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?
Edit: No I can’t just send my colleges here https://anubis.techaro.lol/docs/admin/botstopper The issue is they find the Mascot and domain weird, they will still run into both.
My Goal: Recommend a Open-Source bot protection tool
The Issue: When I send my coworkers to https://anubis.techaro.lol/docs/admin/botstopper they find the mascot and URL weird.
Result: They don’t see Anubis as a serious tool and turn away from it
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.
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.
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…
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.
Open-Source sadly shooting itself in the foot again because of hills they choose to die on.
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.
Well, only if you assume the end goal is to make profit from the various businesses out there.
Anubis provides a non-cutesy version. The only one dying on a hill here is you guys refusing to consider it.
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.
being cringe
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 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.
Removed by mod
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’.
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.
As I said, I presume the latter. Hence the blurb.
I don’t know what is happening any more
Removed by mod
deleted by creator
I think people are right that the solution here isn’t to try a different project.
Instead of being confrontational about it, though, I’d recommend a different aproach.
evelyn: .lol 😜
you: I know! I know. The branding is pretty silly. But this really is the right tool for the task. Unesco and Wikimedia use it. And we can do our own branding for $50/month. 🤷
A lot can be fixed by just acknowledging people. They’re trying to evaluate something they don’t understand, and having a reaction. It’s not even unreasonable. The right thing to do is just acknowledge and move on.
Usually that’s all it takes. Don’t let yourself be embarrassed when you’re being reasonable. If they won’t move on, that’s the point where I start thinking about job applications somewhere else.
This is because you are mature, you came up with the mature response.
My response was basically something along those lines. But it’s still DOA, because that coworker now has to sell it to their team, and they won’t.
Another team asked for your input, and you gave your input. If they don’t want to take your input then what does it matter?
Lost opportunity for the open source community
How? Having bad people badding about your stuff is bad overall.
“Look, we don’t need to use Photoshop for our shop. There’s an open source option that matches our use case perfectly.”
“What’s it called?”
“Gnu Image Manipulation Program.”
“That’s an awfully long name. They should have a shorter one that’s less of a mouthful to say.”
“…they do not.”
Krita’s pretty close, but unfortunately not quite as close as the program our friend Wilber represents :’)
GIMP blows anyway.
Strawman
Yesssssss?
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.
The type of folks who avoid Anubis because of the mascot don’t deserve good bot protection anyway. Its like reverse gate keeping, the corpo dorks filter themselves out.
It’s Free Software; if they want to change the branding, they can fork it. I say fuck the haters of .lol and anime catgirls.
Corpos might get to use our work gratis (since that’s the only way we can make it libre for everyone), but we don’t have to cater to them.
The mascot is part of the repellent. It will repeal the tech and finance bros.
appeal to tech bros :3 *
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.
Best advice in this entire thread.
Thanks I’ve reached out to them using my EuroSky account on BlueSky
they see a mascot that dont like and then dont use that software because that? how unprofessional
Wait to their reaction when they find out that sports teams mascots are just corporate fursonas.
That’s the business model: make it free to use for any purpose, but charge to change the mascot.
the insane smugness and inability to comprehend that money isnt everything for the creator is astounding “Waaahhh Anubis isn’t gonna get my money cus they chose to look UNPROFESSIONAL” this is why everyone hates corpo guys
edit: I forgot to add the comments elsewhere downright accusing the creator of being a pedo for having an anime furry mascot yeah you guys arent subtle at all
MBAs love getting ripped off.
I’ve been explicitly told not to use any open source for a project. I don’t even know what language I’d write it in. We ended up not even quoting for it in the end.
oh they do want all the shit anubis and other foss projects offers which is why they keep trying to browbeat and bully them whenever they arent soulless slop, see the comment thread elsewhere in this post where a bunch of fucks keep jerking off to their idea of replacing the catgirl with a grey square or something so that muh MaRkEt can get over itself and
take overproperly compensate the projectThey want to criticize the mascot and, what, replace it with some kinda glyphic anus logo like all the “professional” companies with stupid silicon valley-approved names? LOL what high-ground amirite? 😂
You can just do that yourself. Take the logo off.
thats the thing they are explicitly making a brandless soulless alternative you can change the branding for yet there’s still complaints and accusations for how the og software looks
which is what gives me the feeling these aren’t real concerns and is just a way to bully people working for free, if not some sort of astroturf conspiracy by businessmen who want anti-ai tools out of the way
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.
There is a debranded version you can pay for
Look, you suggested software that does the job. The issue is not the software, its that your colleagues are being dismissive and disrespectful.
Instead of looking for other alternatives, you need to be more assertive in your job and career. Tell them you offered an option that does the job and if they have better options its on them to offer them. And also tell them you dont appreciate “lol” as a response to a work suggestion.
Scrambling to find an alternative because your work colleagues are too immature or arrogant to get past an animal character really doea not reflect well on you. Instead you can tell them the company can pay a small amount to have their own branding, or they can go with a more expensive option like cloudflare, just because they can’t be bothered to engage with the cheaper option.
But whatever you do, do not accept this dismissive treatment by your colleagues. You’re just setting the standard that they can just laugh at you and insult you. That is the unprofessional behaviour by them, not some projects mascot. Do not tolerate that BS.
You’ve been perfectly williing to argumentative with people here. Apply that attitude to your colleagues who are the real issue.
I don’t think you understand the problem.
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.
To some people, anubis is weird, there is no changing that. It does the job, the mascot can be changed by paying, but the project itself is weird to some people. Such person is asking, is there an alternative. You cannot just say “push back that is not weird”.
tell them to grow up
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
Great career move, run around telling people to grow up.
Being assertive IS important in your career. Your colleagues are the unprofessional ones here. I would not tolerate someone sending me “lol” in a professional context and would quickly correct that behaviour.
A factual reply is all thats needed “you asked for a solution, this is the solution. Please do not be dismissive or rude. If you want an alternative please look for yourself, just expect the cost to be significantly higher. Otherwise I’m happy to discuss any concerns which are easily addressed such as branding”.
There is a huge difference between being rude and beibg assertive. They’re clearly being rude. You need to be assertive in response.
I think the “lol” is reference to the top level domain being .lol
Arguably even more stupid…
depends on what kind of relationship you have with your colleagues.
In this case, it’s a different team reaching out to me for advice. So zero, and they potentially would have used Anubis, but given the URL and mascot, I doubt it.
There is a corporate friendly way to handle this discussion. Here, I’ll even write it for you:
"Hi [Team],
Thanks for reaching out again about this issue.
I have made two previous attempts to provide guidance on this matter, but my recommendation was dismissed without appropriate consideration due to first-impression aesthetics of a product that is provided for free by a small team of dedicated nerds.
I attempted to explain that a corporate-friendly paid version exists but never got that far in our conversation due to your team’s outright dismissal of the product I know to be both effective and appropriate for your use case.
Due to these circumstances, and your team’s apparent priorities, I recommend you pursue an expensive contract with CloudFlare.
If you change your mind and would like to revisit this matter, I’m happy to set up a meeting to present the details.
Best of luck,
-Ek-Hou-Van-Braai
See here’s the thing - the mascot and URL are serving their purpose to deter the software author’s outsiders. They don’t want your business, it is a social signal being sent and the reception from your coworker? - did it’s job.
End result: Anubis loses a paying customer and big client that throws tens of millions each year at software projects.
Working as intended. Their goal is not a payday.
It is WILD that someone from another team asks for help and replies with “lol” to dismiss your response. You need to correct that behaviour or they will treat you like shit going forward.
No, they are replying about the tld .lol, lol
They didn’t reply “lol” they replied “.lol?” because of the tld. I agree it sounds unprofessional though, who would choose that for their domain if its meant to be a legit/serious tool?
If it is a different team, why wouldn’t you just say that’s your recommendation? Your story isn’t making sense
Life is too short to be all serious all the time, love Anubis logo!
