Cal.com (was Calendso) - Calendly Alternative

[jdaviescoates]

@tshirt-chihuahu yeah, I've been using the hosted version for a while now and I really like it!

For my use cases at least their integration with Nextcloud now works great after they ironed out various issues, so I'd love to be able to easily selfhost it on Cloudron as is!

[jdaviescoates]

2.4 is available

https://github.com/calcom/cal.com/releases/tag/v2.4.0

This is getting so good.

[3699n]

I would be interested to know what priority the Cloudron team has for bringing Cal.com to Cloudron. To me it seems like a killer feature, and I don't quite understand why there has been so little input from them in this thread recently.

Is there a public app roadmap of some sort?

[nebulon]

We actually wanted to package that already but mostly main bits of the app are not even public as far as I can tell. The main repo references git repos which are not available to the public: https://github.com/calcom/cal.com/tree/main/apps

[3699n]

@nebulon Interesting. I wasn't aware of that. Aren't all the necessary parts of the project public to deploy it on Cloudron? https://github.com/calcom/docker

[nebulon]

@3699n I maybe misunderstand their repo structure, but as far as I can tell the backend is not open source, only the frontend assets are.

[jdaviescoates]

@nebulon I don't think that can be right. They certainly claim that it is fully self-hostable, it's deployable on Heroku, Railway, Vercel and Render, and I'm pretty sure I've seen people on Twitter saying they are self-hosting it.

In this Tweet by Cal.com back in July 2022 they claim over 10,000 people were already self-hosting:

https://twitter.com/calcom/status/1559246473853812736

And here is one of the founders and Co-CEOs saying people are self-hosting it:

https://twitter.com/peer_rich/status/1553123068289187840

And this one from 11 days ago saying they are putting in a lot of work to make self-hosting easier

https://twitter.com/peer_rich/status/1610967646652059650

Presumably you have already looked at that docker link?

https://github.com/calcom/docker

Perhaps ask for help/ clarification in their Slack? https://cal.com/slack

I've also just directly asked them on Twitter here and invited them to chime into this thread:

https://twitter.com/jdaviescoates/status/1615088837520228370

Edit:

Seems there are some issues with slowness when selfhosting though:

https://twitter.com/peer_rich/status/1610726994525945857

Also, I've now asked about this in their Slack too:

https://calendso.slack.com/archives/C01NXDSRY9W/p1673902893871239

[chetbaker]

As far as I understand, it can be selfhosted.

I've done it myself in the past (not being a developer) using an heroku instance.

[marcusquinn]

@jdaviescoates Good initiative. If the community here can find the source, then I'm sure we can package it. Need some community help on the research and enlightenment though, as it's not been obvious to us.

[A Former User]

@marcusquinn The source can be found at: https://github.com/calcom/cal.com/tree/e05bcf98c2348d2c322665fa752350134d7c74bb/apps/web

api, console, and website are not required for a Cal.com instance.

api: Both REST API endpoints and tRPC resolvers
console: This is the admin console they use to manage their instance internally
website: Landing page

Please see this issue for reference: https://github.com/calcom/cal.com/issues/1581

[alishahbaz]

@nebulon Hey, I'm one of the founding engineers at Cal.com, @jdaviescoates invited me here to clarify on the open source state of our app. Cal.com is a COSS which means, it is commercialized open source software. So there are parts of the app that are not open source only for enterprise customers. But the backend and front end of the app are definitely all open source and that's why so many developers are able to contribute to the app. I hope this clarifies things for you.

[jdaviescoates]

Hey @alishahbaz many thanks for chiming in here

I have to say though, that hasn't really clarified much for me at all.

@alishahbaz said in Cal.com (was Calendso) - Calendly Alternative:

So there are parts of the app that are not open source only for enterprise customers.

I'm not exactly sure what you are saying here.

I think was you're saying is: that for enterprise customers only some parts are NOT open source.

Is that correct? If so, which parts?

Also, importantly, who counts as an enterprise customer?

Does this "some parts not open source" effect people who wish to self-host? (which is our concern here).

If so, which people, and under what circumstances?

@alishahbaz said in Cal.com (was Calendso) - Calendly Alternative:

But the backend and front end of the app are definitely all open source and that's why so many developers are able to contribute to the app

That's great, thanks.

But what we're looking for more clarity on here is not whether or not developers are able to contribute (although that is of course related - and of course it's also possible to contribute as a non developer, as I have already done so multiple times by reporting bugs and letting you debug bugs on my system): it is more whether or not users are able to self-host the complete stack, and if so, how exactly can they do that?

To be clear, I am only using and promoting Cal.com because I am under the impression that it is fully open source and self-hostable.

But I'm beginning to wonder if I should instead be publicly criticising it for "open washing" (I'm still reserving judgement on this - it sounds like it perhaps is currently possible to self-host the full stack for non-enterprise customers, but that at present that is rather complicated and not for the faint hearted - especially given very experienced developers like @nebulon can't work out how to do it)

Thank you in advance for any further clarification you can provide on the topics mentioned, to recount:

1. Who counts as an "enterprise" customer?
2. What is/ is not open source for such customers?
3. Can enterprise/ non-enterprise customers self-host the full stack (even if parts of it are not open source for the enterprise customers, whoever they are)
4. How exactly can they do that?

[nebulon]

thanks for everyone chiming in here and @alishahbaz for the clarification. Generally we don't mind if open source or not, as long as we can build an app package. Seems like I got confused about the subrepo style there and somehow thought only pre-built docker images for the backend parts are delivered.

Anyways we will start looking into getting the app into the library soon.

[jdaviescoates]

@nebulon said in Cal.com (was Calendso) - Calendly Alternative:

Anyways we will start looking into getting the app into the library soon.

[jdaviescoates]

@jdaviescoates said in Cal.com (was Calendso) - Calendly Alternative:

I've also just directly asked them on Twitter here and invited them to chime into this thread:
https://twitter.com/jdaviescoates/status/1615088837520228370

Just for completeness, here is the response I received:

https://twitter.com/peer_rich/status/1615298951510429696

[3699n]

@nebulon Amazing! Thank you!!

[marcusquinn]

Not as easy as first hoped for packaging. In the meantime, here's a reasonable and free Wordpress plugin that offers a subset of this kind of feature:

• https://wpcal.io/

[jdaviescoates]

@marcusquinn I'm happily using the hosted cal.com service myself.

It's pretty much the only service like this that integrates with self-hosted caldav calendars.

[jdaviescoates]

2.8 is out:

https://cal.com/blog/v-2-8

Not only that, but there is now also a $100 bounty on packaging it for Cloudron!

https://github.com/calcom/cal.com/issues/3026#issuecomment-1509352147

[roofboard]

@jdaviescoates
get that bounty up to 1000 and I will spend another week on it and it will be done. -- Already half way there.