At work I was asked by a different team how we can deal with bots, because someone in my team remembered that I knew how to do it.
I reluctantly suggested Anubis because I got shit for it last time, This is the URL https://anubis.techaro.lol/
This is the 2nd and last time I will ever recommend Anubis anywhere at work to deal with bots because of how unprofessional, un-serious and weird others perceive it.
The mascot being a ~10 year old “cutsie” anime cat girl is weird in a work setting.
I will never put myself in a situation again where I have to explain that it’s not weird to anyone again, same for that URL.
What is a professional looking open-source alternative to Anubis?
I want to remind everyone to keep on topic. Disparaging people for whatever reason is not on topic.
If you see something problematic, please report rather than respond. Your comment in response will be nuked along with the original problem comment.
I get it that you want to be a worker with a good idea, but after that reaction, I would not give a fuck anymore about what this company needs.
I worked at ‘company’ once that felt bad because it used Blender, not an expensive 3D software, so they bought 3DsMax license only for it to lie down and being unused, but the boss ego was a bit less scratched by using Free stuff. Like those people are fucked up.
Botstopper.
Litterly the same thing but you can customise the image.
https://anubis.techaro.lol/docs/admin/botstopper
You’re a business, support the project.
That URL has all the same issues I mention in my post
If I could send them to eg. botstopper.com where there is no mascot to be found, then that would be a solution.
Host your own redirect then? The cold feet from people like you is kinda the point, Buisnesses should be using the business tier.
I don’t have cold feet, but I need to convince others to want to use the tool.
But when others deem it weird, that doesn’t succeed, and they turn away from Anubis
I need to convince others to want to use the tool.
Why? They asked for options, you gave them the best one, they dismissed it. Let them pay through the nose for the big corporate system if that’s what they want to do.
You need to direct the conversation away from the logo to the actual product. You are having a technical discussion to fulfill a technical need. When someone brings up the logo you do 1 of 2 things.
Option 1. We will get back to that. ( and just don’t, there will be more questions about other things to make people forget)
Option 2.
A. You tell them is a branding thing and we can change it to our own company logo. Or
B. Mock up the page with your logo to show them.It sucks but you need to crank into sales mode and suck up to the manglement team who will ultimately approve the expenditure.
I agree that if you’re a business you should probably just pay so you can change the image.
I’ve been meaning to set up something like https://iocaine.madhouse-project.org/ though, seems interesting.
Paying isn’t the issue, it’s convincing colleagues
When I try to do so they react weirdly and I am just left feeling uncomfortable recommending Anubis because of the reactions I get.
You have ignored the other suggested project in that comment.
Oh my bad, I thought it was just another person pointing me to Anubis’s post about how to remove the logo.
Thanks I will look at that alternative
That URL has all the same issues I mention in my post
If I could send them to eg. botstopper.com where there is no mascot to be found, then that would be a solution.
If this is for work you probably should bring in a professional. There are enterprise solutions for this.
This is selfhosted after all
My client wants to ditch US tech and have a Open-Source division, so they are pro self hosting and open source.
It’s government, so they will frown upon that mascot, and won’t choose it as a tool.
Look at the anubis challenge algorithm, reimplement it, publish it for the rest of your government organizations.
Not my teams job, we won’t get time or budget for that
If they (budget-givers) won’t let you (plural, team) get budget to alternativise the software, that is an indication that the catgirl is not really an issue. Or, alternatively, that to them the catgirl is worth that much money.
if it’s self hosted, just replace the image with your company logo, problem solved.
Is this something I can deploy on my homeland for my web facing services? Or am I miss understanding the purpose
Yes, your reverse proxy serves this and only then the actual service when the client solved it
So it is like a captcha?
Kind of, but your browser needs to solve it (which classic ai scrapers weren’t able to)
So it is not something that a normal user sees like a puzzle you need to solve before accessing a certain service?
The user sees it but just has to wait a bit, see the screenshot in the OP.
Well you can pay 50 USD / month to remove the anime jackal girl and apply your own branding. I think its a fair system: hobby & FOSS projects don’t have to mind being cringe and profit-oriented operations that need to look professional can spare some of their profit for this cool service.
That doesn’t really solve the problem. The problem arises when he presents the product. It’s a very unserious and unprofessional image that professionals see immediately when OP shows them the tool, which causes the project not to be taken seriously. Which is fine, because it’s not really a professional product, and isn’t trying to be. OP should probably just stop trying to present it as such. Any company is going to want something more common with funding and technical support anyway. Most likely what just about everyone else uses (Cloudflare).
This is quite simply solved by using in your presentation a site that already rebrands Anubis.
Explain the business strategy
Open-Source sadly shooting itself in the foot again because of hills they choose to die on.
Anubis provides a non-cutesy version. The only one dying on a hill here is you guys refusing to consider it.
Alternately, Super Serious humourless douchebags pretending to be All Grown Up and overlooking powerful functionality because they don’t like the picture on the box.
Some people need to get over their obsession with appearance and face.
The picture on the box matters, its absurd thinking it doesn’t
Reducto absurdum: Would you buy a car with a big dick and balls for a logo, but you can pay extra to have it removed?
I mean, I’d look at the specs first. Because it’s just a logo. Show me the numbers that actually matter.
That said, there are imagery that would give me pause, obviously. I suspect we’d just draw the line in very different places.
If it harms nobody, let people have fun.
I am not the problem, I don’t care about the mascot.
It’s incorporating it at work that is the issue.
Yes you might buy a car with a dick and balls logo for personal use, but would you try to convince your managers to buy it for the company?
I might, if the specs were good.
Would you buy a car with a big dick and balls for a logo, but you can pay extra to have it removed?
Have you ever seen corporate branded truck nuts? Because I have, and those companies paid to add it in.
Is it really shooting itself in the foot, though? There are plenty of FOSS projects that companies benefit from and never contribute back to, either monetarily, or in the form of writing code. They provide an easy option to make it look more professional while helping to support the project, and you could always fork it and do what you need to with your fork. The idea that developers should do a thankless job to maintain their software in a way that complies with random corporate policies in order to be more widely adopted strikes me as setting up devs to burn out and crash from having all the joy ground out of their projects for them.
UNESCO, the Wikimedia foundation and other major organizations have already implemented it and gotten onboard, so I would suggest your coworkers are being a bit foolish in completely disregarding it because of a single mascot image that has a clear option to replace. The Dev is just saving themselves aggravation from people that were going to make endless demands of them, but most likely balk at actually supporting the project to enable features that only matter to their organization, but not to the Dev themselves or others.
Well, only if you assume the end goal is to make profit from the various businesses out there.
finger touch grep awk cat pip, Red Hat…
Unix. GNU.
Dumb jokes and weird branding kinda comes with the package. People have fun.
I think ‘get over it’ is a pretty reasonable take, overall.
It’s not cringe :(
As a millennial parent to teenage girls who eat this shit up, IMO, it is very cringe.
Millenials are cringe.
I don’t really care. Grown-ass men should not be incorporating underage-appearing anime catgirls in…anything. Ever. It’s weird as shit.
Why do you see an underage girl and immediately make it sexual
…you do understand the very obvious connection between anime catgirls and porn, right?
Literally something that only someone who watches a lot of anime porn would say… Most people don’t instantly make that connection actually. Do your daughters?
https://anubis.techaro.lol/docs/admin/botstopper That URL has all the same issues I mention in my post
If I could send them to eg. botstopper.com where there is no mascot to be found, then that would be a solution.
I am pretty sure the software is self hosted. So what is the issue? The documentation? Bunch of retards.
I feel like you didn’t understand what they are saying. That is the page of their monetization policy, not a demo.
Edit: you don’t like their branding and feel weird about linking there? Make a presentation then.
Or download the .webp
People shouldn’t have to jump through that many hoops to recommend something, that’s ridiculous
People shouldn’t have to jump through that many hoops to recommend something, that’s ridiculous
True, but only for a commercial offering.
False, for free or open source software. Makemkv is the absolute best tool for ripping DVDs and bluerays. It requires being compiled from source in order to be used for free. Anubis charges 50/month to change the branding. These both serve the same purpose; a mild speedbump to encourage paying for the work of the developer.
Anubis’ direct competitor will straight up hold your business hostage and blackmail your company for money when they feel like they can get away with it.
The ‘ridiculous hoops to jump through’ are there for the developers benefit, and are incredibly mild compared to most every other commercial offering. I just don’t see why it matters so much that anubis must change in this way.
The reaction you are describing is not reasonable and large, reputable websites just use Anubis.
Either you are a creep or otherwise come off as creepy due to Audhd things or unwashedness and hence ellicit this reaction or you have a very weird work culture with people being far removed from tech. I presume it is the latter. Hence giving a simple recommendation with condensed information is much more appropriate than just dropping a link and posing a significant challenge to the people in charge. Being scared of being perceived as creepy may also cause you to be perceived as creepy. A potentially great way to phrase it is stating: “look, here is a great, free and secure tool to do this. They come with a weird anime mascot to encourage commercial customers to pay for their software while being free for private and open source users. It’s just 50 Bucks to remove this so we can just do that. If we don’t feel like paying for this we also could just use Anubis directly, but I feel like we should go with their commercial offering.”
Jeeeze I do not even begin to know how to respond to what you just wrote.
You completely misread the situation. Nowhere did I ever say I came across as a creep, I’ve never had that in my life.
Then reply to the entire rest of their message where they said they’re assuming you being a creep isn’t the case…?
As I said, I presume the latter. Hence the blurb.
Why the fuck is the AuDHD drive by audience taking potshot in a sentence equating it with creepiness and unwashed-ness?
Did one of us touch you in a bad spot or something else wrong with you?
Either you are a creep or otherwise come off as creepy due to Audhd things
That is one hell of a leap. Maybe don’t try to diagnose people on the internet?
The reaction you are describing is not reasonable
No, it is. Anubis being unprofessional is by design. It’s run by one person, as a hobby, as of last year. When you aren’t reliant on profit in order to run a project you are able to adjust your priorities away from ‘money at any cost’.
I don’t know what is happening any more
Kinda a genius way to deliver a free service to individuals but force companies to pay for it. Just bung some really cringe pic there…
I imagine Anubis looking like that is because professional settings really should sponsor when using open source.
https://anubis.techaro.lol/docs/admin/botstopper/
https://github.com/sponsors/Xe
That URL has all the same issues I mention in my post
If I could send them to eg. botstopper.com where there is no mascot to be found, then that would be a solution.
You can always contact techaro.lol and ask if they’re willing to setup a secondary domain for you.
Or you can use others endorsements of the product to give it weight.
"The Linux Foundation uses Anubis to protect git.kernel.org and lore.kernel.org and seem very satisfied with the result.
For the low cost of 50USD/Month we get a custom branded version of it.
Thanks I’ve reached out to them using my EuroSky account on BlueSky
Look buddy I understand that URL has the same issue you mention in your post but it is the official Anubis URL.
Thus if you really want to be professional you load up the URL past the anime girl, organize a meeting and share your screen.
Tell them what it is and what it is for.
Explain what is opensource and the fact that this is free only if they accept that anime girl. Otherwise it’ll be 50 bucks and they can put their own ai designed logo instead.
If they are still acting like childs treat them like childs. Recenter the meeting on what it is for. Do a proof of concept. I don’t know, do something instead of stating that the official website is not how you would like it to be ?
That is not always possible, or worth the fight.
Even if I was willing to go through all of that, not everyone is, so what happens is more people turn to cloudflare instead of something Foss
Sounds like you work with a bunch of short-sighted, judgemental simpletons who cannot look past initial aesthetics for a product that has nothing to do with aesthetics.
Tbh I would run far the fuck away from that company if they can’t be bothered to sit down for a meeting where you explain that it’s an open-source project run by an extremely small team of nerds and that there is a commercial product available without the branding issues.
Everything you’re describing about your employer/coworkers gives me giant red-flag warnings regarding their decision making process.
Time to start looking for a new employer, or accept that they’re idiots and next time they ask about bots tell them “I’ve tried explaining this already but you dismissed me for silly reasons, so go pay for CloudFlare and stop bothering me”.
I understand you are just looking for an easy open source project that solves your issue, but it seems fairly obvious to me that your real issue here is that you are not willing to push for your teammates to accept that it is a valid service even if branded a bit oddly.
You should go for the $50 professional tier and get your team to accept that as valid by respectfully asserting yourself instead of wetnoodling and trying to get a different project that requires less assertiveness on your part.
Good luck with your team.
I have tried twice to push it, and both times I’ve gotten weird reactions because of the branding.
It’s not worth it for me to do that again, I wish Anubis had a paid version with a different domain and no cutsie anime girl branding. That would make it significantly easier to sell to me colleagues
You say you have tried to convince them twice. How have you tried to pitch it so far? Like, give us a word for word and we may be able to help you workshop it.
I am not jumping thought hoops at work to fight this battle at work.
IMO, Anubis is no longer a tool I will recommend at work until there is a URL I can point people to without that branding, it being paid is not a issue, work will throw thousands of Euro’s at the issue if they have to. But I will never risk that mascot coming up in a meeting again.
Then don’t recommend it to others. Keep being ashamed of the cute, anime-style picture just because everyone else is embarrassed by it. But that’s not how the world’s problems get solved.
It sounds like you are still just throwing a fit over the fact that the Anubis team has set the logo as what it is.
New suggestion:
Write your own damn anti-bot code.
I think the developer might benefit hearing that point of view. A separate website that only lists the paid tier without displaying the anime branding seems beneficial for them. You could suggest it to them.
That would solve all my problems.
If they can’t stay professional, be the one who does.
Sure, but at the end of the day Anubis will not be used, because of its branding.
Then point out that their way of thinking is unprofessional without saying so directly. That’s what I would do, at least.
There is a way to use something like Anubis without having to deal with the image. But you need to handle it professionally.
Even after doing that, Anubis will not get used. I am in the minority.
Then let happen what needs to happen. The company does not have a simple and cheap solution for fighting bots. Maybe it is better they don’t have such protection.
It is a big problem with a number of opensource projects that could get wider adoption and support, especially from businesses, but seem to, almost deliberately, work against that with their naming and/or branding.
Anubis is a perfect example. In this case the name is ok, and by all means have a cutsey mascot for the basic offering, but if they want businesses to subscribe they need a professional offering. That should be on a separate domain, styled to attract the decision makers in their target market, and that includes having a .com or similar domain name and a more serious logo. Do that, and it becomes a serious contender in the market, rather than a technically good but excessively kooky option.
I think they have a professional offering. You can give them a bit of your money to have a proper branding as you like, or just remove it. The cost-free version is not primarily meant for commercial use. Just stop thinking a company is non-commercial.
It is simply stupid if the companies prejudge a project in such a way, although there would be an offer for them, which is made especially for commercial projects.
They do have a professional offering, but it’s offered in a deeply unprofessional way. Selling to businesses means you need both the technical offering, but also the correct commercial offering. That means presenting yourself in a way that attracts the attention of the decision makers in those businesses, and telling them a compelling story of why your product is the best fit to solce their problem. A .lol domain and a cartoon catgirl doesn’t do that.
I’d suggest that, for the cost of an extra domain name, and a boring logo, they could probably significantly increase their subscriber base. There’s nothing stopping them keeping the current mascot on the current site at the same time.
You call it stupid to prejudge a project in such a way, but businesses need a product to buy, not a project.
I’d suggest that, for the cost of an extra domain name, and a boring logo, they could probably significantly increase their subscriber base.
Here’s an idea. Do this with a giant ass logo. Put a banner underneath it with a link saying something like “Add this for FREE to your own business’ website!”
It would have two main benefits. First, it’s still a giant ad for their project. Second, it would shame the company into sponsoring because now everyone can see how cheap they are.
<rant>
especially from businesses
if they want businesses to subscribe
styled to attract the decision makers in their target market
Do that, and it becomes a serious contender in the market
The market who’s responsible for fucking up the internet? The market that constantly attacks websites with crawlers to steal everything for value extraction, which Anubis fights against? The market that couldn’t care less about you unless you provide value to it, and even then won’t give you a penny unless forced (while building the whole internet on your shoulders)? That market?
Most FOSS devs I know who aren’t forced into it couldn’t give less of a fart about “the market” and capitalists with sticks in their rear ends inside it. The monetization was often just attached to a project because it makes sense given we’re all trapped in capitalism and perhaps have to somehow cover project costs (probably less so for Anubis), not because it’s a goal to attract investment.
People who’re appaled by something so simple such as a .lol domain and a cute mascot sound awful to talk to anyway.
It is a big problem with a number of opensource projects that could get wider adoption and support
I tell you how that “support” looks like. Companies who adopted the software will add your maintainer Email to their business contacts. If there are issues with your software they’ll then usually ignore the developer route and directly write emails to you, and if it’s a big problem for them immediately blame you and threaten legal action, blahblahblah. They’ll treat you like someone they have a support contract with and be completely confused when you tell them to open an issue and that you otherwise don’t care. Meanwhile they’ll build an empire using your software and be a persistent nuisance.
Why should anyone not desperately needing money to survive care about this.
</rant>
100% couldn’t agree more.
They’d easily pay 1000 Euro for a tool like this, and I’d be able to sell it to multiple teams. But after my experience recommending Anubis at work, I will simply never recommend it again until they offer something like you have mentioned.
It’s so frustrating.
Anubis is not out to make money, as such it has absolutely no obligation to try to appeal to corpos who would use it without contributing back to it.
Either your coworkers have to get over their hangups (have they not noticed that some of the best software that exists is made by furries?) or you’ll have to re-implement something yourselves.
Anubis is open source. You COULD fork it and modify it for your own purposes.
If your coworkers can’t separate what a piece of software is able to do from how it is branded, that’s their problem.
Xe Xaio is trying to self fund to replace their day job, so i wouldn’t say there’s no money motivation involved.
It was a slightly uphill battle to get my organization to adopt it for similar reasons but we got there with the branding, and we love botstopper. I put some effort into letting them know just how much it’s blocking.
Yeah, but Xe Xaio also has a full time job that is funding things right now. There’s room for priorities other than profit, such as cute furry art. Not everything has to be about money.
It is good that they’re working towards sustainability though. Lots of devs burn out.
It’s also OP’s problem though, clearly.
Your business deserves to suffer the consequences of being stuck in a juvenile mindset. Simple as. I know it’s not helpful, but there’s no helping your business.
I hope Ms Evelyn W. is otherwise contributing more to the company than the costs she helps cause in technology deficit. But somehow I doubt it.
It’s not my business, and it’s not even them making the decisions. it’s coworkers
have seen this one on the invidious instance i use https://gandalf.nerdvpn.de/
