Cal.com (was Calendso) - Calendly Alternative

[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.

[jdaviescoates]

@roofboard it's nothing to do with me

[marcusquinn]

Looks like there's a Pull Request related to the bounty on this:

• https://github.com/calcom/cal.com/issues/3026
• https://github.com/calcom/cal.com/pull/8561

Give it your emoji support

[dev-cb]

What can we do to get this rolling? Since cal.com is now also working with SOGo quite well (it wasn’t at all for quite a while) I hope that there is some movement in the package development

[girish]

@dev-cb The last we checked this was not so easy to selfhost. But now, it seems, they moved to a monorepo and atleast the instructions seem quite simple. Time to give this another try...

[marcusquinn]

Seems they are generally supportive of it being on Cloudron, in at least making it compatible, I think the rest is our side of the packaging job.

[dev-cb]

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

Time to give this another try...

Thanks for the response and your will to give it fresh start!

[sparkwise]

While these two relevant issues (https://github.com/calcom/cal.com/issues/3026 and https://github.com/calcom/cal.com/issues/6780) remain open, it looks like a PR was merged and released in 2.9.5 a few weeks ago that addressed both of these: "feat: Make database optional when building" (https://github.com/calcom/cal.com/pull/8561)

[ajtatum]

Honestly, not having this and the lack of new apps for businesses was the reason I didn't renew my subscription. Cloudron is definitely the easiest solution to work with, but for $150 a year I anticipated more apps being released over the past year.

[marcusquinn]

@ajtatum There's no lack of willing to package apps, the issues more come from the apps themselves having difficulties in working with a locked-down Docker setup, and the author's don't have to make their apps compatible if they prefer to use unusual stack setups.

Sure you can package them in vanilla Docker, but then you have all the maintenance and debugging that app store managed apps have done for you.

FWIW, if you didn't already look, Easy Appointments is already available:

• https://easyappointments.org/

And these are free Wordpress plugins options:

• wordpress.org/plugins/wpcal/
• wordpress.org/plugins/vikappointments/

Cal.com does look great, and I've seen the 95% of work done on it to attempt to make is Cloudron-easy as an app store app, but sometimes that last 5% is many times more work, and then author negotiation, than the 95% part.

I guess that's the thing about open-source, no-one is entitled to anything, it's always going to be a best effort at the time offering.

If you want guarantees, then you can always subscribe to cal.com directly, and influence their development directly.

I think the expectation that Cloudron fixes every apps inadequacies to package and maintain and make easy for all, is always going to need some pragmatism.

As they say, you can pay with your money, or with your time, at least you have that freedom of choice and voice here.

[potemkin_ai]

@ajtatum if you don’t mind me asking - what is an alternative for ~11$/month?