Chevereto

[nebulon]

@rodber sorry for this taking so long, but I feel we are a bit talking past each other.

To take a step back, on Cloudron all apps run in a read-only filesystem, the app code has to be provided in an immutable image. So an app package must contain all the code already and cannot download or install itself during first run. There is however a read/write folder provided at /app/data mount point if the app needs this. Sometimes those are config files, data or also plugins installed later.

Since you mentioned that both free and paid versions are a different code base, then they also would have to be different app packages currently.

It is not quite clear to me unfortunately what the implications of the various mentioned methods bootstrap/container-builder/custom image/container registry mean in this context. Packages for our users, once published would reside in our company namespace at docker.io to ensure consistency and availability for as long as we support an app.

I will take another look at where we stand currently for the free version as a start residing at https://git.cloudron.io/cloudron/cheveretofree-app

[timconsidine]

@nebulon I decided to try out Chevereto using self-hosted Caprover.

I noticed this announcement :

We are deeply sorry to inform that we will stop maintaining Chevereto-Free on 2021-12-31 and we won't produce any more releases for it.

We are very sad for doing this, but kindly note that we are just a small 2-person team and we can't afford to gift this edition any longer. We are now focused exclusively in our paid edition, thanks for your support.

Many thanks for using our software! Hope you enjoyed the experience.

Totally understand and respect the decision by Chevereto team.
However I think this makes it a poor candidate for adding to Cloudron. Although Chevereto is very nice app and I was excited to see this in AppWishlist, no-one wants a frozen version.

[nebulon]

@timconsidine actually depends on their licensing model. We are not at all against paid apps delivered through Cloudron. I understand the need to make a living as a small team pouring your time into a great project. Although in this case I guess, the packaging initiative should come from the upstream app from now on. Of course we are happy to assist, it still looks like a solid good app

[rodber]

Well, it seems that I can stir this a little bit.

By when I participated here I had this dilemma regarding editions in Chevereto, that's all over as since 2022-11-30 I've been pushing Open Source Chevereto edition. Here the very first release: https://github.com/chevereto/chevereto/releases/tag/4.0.5 (you can learn more here: https://rodolfoberrios.com/2022/12/01/chevereto-goes-free/)

I also have this container registry with about 28K downloads for Chevereto: https://github.com/chevereto/chevereto/pkgs/container/chevereto and I recently started this DockerHub mirror here: https://hub.docker.com/r/chevereto/chevereto

Chevereto free edition is now available on Pikapods, Vultr Marketplace, DigitalOcean Marketplace and more. I think that it will be a great addition to Cloudron, I mean, come on.

[LoudLemur]

And there is an online demo: https://demo.chevereto.com/
And a Docker: https://github.com/chevereto

[LoudLemur]

@rodber said in Chevereto:

Well, it seems that I can stir this a little bit.

It is brilliant to have the developer here! Thank you for visiting and saying hello. There are good prospects for Chevereto on Cloudron as @nebulon is interested!

[jdaviescoates]

@rodber thanks for making Chevereto! It'd be great to have it on Cloudron.

I just read your blog post https://rodolfoberrios.com/2022/12/01/chevereto-goes-free/

I note that:

Chevereto free edition is for personal usage, this edition doesn't include guest uploads, external storage, spam fight, multi-user, moderation tools and anything that could suit a non-personal service provisioning.

Fair enough.

Are all those restrictions removed/ features added if one purchases at self-hosting licence for $36/year? I think that is probably the case, but I'm not sure as it's a little unclear.

Thanks for clarifying!

[andreasdueren]

@rodber said in Chevereto:

Well, it seems that I can stir this a little bit.

By when I participated here I had this dilemma regarding editions in Chevereto, that's all over as since 2022-11-30 I've been pushing Open Source Chevereto edition. Here the very first release: https://github.com/chevereto/chevereto/releases/tag/4.0.5 (you can learn more here: https://rodolfoberrios.com/2022/12/01/chevereto-goes-free/)

I also have this container registry with about 28K downloads for Chevereto: https://github.com/chevereto/chevereto/pkgs/container/chevereto and I recently started this DockerHub mirror here: https://hub.docker.com/r/chevereto/chevereto

Chevereto free edition is now available on Pikapods, Vultr Marketplace, DigitalOcean Marketplace and more. I think that it will be a great addition to Cloudron, I mean, come on.

Just some feedback: This is the first time I'm finding out about your software and it looks really nice, might even have a use case for it!

However: reading through some of these comments here, then your website in the pricing, faq and blog section, trying to find out what in the end the differences between the free and pro plan are, I eventually found out on the GitHub page. Might want to just copy and paste that list on the website lol

[rodber]

@jdaviescoates Yes, that's right. You get access to all extensive features, check the list here: https://chevereto.com/features#list

Chevereto has two editions (Free and Pro) where Pro has all features included. There may be more editions in the future, like a "Hobby" tier or even an "Enterprise" edition with extra stuff like SSO/LDAP. Will run a survey later this year to determine that offering.

[rodber]

@andreasdueren Sure, that's totally needed. The differences aren't listed on the website yet and the table you saw at GitHub appeared just two days ago: https://github.com/chevereto/chevereto/commit/c43666f8d51c4c26c03b41ee1f68f978b72edc90

I didn't add the comparison table before because I had the intention to let users to try the software on their own and explore it, but I noticed that is so feature rich that such process may take months and it is annoying when you are on a rush.

Thanks for the feedback.

[nebulon]

This is great news @rodber ! We can look into providing a package. I see that there are two distinct packages for paid and free https://v4-docs.chevereto.com/application/installing/installation.html is there a way to migrate somehow between them or would we have to provide two app packages for both editions?

Also is there any description on how to use version pinned packages in a basic LAMP environment?
Further I guess our package startup script would use the cli installer somehow to preconfigure the app with say database creds and all, or is it sufficient to configure the env properly and run some extra steps like database migration?

[rodber]

Hi @nebulon great to see you here.

Ideally you will want to have two container images, one for each edition, because the software packages are different. An alternative could be to provision a special license for Cloudron from which you can build the image and make it available only for your network. I could also provide a private container registry and let the user deal with licensing directly from us, but to move in that direction I need to see some traction first.

Unless you are up to deal with the app layer persistence in which case the process can be made directly from the Chevereto dashboard. For non-docker based provisioning the user can enter the key directly and the system will download and extract the Pro edition filesystem:

I can workaround a lot here, I'm the factory after all.

For basic LAMP there's no special requirements, you require a bunch of libs (imagick, ffmpeg, etc) and from there is just bind the website to the public path. To learn about the HTTP server requirements you can check from line 6: https://github.com/chevereto/docker/blob/4.1/Dockerfile#L6

Perhaps for video uploading you will require to increase the post limits, the usual stuff.

[girish]

@rodber Having multiple packages is fine but in some ways this is your choice to make (we follow whatever the upstream app requires).

It's fine if both the editions are different but still data compatible. If the editions are data compatible, maybe it makes sense to have a single package that has the code for both. This way a user starts with the free edition. Then later when they provide a license the package can switch to the paid edition. This is how we do it for apps like mattermost which have the team edition and enterprise in one package (in mattermost case, the data is compatible and they have documented how to migrate between editions).

I think the important thing for cloudron package itself is: we need to be able to pin the app to a specific version. This, in turn, means that the app source needs to be "available" at build time and not at install time.

[rodber]

Data (uploads, assets and database) is compatible between editions. What changes is the actual application filesystem, it must be a different container image for the application layer.

[nebulon]

@rodber is the actual paid version code which could be in a public Docker image or is that code protected by some license for actual downloading?

[rodber]

Open Source edition is available through public registry (GitHub CR, DockerHub). For the paid editions you need to build locally as we don't have a private container registry yet.

To access the proprietary code users provide the license key in some build process that I streamlined for them. They fill some env file and the thing does the building for them. Here the pure docker builder: https://github.com/chevereto/docker/blob/4.1/docs/PURE-DOCKER.md#build-image

[nebulon]

Thanks for the info on that. I don't think this will work on Cloudron though, as apps run in a read-only filesystem for various reasons so building the app assets within the running container will probably not work then.

Also for further context, Cloudron does not use upstream docker images. We use docker as a container runtime, but in order to provide tested updates, we build our own images with various constraints to keep things manageable, so even if a private registry would exist, we can't use those currently.

Not sure how to proceed here then and if it makes any sense for you to proceed with only the free version as a package as that wouldn't really give you much incentive as it is without a potential path for the users to get the full version

[rodber]

Go ahead with the Open Source edition only. Need an incentive?: This means giving another app for your users.

What happened here is that you saw paid software and you want a piece of the action. I gave you options you gave me less, no big deal.

Here's how it's made: Reach me when you get 100 users running the Open Source edition I will grant you an exclusive license to host Chevereto Lite (not yet released) for free for your users during a year. After that let's settle a license fee that will keep you competitive. If you want to keep talking business of course.

[nebulon]

I feel I wrongly framed my answer. This was not intended to seek out an incentive on our side. More like explaining and also asking, if we package the open source edition only, if this somehow conflicts with your view on this. Our goal is not to sell or resell apps, but the platform/runtime to run them, so where possible we try to understand the views of the upstream authors like yourself.

Due to the constraints on our platform side, we always take the responsibility on the app packages itself, didn't intend to make it sound like the work will be on your side.