FOSSBilling -- First Release Since Rebranding From BoxBilling

Not_OlesNot_Oles Hosting ProviderContent Writer

https://discord.com/channels/747432407757488179/902277631850971146/1048306629386457170

https://github.com/FOSSBilling/FOSSBilling/releases/tag/0.1.0

From the highlights section of the above linked Github page: "Initial Proxmox support, we don't recommend you to run it on production yet but contributions appreciated."

The license seems to be Apache 2.0: https://github.com/FOSSBilling/FOSSBilling/blob/main/LICENSE

Sorry, personally I haven't yet used FOSSBilling or BoxBilling or any billing platform except as a customer. I'm not using Proxmox at the moment either. So I can't provide recommendations. However, it seems excellent to me that the Community might have available a free and open source billing platform that soon might integrate with Proxmox.

Congrats to FOSSBilling! 🌟Friendly greetings from New York City and the Sonoran Desert! πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡ΈπŸ—½πŸ‡²πŸ‡½πŸœοΈ

I hope everyone gets the servers they want!

Β«1

Comments

  • a demo or read-only site would be great, or at least some screenshots?

    looking forward to see it competing with whmcs (if that what they're after)

    Fuck this 24/7 internet spew of trivia and celebrity bullshit.

  • Not_OlesNot_Oles Hosting ProviderContent Writer

    FOSSBilling has a website and a Github.

    The website has a Discord invite.

    On Discord, Cosmii02 said he set up a demo site.

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    I hope everyone gets the servers they want!

  • MichaelCeeMichaelCee Hosting ProviderOGServices Provider

    I am not ashamed to admit I used BoxBilling at one time (okay, I’m slightly ashamed) so I’m looking forward to whatever this new iteration is and having more things in the modern market.

  • This line:

    Initial support for our new extension store.

    Indicates that project will be stripped as much as possible and paid addons to make it usable in true production environment will be sold. I have very little hope that this gonna be good.

    Thanked by (2)AuroraZero webcraft
  • edited December 2022

    Indicates that project will be stripped as much as possible

    Yes completely true. No need to include everything out of the box if we can support "downloading" a lot of modules like a forum don't belong in a billing system and a lot of users don't need a lot of features...

    And putting everything in separate "repos" will allow for easier maintenance. And allows updating "modules" at a different rate then the core software...

    paid addons to make it usable in true production environment will be sold.

    Wordpress also has a plugin database is it bad? No way maybe it should be called different but there are no plans for paid modules.

  • edited December 2022

    People ought to donate money to stable and widely used Free and Open Softwares (like OpenSSL, curl, ilovexjp, etc).
    I mean some softwares have been indispensible while maintained by developers with little support from the public?

    Ordinary people should donate a little, for example 0.99 USD or 0.01 USD annually will make difference.

    Some companies should donate more, for example Facebook, Elon Marx will be dead if some dependent softwares get broken.

    No one can image the SpaceX without GNU packages.

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  • welcome back Tom

    we haven't spoke in a while

    hopefully all is well from your side.

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  • @jaapmarcus said: .. at a different rate then the core software...

    Doesn't bode well. :|

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  • @bliss said:
    People ought to donate money to stable and widely used Free and Open Softwares (like OpenSSL, curl, ilovexjp, etc).
    I mean some softwares have been indispensible while maintained by developers with little support from the public?

    Ordinary people should donate a little, for example 0.99 USD or 0.01 USD annually will make difference.

    This. If we all chipped in a bit to support free and open source software, we’d have loads of decent free and open source software and Microsoft could suck our collective hairy ballbags.

  • @Nekki said:

    @bliss said:
    People ought to donate money to stable and widely used Free and Open Softwares (like OpenSSL, curl, ilovexjp, etc).
    I mean some softwares have been indispensible while maintained by developers with little support from the public?

    Ordinary people should donate a little, for example 0.99 USD or 0.01 USD annually will make difference.

    This. If we all chipped in a bit to support free and open source software, we’d have loads of decent free and open source software and Microsoft could suck our collective hairy ballbags.

    Open source collectives lacks drive and centralization. Which is abundant in corporations. Money alone, without proper guidance, will lead to corruption and eventually exit scam. So, first let the idea mature like a 40+ woman. Than spread it for those donations.

    A good example what I mean that software is essentially free, but vital "modules" are paid:

    https://freescout.net/

    Still, a very good software for small loads.

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  • bikegremlinbikegremlin ModeratorOGContent Writer

    @legendary said:

    @Nekki said:

    @bliss said:
    People ought to donate money to stable and widely used Free and Open Softwares (like OpenSSL, curl, ilovexjp, etc).
    I mean some softwares have been indispensible while maintained by developers with little support from the public?

    Ordinary people should donate a little, for example 0.99 USD or 0.01 USD annually will make difference.

    This. If we all chipped in a bit to support free and open source software, we’d have loads of decent free and open source software and Microsoft could suck our collective hairy ballbags.

    Open source collectives lacks drive and centralization. Which is abundant in corporations.

    Go on...

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  • @AlwaysSkint said:

    @jaapmarcus said: .. at a different rate then the core software...

    Doesn't bode well. :|

    Why not? We do plan to have regular updates but maintaining 50 different payment systems doesn't work. It depends on the community..

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  • @jaapmarcus said: Why not?

    Software full of simple spelling mistakes?

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  • edited December 2022

    Hello, I am from the FOSSBilling team. I hope you are all doing well.
    It seems like you have already met Jaap. I am here to add to what he said and correct some of his messages.

    First of all, this seems like a great community. I didn't know this forum existed until today, but I already like it.

    I would like to provide some background information. The majority of the team that formed FOSSBilling and currently manages it is the same team that maintained BoxBilling before we moved our organization. The original author of BoxBilling kept access to critical infrastructure to himself and did not give us access when we asked. He was the only owner in the GitHub organization, we did not have access to the domains or the linked Cloudflare account, and we couldn't read any emails.

    The project had been dead for over five years before we attempted to revive it in 2020, and it was difficult to do all of the necessary work with limited access to everything. Just like in the five years before 2020, he wasn't really interested in keeping the project alive and only participated in discussions occasionally.

    At some point this year, we felt like it was enough and decided to move the project to a new organization. We formed a steering committee made of (currently six) people who had equal rights over the project. We also decided to make all of our income and expenses transparently visible on our Open Collective account, and we make decisions about the project openly on the Discord server whenever possible.

    @legendary said:
    This line:

    Initial support for our new extension store.

    Indicates that project will be stripped as much as possible and paid addons to make it usable in true production environment will be sold. I have very little hope that this gonna be good.

    No, we don't have a plan like that.

    I can't predict what the future will bring, but the whole reason it was named "extension store" is because it was named that way in BoxBilling. We didn't give much thought to it and kept it that way.

    But as our extension "store" has only free and open-sourced modules, themes and server/payment/domain registrar adapters right now, I also feel like the name can be misleading and we've already started looking for a new name for it. I would appreciate any suggestions.

    The extension store also gives us great flexibility. We can release updates for our modules without needing to release a new version for the whole system. We can be faster with our updates to the individual modules, and separating them from the core to their own repositories helps us track their issues and pull requests separate from the core system.

    We also want to get some help from the community for our module catalogue whenever we can. Maintaining the core already is a time-consuming job and without the community giving a helping hand, we have to build the front end, maintain implementations with the server and payment software, work on the documentation and give support to the users all at the same time. If we had more people from the community interested in some of these tasks, we could focus on the core and let other teams handle the others.

    @bliss said:
    People ought to donate money to stable and widely used Free and Open Softwares

    Absolutely. Neither the project nor we can survive without funding.
    Right now, we are just working on FOSSBilling in our free time. Your donations can help us keep the project sustainable both for us and the community in the long term. We want to keep advancing FOSSBilling and make it a viable alternative to similar proprietary and encoded software. But we also have jobs and other responsibilities that consume our time.

    Donations are a big motivator, and maybe they can even help us replace our full-time jobs with open-source development in the future? Who knows.

    @legendary said:
    Open source collectives lacks drive and centralization. Which is abundant in corporations. Money alone, without proper guidance, will lead to corruption and eventually exit scam. So, first let the idea mature like a 40+ woman. Than spread it for those donations.

    I absolutely agree. There is no way to make sure corruption is completely eliminated, but we promote transparency and accountability, which can make it more difficult for corruption to take hold. We also have our complete source out there in the open. Everyone can get to audit the code and expose any malfeasance in the codebase when found. We're confident about our team, and keeping everything transparent helps us validate our trust with our community in a concrete manner.

    @AlwaysSkint said:
    Software full of simple spelling mistakes?

    Yes, the software was written with poor grammar pre-2020 and still has many of them left. We did our best about it after we revived the project. I also would appreciate your pull requests if you want to help.


    Before I forget, here is our socials if you want to follow the news. I'm hoping it's okay to post them here, feel free to remove if it isn't.

    Twitter: https://twitter.com/FOSSBilling
    Mastodon: https://fosstodon.org/@fossbilling
    Discord: https://fossbilling.org/discord

  • bikegremlinbikegremlin ModeratorOGContent Writer

    @evrifaessa said:
    Hello, I am from the FOSSBilling team. I hope you are all doing well.
    It seems like you have already met Jaap. I am here to add to what he said and correct some of his messages.

    Hello and welcome. :)

    Thank you for taking the time to provide some first-hand info.

    But as our extension "store" has only free and open-sourced modules, themes and server/payment/domain registrar adapters right now, I also feel like the name can be misleading and we've already started looking for a new name for it. I would appreciate any suggestions.

    I suggest "Johnson."

    "Johnson Extension modules."

    OK, OK, I'll see myself out...
    :)

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  • edited December 2022

    Simply, Extension Repository?

    @evrifaessa For clarification purposes, I was referring to this..

    @jaapmarcus said: .. at a different rate then the core software...

    Just ask @FrankZ ;)
    "Frank, get the door" ref. Janey Godley

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  • @AlwaysSkint said:

    @jaapmarcus said: .. at a different rate then the core software...

    If you meant the typo, Jaap isn't an English native and might not be the best at communicating in English but he has great contributions to the project and is an important part of the team.

    Where we have shortcomings, we complete each other. We fix typos in each others' pull requests if we notice them.

  • edited December 2022

    LMFTFY

    @evrifaessa said: ..we complete compete with each other..

    My comments on than/then are always "tongue-in-cheek" for non-native speakers and primarily directed at those who can't differentiate between draw/drawer & bought/brought. (Guess who?) ;)
    Keep at the open sauce! :D

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  • What does this actually do? Is it a replacement for WHMCS? What language is it written in? Thanks.

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  • @willie said:
    Is it a replacement for WHMCS?

    Yeah.

    @willie said: What language is it written in?

    It's written in PHP.

  • I wouldn't mind knowing more about this project. Like a demo and what extensions are currently available.

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  • bikegremlinbikegremlin ModeratorOGContent Writer

    For those unaware, @AlwaysSkint is LES' very own, advanced spill cheek AI written in Turbo Pascal by a drunk Serbian.

    To our astonishment, the AI has apparently become self-aware. Do not argue - just check your spilling before posting anything, as the AI is known to have a temper.

    As it is running on the same Arduino with a USB stick in @Not_Oles bathroom as the whole LES forum, and no amount of rakija has enabled us to understand (much less replicate the code), we're sort of stuck, for better or for worse.

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  • edited December 2022

    BTW, did you knew that FOSSBilling looks similar to https://fosshost.org/ , which is going belly up in a drama (?):

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33848529

  • @evrifaessa extension hub :)

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  • edited December 2022

    @legendary said:
    BTW, did you knew that FOSSBilling looks similar to https://fosshost.org/ , which is going belly up in a drama (?):

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33848529

    Can you elaborate? I’d like to clear any confusion and I don’t know how we look similar except the name.

  • @evrifaessa said:

    @legendary said:
    BTW, did you knew that FOSSBilling looks similar to https://fosshost.org/ , which is going belly up in a drama (?):

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33848529

    Can you elaborate? I’d like to clear any confusion and I don’t know how we look similar except the name.

    Yes, the name similarity. Why fossbilling? Few alternatives:

    Freebilling
    OSbilling
    OpenBilling

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  • Don't see an issue with the name being similar, after all, the only shared part is "FOSS".
    Congrats on the release!

    I used BoxBilling for a short while when it first came out, going to star the project to follow along.

    Thanked by (2)evrifaessa Not_Oles
  • BlaZeBlaZe Hosting ProviderOG
    edited December 2022

    I would seriously donate $ in 4 figures via crypto if Celsius starts its withdrawals!

    I want to see this become stable & popular AF so that WHMCS can be replaced!

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  • @BlaZe said:
    I would seriously donate $ in 4 figures via crypto if Celsius starts its withdrawals!

    I want to see this become stable & popular AF so that WHMCS can be replaced!

    Just use one of the others πŸ˜„

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