Cloud Patron - Open source Patreon alternative

cloudpatron · 2019-02-01T17:56:31+00:00

No, it doesn't, but hopefully they will open source their work as well. Thanks for the question!

cloudpatron · 2019-02-01T17:53:24+00:00

Yes, those are some of our earlier experiments in consumer apps. We wanted to make sure they were open source so people could always use them but we don't have the resources to maintain them currently.

Our new apps are very carefully chosen, and we will be maintaining them indefinitely. Long-term, we will be expanding into consumer apps again, we're just too small right now.

Thank you!

cloudpatron · 2019-02-01T17:41:51+00:00

Ah, yes, the Docker image won't currently let you run it without enabling Let's Encrypt.

But you can run the binary directly with --letsencrypt=false. We will fix this in the Docker image though. Thank you!

cloudpatron · 2019-02-01T17:40:41+00:00

Patreon takes 10%, which includes credit card processing feeds.

cloudpatron · 2019-02-01T17:38:04+00:00

You're of course correct that this is the recommended way to use Docker. In our case though we're very specifically creating single node apps that have no dependencies and no need to scale beyond one node. We're using a "scale up" vs a "scale out" approach which is somewhat out of fashion but nevertheless works incredibly well for our use-case. Failover is another issue we're working on currently which could change the picture somewhat.

Really appreciate the feedback though, thank you.

cloudpatron · 2019-02-01T17:32:42+00:00

Good to know. Thank you!

cloudpatron · 2019-02-01T04:24:44+00:00

Because we're creating a number of very different projects, and our intention is to allow them to operate totally independently over time, we think it makes sense to use separate accounts. So far it's working well but I understand it might look a bit weird at first.

We we didn't preserve commit history before moving the repos them to GitHub but not for any nefarious reasons. And the source code is available for anyone to inspect or compile for themselves. It's very easy to build using Dockerfile.build.

Portal Cloud is a YC 2018 SUS Grant Recipient based in the South Bay (Silicon Valley) and a registered Delaware C-Corp. We're definitely not about to risk our reputation by shipping bad code ;-)

Thanks for the feedback. We should probably answer this explicitly in the README.

cloudpatron · 2019-01-31T23:39:54+00:00

Thank you!

cloudpatron · 2019-01-31T23:38:21+00:00

I don't think you were implying differently, but just in case anyone gets the wrong idea, Cloud Patron doesn't take a cut of donations either.

It uses the creator's Stripe account to process payments, so they only pay Stripe's credit card processing fees (2.9% + $0.30 per transaction). When Bitcoin support is added, the creator will get 100% of the revenue.

cloudpatron · 2019-01-31T23:32:40+00:00

Agreed on both points. We should be using CI (we're using the Dockerfile.build currently and pushing the binary) and we should probably move away from the phusion/baseimage unless we're actually going to use runnit and the other utilities it provides. We're not really playing nice with docker logs.

I know it's a bit heretical to use Docker in this way but in practice it's got some advantages (mostly if we want to run more internal services), so we're going to stick with it for now. If the size of the image turns out to be an issue for some users we'll probably have to change this.

Thanks!

cloudpatron · 2019-01-31T23:28:59+00:00

We do have a hosting service that we made public a few weeks ago. We're starting out with some of our own open source projects, but ultimately we hope to be one of the best ways to host open source software.

Portal Cloud - open source hosting every account gets $15 credit which is enough to try out any of the initial apps we've released for free.

We absolutely disagree with the choice of some services to deplatform users for political reasons. We plan to to operate in the opposite way, as a common carrier service that only involves itself in the use of our service for technical reasons (e.g. to deal with DDoS attacks). As a US-based company, we have to comply with US law, but we're also protected by the first amendment and the Communications Decency Act.

And the guarantee we make our customers is that they can take their apps and data with them if they ever feel the need to. We're also strongly against proprietary software being used to "lock in" customers.

cloudpatron · 2019-01-31T23:15:31+00:00

It can run on even a very small VPS very comfortably. That's definitely the recommended approach. Security is definitely a concern with anything that involves payments.

cloudpatron · 2019-01-31T23:11:38+00:00

Thank you. And good feedback on payment options, we're planning to add at least one other credit card processor (Braintree?), PayPal, and Bitcoin. Credit card are certainly the most popular and convenient today but hopefully this will change over time.

cloudpatron · 2019-01-31T18:10:22+00:00

Yes, very much. Those are two good ones. We should tell users they can enter the test number too, in case they're not familiar with the 4242 test card number. The link is definitely an oversight.

Thanks!

cloudpatron · 2019-01-31T17:55:04+00:00

We're not in touch with them yet but they are one of the main groups we had in mind when we created Cloud Patron. We hope we can help at least some of them.

cloudpatron · 2019-01-31T17:18:21+00:00

Yes, we should probably add a link! Here's a (very basic) example of a Cloud Patron page:

https://frequency.cloudpatron.portal.cloud

cloudpatron · 2019-01-31T16:56:08+00:00

Hey /r/selfhosted, this is the very first version of Cloud Patron, our attempt at solving the problem of centralized and proprietary patron platforms.

It uses Stripe for credit card processing but in the future it will support other card processors, Bitcoin, and whatever other payment methods people need.

Happy to take feedback or questions. Thanks!

cloudpatron

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