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WeAreDevelopers LIVE • Oct 2, 2024

Starting business without breaking the bank: Self hosted OSS productivity ecosystem

Den Prysukhin

Tired of draining your startup's budget on per-user SaaS fees? Reclaim your data sovereignty. Learn to architect a self-hosted open-source productivity stack for under 80 dollars a month.

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#1 about 3 min

Introducing the self-hosted open source ecosystem

Why starting businesses need cost-effective open source alternatives to expensive proprietary toolkits.

#2 about 4 min

Identifying essential software categories for business operations

The foundational software categories required to run a business efficiently.

#3 about 4 min

Calculating the cost of proprietary software subscriptions

How software-as-a-service pricing scales as businesses grow and require more tools.

#4 about 3 min

Choosing self-hosted infrastructure for privacy and control

Why a client chose to self-host their entire toolchain to maintain data security and ownership.

#5 about 3 min

Selecting open source tools for communication and documentation

Evaluating open source choices like Wiki.js and NocoDB for knowledge bases and database management.

#6 about 1 min

Adopting open source frameworks for customer relationship management

Using ERPNext to handle business operations and provide a foundation for custom plugins.

#7 about 5 min

Managing large-scale file storage and synchronization internally

Leveraging Seafile for fast and reliable synchronization of massive project files.

#8 about 2 min

Organizing task tracking and project management workflows

Implementing Wekan for Kanban boards, OpenProject for waterfall management, and Kimai for time tracking.

#9 about 3 min

Deploying self-hosted source code management and continuous integration

Choosing lightweight tools like Gitea and Drone CI over resource-heavy alternatives.

#10 about 5 min

Centralizing access with open source identity management providers

Integrating multiple self-hosted tools into a unified ecosystem using identity management solutions like Zitadel and Authentik.

#11 about 2 min

Securing team credentials using self-hosted password managers

Replacing proprietary password vaults with Vaultwarden to securely share credentials across teams.

#12 about 6 min

Architecting docker deployments with reverse proxies and offsite backups

Deploying containerized environments via Ansible on bare metal servers using Traefik and Backblaze.

#13 about 3 min

Implementing secure network tunnels on managed cloud infrastructure

Using Cloudflare Zero Trust to safely expose internal applications hosted on DigitalOcean.

#14 about 2 min

Evaluating the labor costs of self-hosted open source solutions

Balancing the savings of open source software against the hidden costs of maintenance and operational labor.

Matching moments

4:45 min

Questions on open-source vision and developer autonomy

Jan Steffen · LIVE

6:16 min

Shifting towards digital sovereignty and open source infrastructure

Chris Heilmann +2 · LIVE

58 sec

Replacing commercial AI APIs with self-hosted open source models

Cedric Clyburn Cedric Clyburn +1 · World Congress 2025

5:01 min

Fueling major tech companies and the open source ecosystem

David Heinemeier Hansson David Heinemeier Hansson +1 · Coffee With Developers

2:39 min

Discussing open-source possibilities and identifying viable team sizes

Dubravko Dolic +1 · World Congress 2021

9:59 min

Evaluating platform adoption and orchestration complexity for teams

Hannes Norbert Göring · LIVE

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Upcoming sessions on this topic

Open session

World Congress 2026 North America

September 25, 2026 · 13:30–14:00

Stage 3

Lessons from 20 Years of Bootstrapping an Open Source Business to $50M+

Peter Farkas

Percona, Founder

Peter Farkas
Open session

World Congress 2026 North America

September 25, 2026 · 13:30–14:00

Stage 9

On the Public Clock: Open-Source Defense When You're Not in the Club

Nicholas Muy

VP Engineering Platform and Security at Scrut.io

Nicholas Muy
Open session

World Congress 2026 North America

September 24, 2026 · 11:40–12:10

Stage 3

Stop Running Mystery Meat in Production

Jeroen van Erp

Technical Advocate @ SUSE

Jeroen van Erp
Open session

World Congress 2026 North America

September 24, 2026 · 11:00–11:05

Outdoor Stage

Alexander Varro and Alija Nuredini - Founders OS for replacing operational fragmentation

Alexander Varro, Alija Nuredini

Alexander Varro
Alija Nuredini
Open session

World Congress 2026 North America

September 24, 2026 · 12:15–12:45

Stage 6

AI vs. AI: Defending the open source supply chain with agentic workflows

Manfred Moser

Senior Principal DevRel Engineer at Chainguard

Manfred Moser
Open session

World Congress 2026 North America

September 25, 2026 · 16:50–17:20

Stage 4

Engineering Moneyball: How We Benchmarked Google vs Meta

Jirka Bachel

Co-Founder & CEO

Jirka Bachel

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