026, 8:57 AM
I actually rather dislike having my info spread over a gazillion services, all of them having their own paid accounts or advertising. Also, a single unified search for all communication and shared notes would be very helpful.

Also, I'm not familiar with ClickUp nor Dobase, but I imagine you can have them open in multiple tabs, allowing for your preferred way of working?

chopete3Mar 27, 2026, 6:25 AM
What is stopping one to have a chrome or other browser window with pinned links to Email, Calendar, Drive and other web links?

Why build a full app?. They could released a Chrome extension to let users configure their links for each of those apps. Wasted effort.

whilenot-devMar 27, 2026, 6:44 AM
> They could released a Chrome extension to let users configure their links for each of those apps. Wasted effort.

This app isn't just some link aggregator or an admin dashboard, though. It's workplace software that hosts all your data, self-hosted on your system of choice if you wish. I'm neither a user of nor am I affiliated with this project, but it seems like there's the aspiration to provide a unified client interface for every app, and it looks like you could BYOC as well (for CalDAV and Email).

smgdkngtMar 27, 2026, 12:13 PM
Because I wanted everything on my own server, in one database, under my control. A bunch of pinned tabs to different SaaS apps is a completely different thing. But fair enough, if that works for you, you don't need this.
hperrinMar 27, 2026, 1:42 AM
The commit log is filled with AI generated commits. I wouldn’t trust that on my server.
argeeMar 27, 2026, 1:53 AM
I want to know why this [0] needed to be co-authored by Claude. Especially because it seems like the kind of change you'd explicitly want to make without Claude's "help" (presuming that's how that got in there).

[0] https://github.com/smgdkngt/dobase/commit/597684fc67b67f5a2a...

supericeMar 27, 2026, 5:11 AM
Asking Claude to commit and push triggers the Co-Authored-By thing typically, even if the change was made by hand. It could entirely be possible the author just asked it to generate a commit message for this change (although the style doesn't strike me as very Claude like).
smgdkngtMar 27, 2026, 11:59 AM
I use Claude to help me code. I'm a solo developer and this is a side project, AI helps me move faster on things I'd otherwise not get to. The code is all reviewed and tested by me before it ships. I understand the skepticism though.
hperrinMar 27, 2026, 8:29 PM
That’s all well and good, but you can’t enforce a license on it. Code written by an AI is in the public domain. So the license you’re using is essentially meaningless, and anyone can do anything they want with the code.
spartanatreyuMar 27, 2026, 3:17 AM
Blocking AI users on github is such a quick way to avoid most slop and get advanced notice when an existing project has started going into tech/cognitive debt.

You'll get a warning banner for those repos if you go to these users and block them:

- github.com/claude

- github.com/cursoragent

- github.com/gemini-code-assist

---

Example of the warning banner and more discussion here: https://mastodon.social/@mcc/116115453811522063

AbanoubRodolfMar 27, 2026, 3:48 AM
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herskoMar 27, 2026, 3:27 PM
Cool project!
achilleMar 27, 2026, 4:40 AM
i registered for their demo and it seems to be unable to do any of the advertised features. nearly everything crashes; feels like a ux wireframe not yet wired it
smgdkngtMar 27, 2026, 12:11 PM
That's strange. I use it daily myself and some of my clients do too (to communicate with me). The main tools work reasonably well for us. There are definitely rough edges and bugs still, it's a one-person project.
hikaru_aiMar 27, 2026, 7:16 AM
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