StartOS facilitates the entire process of discovering, installing, configuring, and using any variety of open-source software from anywhere in the world without trusting anyone.
StartOS facilitates the entire process of discovering, installing, configuring, and using any variety of open-source software from anywhere in the world without trusting anyone.
I really like the idea of user-friendly selfhosting (which is essentially what this company is offering, I mean hell, I’ve had similar business ideas floating around in my head too) BUT any company that has:
an in-the-know marketing team
Any employees that are somewhat technical enough (which should be guaranteed for a company with this sort of product
NOT a scam
Would know what a HUGE risk reputation-wise it is to showcase crypto-related selfhosting on the FRONT page. It’s like a “build-a-red-flag” or “destroy-our-reputation” speedrun. Even IF you want to offer this, anyone in-the-know with at least 3 braincells would bury this deep in the page and make it difficult to find (if they were well-intentioned in the first place) because at this point anything crypto, especially being the main offering, is a huge red flag.
If instead, they offered a nextcloud instance, for example, or Pihole as an adblocker, or some other good and common services, maybe a selfhosted VPN (or maybe not, because of the stupid and misleading ads of VPN companies), they would be seen as 100% more legit.
Edit: Just checked their marketplace and they have:
Jellyfin
Vaultwarden
FreeGPT-2
Gitea
Matrix
Nextcloud
Their own service for TOR pages
Ghost (a blogging platform)
SearxNG (a search engine)
I mean, add Wordpress, Pihole and some other friendly services, and advertise THOSE!!! Build your own Google (SearxNG)! Build your own MS Office online and OneDrive (Nextcloud)! Build your own Github (Gitea)! Build your own Discord (Matrix)! Build your own password manager (Vaultwarden)! Build your own Netflix (Jellyfin)!
True. Tipi, Umbrel and CasaOS are savvy enough to do this. But do you really want to teach more cryptobros to slip their message under the threshold? I’m fine that they show their true goals front and centre, it’s like a note saying “hit me” taped to their backs.
Fair point. But even if they were legit in any way, I’m already positioned not to trust them.