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Show HN: Kan.bn – An open-source alterative to Trello

509 points by henryball 1y ago

appendixv2 1y ago
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- xet7 1y ago
  WeKan https://wekan.github https://wekan.github has email notifications, and notification tray like Trello. You get notifications like becoming assignee by changing board top setting from Muted to Tracking, and also there is red bell icon at right top notification tray like Trello. Currently I mostly use AWS SES. https://github.com/wekan/wekan/wiki/Troubleshooting-Mail https://github.com/wekan/wekan/wiki/Troubleshooting-Mail
voldrix 1y ago
I also made a minimalist Trello clone, but it is single-user (no authentication). Runs on just the basic LAMP stack. https://tellor.cc/ https://tellor.cc/
henryball 1y ago
Hey HN, I couldn’t find an open-source alternative to Trello that I liked so I built my own. It’s fast, free and fully-customisable. You can self host it, or use the cloud version if you don’t want to manage your own infra. Repo -> https://github.com/kanbn/kan https://github.com/kanbn/kan Cloud -> https://kan.bn https://kan.bn Roadmap -> https://kan.bn/kan/roadmap https://kan.bn/kan/roadmap I’d love feedback, bug reports, or any feature suggestions!
- stevekemp 1y ago
  How does it compare to the existing open-source boards, such as: https://wekan.github.io/ https://wekan.github.io/ https://taiga.io/ https://taiga.io/ https://kanboard.org/ https://kanboard.org/
  - walthamstow 1y ago
    Also https://github.com/plankanban/planka https://github.com/plankanban/planka
    - rodnim 1y ago
      I am using Planka for my personal projects. Works great!
    - senorrib 1y ago
      Planka is not open-source.
      - organsnyder 1y ago
        They don't appear to be using an OSI-approved license, but the source code is available. So depending on your use-case that may be an academic distinction.
        kstrauser 1y ago
        Its license has strict limitations on what you can use it for. It’s not open source in any reasonable sense.
        Izkata 1y ago
        It is open source (the code is right there), but it's not Open Source due to what GP references. There is a distinction.
        7839284023 1y ago
        That’s just called „source available“.
        kstrauser 1y ago
        But since [oO]pen [sS]ource has a broadly understood meaning that's different, we shouldn't deliberately use the same description for both ideas. If you want to describe it as "source available", I'll happily go along with it. It's not open source, though. The source is visible, but it's not open to use. I mean, you can find the leaked Windows source code online, but it's not open source just because you can look at it.
- progx 1y ago
  Sorry, but I can't see what is better or other than every existing kanban-tool. I tried it, but you have only drag & drop lists with items and labels, that is all.
  - progx 1y ago
    I don't want to blame you, you have put in a lot of work. My point is, that at the current state, your kanban offers nothing special. It is like the other 1000 kanban boards. I think you should specialize your board for a selected audience. Not a board for all, that kind of boards we have. Example: Kanban with special features for game developement. More visual options, images and not only text. Currently there exists only some really overbloated tools.
- cellularmitosis 1y ago
  Nice project. Some of the workflows could be more keyboard friendly. I started an issue: https://github.com/kanbn/kan/issues/3 https://github.com/kanbn/kan/issues/3
- jpc0 1y ago
  I would love to see webhook support add to this. For many users this isn’t an issue but for use it’s a must have feature. Will stick to trello for the time being.
  - xet7 1y ago
    WeKan https://wekan.github.io https://wekan.github.io has: 1) Per-board webhooks at board right sidebar / Board Settings / Webhooks 2) Global Webhooks at Admin Panel See right menu of https://github.com/wekan/wekan/wiki https://github.com/wekan/wekan/wiki , scroll down to webhooks part of menu. It's possible to send board change events like move card as webhooks, for example to some chat: https://github.com/wekan/wekan/wiki/Outgoing-Webhook-to-Discord https://github.com/wekan/wekan/wiki/Outgoing-Webhook-to-Disc... Or to NodeRED: https://github.com/wekan/wekan/issues/2017 https://github.com/wekan/wekan/issues/2017 or to to some PHP webhook receiver like this, that can use Python code to call WeKan API: https://github.com/wekan/webhook/blob/main/public/index.php#L46 https://github.com/wekan/webhook/blob/main/public/index.php#... https://github.com/wekan/wekan/blob/main/api.py https://github.com/wekan/wekan/blob/main/api.py
    - smartbit 1y ago
      WeKan doesn’t seem to have an App for iOS https://wekan.team/app/ https://wekan.team/app/
      - xet7 1y ago
        WeKan works at iOS, it's mentioned at that page, I'll try to update that page to be more clear. WeKan is fully compatible with iOS webbrowsers, touch, drag drop etc. For free WeKan server, at iPhone or iPad make WeKan app icon like this: https://github.com/wekan/wekan/wiki/PWA https://github.com/wekan/wekan/wiki/PWA from free server hosted by me (no admin access) from address https://boards.wekan.team/sign-in https://boards.wekan.team/sign-in or from your own hosted server https://wekan.example.com/sign-in https://wekan.example.com/sign-in . From that icon, WeKan starts fullscreen, at iPhone in mobile board view, and at iPad desktop browser view, working exactly like app. There is not yet separate app at App Store, because figuring out releasing to App Store takes some time.
- mbreese 1y ago
  I think one thing that might help the discussion would be if you could explain a bit more about what you didn't like or thought was missing from other alternatives. IMO, there's nothing wrong with building an alternative because you wanted to, but if there is some feature that you're specifically trying to do support, it would be helpful to mention it here.
- AntiqueFig 1y ago
  Shouldn't this be a "Show HN:" post?
  - henryball 1y ago
    You're right - I thought I had posted it to show HN but obviously not...
- Closi 1y ago
  Just as a heads up, that roadmap you linked is broken. The formatting looks all off for me on chrome mac (black bars) and then if I click on a card it opens a window but then doesn't load any data. Also it looks like a bug that if you filter by some tags, then click a card, the filter gets reset. This is 5 secs of testing on the one board you have publicly shared, so there might be a few bugs to iron out!
  - Closi 1y ago
    A few other trivial bugs I have found: * Can create multiple workspaces with same name which then ticks both * Invite user seems to not work randomly or will not send the email * Cards with special characters like @ will just not be created, and won't show error messages.
    - Closi 1y ago
      oop found a security issue - you can abuse profile pictures to upload any file (e.g. to host malware if you were a bad actor!) IMO don't think this is ready for production use in the slightest - but cool project!
      - Xiol32 1y ago
        Would be interested to know if this was vibe coded.
      - henryball 1y ago
        This has been patched - thanks for flagging!
        Closi 1y ago
        Not a bug necessarily, but one of the key features of trello is multi-user editing which doesn't seem to work. i.e. if I open two tabs, and edit one tab, the other tab doesn't update and visa-versa until refresh.
- tiffanyh 1y ago
  Feedback (since you asked) ... Using the kanban for your roadmap, https://kan.bn/kan/roadmap https://kan.bn/kan/roadmap two things I noticed: 1. When I click a card, no data is present. It's just an empty card that says "Activity". 2. After you click a few cards, it hijacks your browser Back button.
  - johnisgood 1y ago
    +1
- kadutskyi 1y ago
  Scrollbar in Safari looks wrong.
- andruby 1y ago
  Really cool you built this! Can you elaborate a bit on what you were missing or didn’t like from the other existing open source Trello clones? I’m curious what potentially different choices/trade-offs you made.
- caseysoftware 1y ago
  Congrats, strong start. What are you doing (plan to do) that is more interesting/compelling/useful than anyone else? Also, what have you learned so far? What surprised you?
SwiftyBug 1y ago
Im curious about the choice of Next.js for an open source project as Next.js is notoriously painful to deploy to anything other than Vercel.
- herrkanin 1y ago
  The difficulty to deploy Next.js is greatly exaggerated in my opinion. It's mostly if you care about some of the more advanced features, like image optimization and hosting static assets on a different origin it can become difficult, but these are features no Next.js alternative generally provide anyway.
  - mstade 1y ago
    Even with the optimizations it's not that difficult in my experience. Not terribly well documented (not worst-in-class either) but not that hard and mostly just works once you have a pipeline up and running. We set ours up about two years ago now and have had to make minor modifications maybe three times since then.
  - diggan 1y ago
    > hosting static assets on a different origin it can become difficult What's the alternative? Hosting the static assets on the same place as the backend? Usually adding the CORS headers is enough to solve that (on the backend side), the frontend is still just HTML,CSS and JS running from nginx. Is it common to do a different type of deployment with Next.js? It's a pretty basic deployment scenario (having the frontend on a different origin than the backend it communicates with), so not sure why that'd be so difficult with Next.js compared to basically anything else.
    - lmm 1y ago
      It's the opposite, it's extremely easy to do that with Next.js - pretty much free - but only if you're deploying to Vercel. If you want to host somewhere else then you have to do that semi-manually the same way you would with any other framework.
  - 1y ago
abcd_f 1y ago
> Kanban reimagined In which way exactly? Also, is there a demo account to try it out?
- henryball 1y ago
  Thanks for checking it out! Kanban reimagined to focus on speed, simplicity, and user experience - all while being open source. I haven’t had a chance to set up a demo account yet (just added it to the roadmap), but you’re welcome to sign up and try it out in the meantime :)
  - abcd_f 1y ago
    You may want to rethink your pitch. Virtually all kanbans, being ultimately todo lists, focus on "simplicity, speed and user experience". You have an open source going for yours, but there is already a ton of O/S kanbans as well.
rodolphoarruda 1y ago
> "I couldn’t find an ... alternative ... that I liked so I built my own." Congrats! That's a brave move. I've been using Kanboard for years. Good luck with your project!
- henryball 1y ago
  Cheers! Kanboard is a great project, but I found the UI/UX a bit lacking (just personal preference)
  - rodolphoarruda 1y ago
    I agree. UI/UX lacks some basic data like the project start date, which is kind of odd for a PM app.
notyouraibot 1y ago
Just use Linear.
- henryball 1y ago
  Linear is great, but it's not the same as Trello and it's not open source
bitsignal 1y ago
having mardown support for code blocks would be good.
- henryball 1y ago
  Thanks for the feedback - this is a great shout! I've added to the roadmap :)
- xet7 1y ago
  WeKan https://wekan.github.io https://wekan.github.io has markdown and GitHub emoji support https://github.com/wekan/wekan/wiki/Emoji https://github.com/wekan/wekan/wiki/Emoji at board titles, swimlane titles, cards, card descriptions, checklists, comments, etc. Card comments also have user reactions like thumbsup, etc.
digger495 1y ago
[flagged]
- akshayKMR 1y ago
  What do you mean?
  - digger495 1y ago
    Limiting the amount of work in progress is, in my opinion, the single reason to focus on Kanban. https://www.atlassian.com/agile/kanban/wip-limits https://www.atlassian.com/agile/kanban/wip-limits Of course, most tools get this wrong, so it's not surprising that it's missing here.
- henryball 1y ago
  I wasn't even aware you could do that in Trello! I've added WIP limits to the roadmap
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
hnthrowaway121 1y ago
Hi! Your license link is a 404, just FYI
- henryball 1y ago
  Great spot, thank you! Fixed :)
mdtrooper 1y ago
Some years ago, I used Kanboard (it written in php): https://kanboard.org/ https://kanboard.org/ . It was ugly but useful (and easy to install because I remember that it didn't need any data base).
- kiney 1y ago
  I still use it. Love the simplicity.
- rsolva 1y ago
  I threw it on a shared host and was up and running in notime. The UI is dated, but it is very functional.
calrain 1y ago
I've been testing using AI coding agents by asking an AI acting as a software designer to build a set of kanban style cards as .md files in a directory, designing the work we talked about into cards for AI developers. It works quite well, and then you can review the cards (as files) and then ask another AI agent running as whatever role is suitable for that card, to pick up the card by name and do the work. But there is no kanban board, it's just .md files in a folder. I am continuing to test this, as transfer of context between AI sessions is an interesting challenge, and leveraging md files as if they are kanban / agile style cards, is interesting.
- karn97 1y ago
  What is with you people and the quest of degrading your own while feeling really happy about it like it's some amazing thing?
  - calrain 1y ago
    AI is just a tool, it's no more useful than a non-complaining junior dev that constantly needs direction, but it sure can cut out a lot of repetitive work. I am more productive using it, but that is just me.
    - karn97 1y ago
      I use ai myself as stack exchange but this sentiment is extremely common on HN where you have people trying to force ai to do things it's clearly shit for. Not to mention the rust your brain gathers by not doing these little 'mundane' things. LLMS are a useless dead end anyway all these billion dollar corpos building over it, even worse hype than crypto.
      - calrain 1y ago
        Without making generalisations, I'm trying to leverage LLM as much as possible to see how they can help. I know there is a lot of hype about LLM's and I'm genuinely interested in the niches that they can fill, and where they definitely shouldn't be involved in the software development process. I would say I'm an expert level programmer in the small field that I work in, and have set up development teams in the past. I think that is an advantage to working with integrating LLMs into a dev cycle as I have experience in providing structure with developers, something that LLMs 100% require, without a shred of doubt. As the capability of LLMs continues to grow, having some framework around where they are 'almost good enough' will help re-evalutate them as they improve. I'm not trying to prove anything to anyone else, just build a reference point for where we are now.
XCSme 1y ago
Congrats, any plans to add it as a Collify app?
- henryball 1y ago
  Cheers! Yes, I plan to make it as easy as possible to self-host so Coolify and Dokploy apps are on the roadmap
esskay 1y ago
Feels like Trello alternatives are the next ToDo list. There's so many of them these days that I struggle to grasp why anyone thinks launching an opensource one and thinking they can turn a profit with a cloud version is ever going to work. In all likelihood the project will be abandoned in 6 months and the site offline in 12.
- dabeeeenster 1y ago
  The market for an on-premise, developer maintained solution is way bigger for a product like this than the cloud version. We made the exact same, incorrect assumption with https://github.com/Flagsmith/flagsmith https://github.com/Flagsmith/flagsmith several years ago. The market for data sensitive on-premise delpoyments is a LOT bigger than most people would imagine. For Flagsmith, the majority of our revenue comes from on-premise deployments.
  - libraryatnight 1y ago
    "The market for an on-premise, developer maintained solution..." This made me laugh because at work we've been joking, "We've finished moving to the cloud! What now? We must get out of the cloud!"
  - ensemblehq 1y ago
    Wholeheartedly agree. On-prem is still a major market to play in and have worked on many consulting engagements architecting software that plays nicely. Just curious - how do you guys deploy Flagsmith on-prem? I'm still trying to find a nice deployment pattern that aligns well with both client and vendor.
    - dabeeeenster 1y ago
      99% of the time Kubernetes. Just hand over enterprise docker images and helm charts. If that's what you were asking?
      - xet7 1y ago
akshayKMR 1y ago
I'm in search of something simple like this. I tried the demo at https://kan.bn/kan/roadmap https://kan.bn/kan/roadmap but clicking on the card shows the skeleton placeholder, doesn't seem to load the card content.
tspng 1y ago
Congratulation on releasing this project, despite some of the criticism mentioned here. One issue I encountered. I cannot seem to create lists containing works like Todo, Done, .... No error message is shown. Creating lists with random strings always work though.
- henryball 1y ago
  Thanks for the support and for flagging - I've not seen that behaviour before, but I'll raise a ticket to investigate!
px43 1y ago
[flagged]
- digger495 1y ago
  WIP limits are the good stuff.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
AnonC 1y ago
Suggestion to the OP: please consider adding a family plan at a lower monthly price point. On this topic, I really love Kanban boards, but a hosted version (or self-hosted) is not as appealing to me as a native app with some sync. Years ago, I used to use a closed source but free desktop app on Windows (now long discontinued though) and found that it worked very well for me to track my work. Apple’s Reminders app has Lists that can be further divided into Sections and then viewed and used (kinda) like a Kanban board, but the UX is not great. The macOS apps, especially, are an abomination with Catalyst. I’m still looking for a native app that has a simple sync using iCloud or Dropbox. Plus no subscriptions (a one time price per version may be ok). The usage would be for one or two users.
- sen 1y ago
  I use the KanBan plugin for Obsidian and have quite liked it. It’s basic but it does the job and lets you sync however you want (it’s just a folder with markdown files).
- rubymamis 1y ago
  You can check my FOSS note-taking app: https://www.notes-foss.com https://www.notes-foss.com. It is a native Qt C++ app. It has a feature that converts your Markdown tasks into a Kanban: https://www.notes-foss.com/videos/kanban.mp4 https://www.notes-foss.com/videos/kanban.mp4 It doesn't have a built-in sync, but people have told me they managed to sync the DB using Dropbox and other such services. It has a one time payment option to unlock the Kanban feature, but you can also compile it yourself and get all the Pro features for free (all instructions are on GitHub[1]). [1] https://github.com/nuttyartist/notes https://github.com/nuttyartist/notes
Jean-Philipe 1y ago
This looks really nice! I loved trello and I'm always happy to see alternatives. My two cents: I use the keyboard a lot, so when I hit "enter" on a form, e.g. to create a board, it closes the popup instead of creating that board.
- rollcat 1y ago
  Yep, the "market" is littered with Trello clones. I was also a big fan - until they went downhill (basically everything post-Atlassian). What most of the clones miss, is Trello's enormous attention to details - like excellent keyboard navigation. What I also miss, is that with Trello, a board is a board, a list is a list, and a card is a card. The builtins are simple and flexible, the add-ons are optional. Most clones try too hard to guardrail boards into a ticket tracking system. We already have Jira for that.
  - blackqueeriroh 1y ago
    How has Trello gone downhill post-Atlassian, exactly?
sfmike 1y ago
trello has gotten worse and worse actually could charge for features like n8n and more extensibility. Its gotten the opposite of kanban and zen where I just want clean cards it forces weird views and panels and overlays and difficult to find boards now it wants you to switch to other atlassian products from trello as a priority on the left over just trello unfortunately its the classic indie product amazing then eaten by Private equity until just crumbs are left and its just an acquisition vehicle until it turns rotten and shut down as a cost saver.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- xet7 1y ago
  Maybe use n8n with WeKan? https://docs.n8n.io/integrations/builtin/app-nodes/n8n-nodes-base.wekan/# https://docs.n8n.io/integrations/builtin/app-nodes/n8n-nodes... https://wekan.github.io https://wekan.github.io https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44165008 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44165008
tarasyarema 1y ago
Nice one, more of a random question: are you planning on having paid only features for the project, or have it fully self-hosted version be the same in terms of features as the hosted one?
- henryball 1y ago
  The plan currently is to keep cloud and self-hosted exactly the same in terms of features. I'd only consider open-core if I can't find a reliable alternative source of income to support the development of the project :)
submeta 1y ago
I absolutely love Trello. Visually super appealing, very fast interface with shortcuts, and an API that allows me to do all sorts of automations (although it offers automations out of the box). Will check out your solution.
- OsrsNeedsf2P 1y ago
  > very fast interface with shortcuts Trello has either had some serious performance improvements since I last used it, or you have very few cards and no media. It used to take seconds for actions to process.
rollcat 1y ago
IMHO many "open source alternatives to" should drop that tagline. This sentence is the first thing I read, and likely the last. I don't know what "Trello" is. I don't see what your project or app could do for me. Even if I knew Trello, I wouldn't know why does it need an alternative. (Trello was (is?) great for personal use, by non-technical people.) "A powerful, flexible kanban app that helps you organise work, track progress, and deliver results—all in one place." This is your selling point, not what your app isn't.
- imglorp 1y ago
  Yeah the tagline is leaning on the context, saying what it replaces instead of what it does. Trello was a popular, free, simple sticky note kanban board. It was too nice, maybe competing with Jira, so Atlassian ate it, leaving a void again.
- stronglikedan 1y ago
  If the marketing doesn't work for you, then it's not that it's bad marketing, it's that you simply aren't the target market.
- freedomben 1y ago
  I would be careful suggesting this as a universal truth. I think it really depends on the receiver of the message. "An open-source alternative to Trello" is by far the best one-sentence pitch possible for me. It's something that I've wanted for years so I immediately noticed and clicked into it. Obviously I already know what Trello is, but my suspicion is the most interested people in this project are former Trello users. "A powerful, flexible kanban app that helps you organise work, track progress, and deliver results—all in one place." I would not have even clicked in. "An open source Trello" tells me way more about the app. Consider also how many apps are described as "the uber for <xyz>". For people who don't know what Uber is that message falls very flat of course, but a lot of people do know what Uber is and saying, "The Uber for handymen" immediately conveys the point of the app.
- xet7 1y ago
  Kanban https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban
GlacierFox 1y ago
Random curious question. I was pondering the kanban backend. How do you store the order of the kanban cards in your database and keep that in sync with what's in the UI?
- loumf 1y ago
  Here is the answer for Trello: each card and list has a field called “pos” which is a number. The initial values are spread out (e.g. 1000, 2000, 3000) and then when you move a card, it takes on the average of the two adjacent cards. So, if I move the 3rd card to the 2nd position, its “pos” becomes 1500. This means it doesn’t have to constantly renumber the cards -- but, every once and a while, the server does reorder the “pos” fields for a whole list and send the new values down the socket.
  - GlacierFox 1y ago
    Thank you for this, that's so simple and I'd never stumble on that solution which is embarrassing haha. How do you know the Trello internals by the way? You work there?
    - loumf 1y ago
      Yes. I worked there. But it’s described in the API
  - neucoas 1y ago
    This concept is called "lexorank"
    - GlacierFox 1y ago
      Well, not quite. Although lexorank is similar, the mothod described above is not lexorank. Lexorank uses strings and buckets and a completely different set of math to work it out.
  - somat 1y ago
    I was going to guess linked lists/graphs as that is my goto for extremely flexible local structure. But the sparse array is probably better, relational databases hate linked lists.
oldgregg 1y ago
Great project, will give it a try, we've been using another open source trello clone that has been pretty solid and very closely clones the trello UI. https://github.com/plankanban/planka https://github.com/plankanban/planka
- henryball 1y ago
  Thank you! Planka is a great project, but I found the fact it closely clones Trello's UI to be its biggest downfall. I'm hoping to build on top of Trello's simplicity and customisability with a modern UI/UX interface.
- tshannon 1y ago
  Planka is awesome, too bad it's no longer Open Source.
chiptopher 1y ago
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singiamtel 1y ago
The project seems nice, but how good is that domain name
- henryball 1y ago
  I'm so glad it's getting some recognition!
Vicentjojo 1y ago
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Vicentjojo 1y ago
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ulrischa 1y ago
https://kanboard.org https://kanboard.org ist better for self hosting. Runs on any cheap LAMP
anonymous344 1y ago
biggest problems with trello, having using it 14 years or so - if user deletes card/list/board it's gone forever for whole group - i want to share board with secret link(no login) but this user cannot have rights to open any card, maybe just comment. Not available at all in trello
- xet7 1y ago
  WeKan https://wekan.github.io https://wekan.github.io has CommentOnly role, that can be set by BoardAdmin by clicking at board right sidebar board member avatar, or with API: https://github.com/wekan/wekan/wiki/REST-API-Role https://github.com/wekan/wekan/wiki/REST-API-Role https://github.com/wekan/wekan/blob/main/api.py https://github.com/wekan/wekan/blob/main/api.py
wood_spirit 1y ago
This will sound crazy but I wish there was an open source “everything” app. If this could grow into a slack alternative (where channels can host a kanban board) with http bot api and built in charting and dashboards and python notebook snippets etc etc so we can get things in one place… that would be great!!
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- arcastroe 1y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scope_creep https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scope_creep
- xet7 1y ago
  a) Nextcloud b) AFFiNE https://github.com/toeverything/AFFiNE https://github.com/toeverything/AFFiNE but check some part of server license, what is allowed: https://github.com/toeverything/AFFiNE/blob/canary/packages/backend/server/LICENSE https://github.com/toeverything/AFFiNE/blob/canary/packages/... c) Frappe: https://frappe.io/erpnext https://frappe.io/erpnext https://frappe.io/framework https://frappe.io/framework d) Odoo https://www.odoo.com https://www.odoo.com e) Sandstorm https://sandstorm.org https://sandstorm.org , although WeKan is old version, I try to update it sometime f) WeKan with webhooks https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44165008 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44165008 with RocketChat Community Edition https://github.com/wekan/wekan/wiki/RocketChat https://github.com/wekan/wekan/wiki/RocketChat with Jypyter: https://jupyter.org https://jupyter.org
  - crabmusket 1y ago
    One day when I have free time I really want to build an "everything app" suite on top of Sandstorm. Kind of like your supermarket's "home brand" meant to be no-frills, functional and cheap. The way Sandstorm takes auth and hosting off your hands feels like it would make this more tractable. Business model remains an issue though, as it does for much open source work (and of course, all businesses! it's rough out there). Having played around with Sandstorm, it's just so freeing to create one sqlite file per document (or board, or whatever) and just not worry about what happens if 10,000 users turn up. Wekan, which does run admirably well on Sandstorm, pulls an entire Mongodb instance into each grain. That makes sense if you want to host an entire SaaS on one database. But not in the Sandstorm world.
subpixel 1y ago
Trello pricing just got a lot more reasonable, but there is one feature that might get me thinking of moving: conditional logic in automations. Be advised that Trello is now $5/mo. It's gonna be hard to compete here.
- croes 1y ago
  You can’t trust US companies anymore, they easily can become a weapon in a trade war.
  - jjtheblunt 1y ago
    What's an example of a US company being weaponized in a trade war?
    - kfkdjajgjic 1y ago
      There are plenty, but most obvious nvidia which cannot even ship gpus to greenland currently.
      - SV_BubbleTime 1y ago
        Is there a ton of industry reeling on that issue? Or is that closer to a silly example?
        croes 1y ago
        Ask Switzerland who only got restricted access to AI chips. https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/multinational-companies/us-restricts-switzerlands-access-to-ai-chips/88781270 https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/multinational-companies/us-rest... We still remeber the Crypto Wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_Wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_Wars
        xet7 1y ago
        Currently we are at Backdoor Wars https://github.com/howinfo/howinfo/wiki/Backdoor https://github.com/howinfo/howinfo/wiki/Backdoor
artur_makly 1y ago
This may sound sarcastic..but have you considered retrofitting it with LLMs? The #1 problem with Kanbans is CARD-ROT. AI should fix that in a plethora of ways. Shouldn't be too hard to vibe-code that into existing on a mate-fueled weekend !/s
- xet7 1y ago
  For AI with kanban, there is JustDo, but it's source available. It is not Open Source. https://forums.meteor.com/t/announcing-justdo-a-source-available-meteor-powered-project-management-platform/63046 https://forums.meteor.com/t/announcing-justdo-a-source-avail...
- henryball 1y ago
  I would only consider adding LLMs if they could solve a real problem for users in a unique way that couldn't be easily achieved by automation rules. I'm definitely not against it, but I would have to see a real use case first. MCP support for the API would be a good starting point!
  - artur_makly 1y ago
    how can an automation rule help me as a product owner figure out: - which cards have a global common UX theme or proven Business Value? - which epic cards needs more spec detail and broken down to child-cards? - which cards have higher-risk of failure the list goes on..
capitanazo77 1y ago
Spanish language would be the only missing piece for my org, great job!
- henryball 1y ago
  Thank you! Added multi language support to the roadmap
- xet7 1y ago
  WeKan https://wekan.github.io https://wekan.github.io is translated to many languages here: https://app.transifex.com/wekan/wekan https://app.transifex.com/wekan/wekan Spanish is currently 100% translated.
satellite2 1y ago
I'll take anything that allows more than one assignee per task. Is that the case?
- xet7 1y ago
  WeKan https://wekan.github.io https://wekan.github.io can have many assignees and many members at tasks
- henryball 1y ago
  You can indeed! There's also plans to allow custom restrictions on resources if wanted to limit cards to one assignee
jacktheturtle 1y ago
Hey this is awesome. It's exciting to see people launch side projects like this. The UI/UX looks very nice. Thanks for building and sharing.
- henryball 1y ago
  This is really great to hear, thank you for the feedback :)
remram 1y ago
> Kanban reimagined "reimagined" is a weird tagline given that your list of features is the same as Trello's (and Taiga's, etc). Don't get me wrong, I love opensource alternatives, but you did not "reimagine" to make the same thing.
randomuxx 1y ago
what's that '.bn' extension? Banana Republic? Cool app though
- henryball 1y ago
  Brunei! I prefer Banana Republic though...
ramoz 1y ago
Thank you to those who referenced kanboard in this thread. I got it running and it is sweet: $ docker pull kanboard/kanboard:latest $ docker run -d --name kanboard -p 8080:80 -e PLUGIN_INSTALLER=true kanboard/kanboard:latest (admin/admin)
yolkedgeek 1y ago
Why are people still building new projects with react and next.js? This is why we have 1000 trello alternatives.
- popcorncowboy 1y ago
  I'm legitimately asking what people "should" be building new projects in?
column 1y ago
Feedback : when creating a workspace, a board, or a list, pressing "Enter" is not the same as clicking the "Create" button which is the only button visible. Pressing "Enter" does not create the list. For a new user like me, the difference between a workspace, a board, and a list is not obvious. A one image explanation would be welcomed.
aarreedd 1y ago
It would be interesting to build an app like this designed specifically to run on Cloudflare workers. - Essentially free for moderate use - Use CF Access for simple access control - Easier self-hosting because it is designed for a specific target environment - No servers to worry about - Could build AI integrations easily
ralusek 1y ago
Does anybody else have an issue with the like $8/user/month price point that products like this have coalesced around? I feel like a service like this should be like $1-5/user/year, at most.
banner520 1y ago
Congrats, strong start.

509 points by henryball 1y ago

appendixv2 1y ago

[dead]

xet7 1y ago
WeKan https://wekan.github https://wekan.github has email notifications, and notification tray like Trello. You get notifications like becoming assignee by changing board top setting from Muted to Tracking, and also there is red bell icon at right top notification tray like Trello. Currently I mostly use AWS SES. https://github.com/wekan/wekan/wiki/Troubleshooting-Mail https://github.com/wekan/wekan/wiki/Troubleshooting-Mail

voldrix 1y ago

I also made a minimalist Trello clone, but it is single-user (no authentication). Runs on just the basic LAMP stack. https://tellor.cc/ https://tellor.cc/

henryball 1y ago

Hey HN, I couldn’t find an open-source alternative to Trello that I liked so I built my own. It’s fast, free and fully-customisable. You can self host it, or use the cloud version if you don’t want to manage your own infra. Repo -> https://github.com/kanbn/kan https://github.com/kanbn/kan Cloud -> https://kan.bn https://kan.bn Roadmap -> https://kan.bn/kan/roadmap https://kan.bn/kan/roadmap I’d love feedback, bug reports, or any feature suggestions!

stevekemp 1y ago
How does it compare to the existing open-source boards, such as: https://wekan.github.io/ https://wekan.github.io/ https://taiga.io/ https://taiga.io/ https://kanboard.org/ https://kanboard.org/
- walthamstow 1y ago
  Also https://github.com/plankanban/planka https://github.com/plankanban/planka
  - rodnim 1y ago
    I am using Planka for my personal projects. Works great!
  - senorrib 1y ago
    Planka is not open-source.
    - organsnyder 1y ago
      They don't appear to be using an OSI-approved license, but the source code is available. So depending on your use-case that may be an academic distinction.
      - kstrauser 1y ago
        Its license has strict limitations on what you can use it for. It’s not open source in any reasonable sense.
        Izkata 1y ago
        It is open source (the code is right there), but it's not Open Source due to what GP references. There is a distinction.
        7839284023 1y ago
        That’s just called „source available“.
        kstrauser 1y ago
        But since [oO]pen [sS]ource has a broadly understood meaning that's different, we shouldn't deliberately use the same description for both ideas. If you want to describe it as "source available", I'll happily go along with it. It's not open source, though. The source is visible, but it's not open to use. I mean, you can find the leaked Windows source code online, but it's not open source just because you can look at it.
progx 1y ago
Sorry, but I can't see what is better or other than every existing kanban-tool. I tried it, but you have only drag & drop lists with items and labels, that is all.
- progx 1y ago
  I don't want to blame you, you have put in a lot of work. My point is, that at the current state, your kanban offers nothing special. It is like the other 1000 kanban boards. I think you should specialize your board for a selected audience. Not a board for all, that kind of boards we have. Example: Kanban with special features for game developement. More visual options, images and not only text. Currently there exists only some really overbloated tools.
cellularmitosis 1y ago
Nice project. Some of the workflows could be more keyboard friendly. I started an issue: https://github.com/kanbn/kan/issues/3 https://github.com/kanbn/kan/issues/3
jpc0 1y ago
I would love to see webhook support add to this. For many users this isn’t an issue but for use it’s a must have feature. Will stick to trello for the time being.
- xet7 1y ago
  WeKan https://wekan.github.io https://wekan.github.io has: 1) Per-board webhooks at board right sidebar / Board Settings / Webhooks 2) Global Webhooks at Admin Panel See right menu of https://github.com/wekan/wekan/wiki https://github.com/wekan/wekan/wiki , scroll down to webhooks part of menu. It's possible to send board change events like move card as webhooks, for example to some chat: https://github.com/wekan/wekan/wiki/Outgoing-Webhook-to-Discord https://github.com/wekan/wekan/wiki/Outgoing-Webhook-to-Disc... Or to NodeRED: https://github.com/wekan/wekan/issues/2017 https://github.com/wekan/wekan/issues/2017 or to to some PHP webhook receiver like this, that can use Python code to call WeKan API: https://github.com/wekan/webhook/blob/main/public/index.php#L46 https://github.com/wekan/webhook/blob/main/public/index.php#... https://github.com/wekan/wekan/blob/main/api.py https://github.com/wekan/wekan/blob/main/api.py
  - smartbit 1y ago
    WeKan doesn’t seem to have an App for iOS https://wekan.team/app/ https://wekan.team/app/
    - xet7 1y ago
      WeKan works at iOS, it's mentioned at that page, I'll try to update that page to be more clear. WeKan is fully compatible with iOS webbrowsers, touch, drag drop etc. For free WeKan server, at iPhone or iPad make WeKan app icon like this: https://github.com/wekan/wekan/wiki/PWA https://github.com/wekan/wekan/wiki/PWA from free server hosted by me (no admin access) from address https://boards.wekan.team/sign-in https://boards.wekan.team/sign-in or from your own hosted server https://wekan.example.com/sign-in https://wekan.example.com/sign-in . From that icon, WeKan starts fullscreen, at iPhone in mobile board view, and at iPad desktop browser view, working exactly like app. There is not yet separate app at App Store, because figuring out releasing to App Store takes some time.
mbreese 1y ago
I think one thing that might help the discussion would be if you could explain a bit more about what you didn't like or thought was missing from other alternatives. IMO, there's nothing wrong with building an alternative because you wanted to, but if there is some feature that you're specifically trying to do support, it would be helpful to mention it here.
AntiqueFig 1y ago
Shouldn't this be a "Show HN:" post?
- henryball 1y ago
  You're right - I thought I had posted it to show HN but obviously not...
Closi 1y ago
Just as a heads up, that roadmap you linked is broken. The formatting looks all off for me on chrome mac (black bars) and then if I click on a card it opens a window but then doesn't load any data. Also it looks like a bug that if you filter by some tags, then click a card, the filter gets reset. This is 5 secs of testing on the one board you have publicly shared, so there might be a few bugs to iron out!
- Closi 1y ago
  A few other trivial bugs I have found: * Can create multiple workspaces with same name which then ticks both * Invite user seems to not work randomly or will not send the email * Cards with special characters like @ will just not be created, and won't show error messages.
  - Closi 1y ago
    oop found a security issue - you can abuse profile pictures to upload any file (e.g. to host malware if you were a bad actor!) IMO don't think this is ready for production use in the slightest - but cool project!
    - Xiol32 1y ago
      Would be interested to know if this was vibe coded.
    - henryball 1y ago
      This has been patched - thanks for flagging!
      - Closi 1y ago
        Not a bug necessarily, but one of the key features of trello is multi-user editing which doesn't seem to work. i.e. if I open two tabs, and edit one tab, the other tab doesn't update and visa-versa until refresh.
tiffanyh 1y ago
Feedback (since you asked) ... Using the kanban for your roadmap, https://kan.bn/kan/roadmap https://kan.bn/kan/roadmap two things I noticed: 1. When I click a card, no data is present. It's just an empty card that says "Activity". 2. After you click a few cards, it hijacks your browser Back button.
- johnisgood 1y ago
  +1
kadutskyi 1y ago
Scrollbar in Safari looks wrong.
andruby 1y ago
Really cool you built this! Can you elaborate a bit on what you were missing or didn’t like from the other existing open source Trello clones? I’m curious what potentially different choices/trade-offs you made.
caseysoftware 1y ago
Congrats, strong start. What are you doing (plan to do) that is more interesting/compelling/useful than anyone else? Also, what have you learned so far? What surprised you?

SwiftyBug 1y ago

Im curious about the choice of Next.js for an open source project as Next.js is notoriously painful to deploy to anything other than Vercel.

herrkanin 1y ago
The difficulty to deploy Next.js is greatly exaggerated in my opinion. It's mostly if you care about some of the more advanced features, like image optimization and hosting static assets on a different origin it can become difficult, but these are features no Next.js alternative generally provide anyway.
- mstade 1y ago
  Even with the optimizations it's not that difficult in my experience. Not terribly well documented (not worst-in-class either) but not that hard and mostly just works once you have a pipeline up and running. We set ours up about two years ago now and have had to make minor modifications maybe three times since then.
- diggan 1y ago
  > hosting static assets on a different origin it can become difficult What's the alternative? Hosting the static assets on the same place as the backend? Usually adding the CORS headers is enough to solve that (on the backend side), the frontend is still just HTML,CSS and JS running from nginx. Is it common to do a different type of deployment with Next.js? It's a pretty basic deployment scenario (having the frontend on a different origin than the backend it communicates with), so not sure why that'd be so difficult with Next.js compared to basically anything else.
  - lmm 1y ago
    It's the opposite, it's extremely easy to do that with Next.js - pretty much free - but only if you're deploying to Vercel. If you want to host somewhere else then you have to do that semi-manually the same way you would with any other framework.
- 1y ago

abcd_f 1y ago

> Kanban reimagined In which way exactly? Also, is there a demo account to try it out?

henryball 1y ago
Thanks for checking it out! Kanban reimagined to focus on speed, simplicity, and user experience - all while being open source. I haven’t had a chance to set up a demo account yet (just added it to the roadmap), but you’re welcome to sign up and try it out in the meantime :)
- abcd_f 1y ago
  You may want to rethink your pitch. Virtually all kanbans, being ultimately todo lists, focus on "simplicity, speed and user experience". You have an open source going for yours, but there is already a ton of O/S kanbans as well.

rodolphoarruda 1y ago

> "I couldn’t find an ... alternative ... that I liked so I built my own." Congrats! That's a brave move. I've been using Kanboard for years. Good luck with your project!

henryball 1y ago
Cheers! Kanboard is a great project, but I found the UI/UX a bit lacking (just personal preference)
- rodolphoarruda 1y ago
  I agree. UI/UX lacks some basic data like the project start date, which is kind of odd for a PM app.

notyouraibot 1y ago

Just use Linear.

henryball 1y ago
Linear is great, but it's not the same as Trello and it's not open source

bitsignal 1y ago

having mardown support for code blocks would be good.

henryball 1y ago
Thanks for the feedback - this is a great shout! I've added to the roadmap :)
xet7 1y ago
WeKan https://wekan.github.io https://wekan.github.io has markdown and GitHub emoji support https://github.com/wekan/wekan/wiki/Emoji https://github.com/wekan/wekan/wiki/Emoji at board titles, swimlane titles, cards, card descriptions, checklists, comments, etc. Card comments also have user reactions like thumbsup, etc.

digger495 1y ago

[flagged]

akshayKMR 1y ago
What do you mean?
- digger495 1y ago
  Limiting the amount of work in progress is, in my opinion, the single reason to focus on Kanban. https://www.atlassian.com/agile/kanban/wip-limits https://www.atlassian.com/agile/kanban/wip-limits Of course, most tools get this wrong, so it's not surprising that it's missing here.
henryball 1y ago
I wasn't even aware you could do that in Trello! I've added WIP limits to the roadmap
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

hnthrowaway121 1y ago

Hi! Your license link is a 404, just FYI

henryball 1y ago
Great spot, thank you! Fixed :)

mdtrooper 1y ago

Some years ago, I used Kanboard (it written in php): https://kanboard.org/ https://kanboard.org/ . It was ugly but useful (and easy to install because I remember that it didn't need any data base).

kiney 1y ago
I still use it. Love the simplicity.
rsolva 1y ago
I threw it on a shared host and was up and running in notime. The UI is dated, but it is very functional.

calrain 1y ago

I've been testing using AI coding agents by asking an AI acting as a software designer to build a set of kanban style cards as .md files in a directory, designing the work we talked about into cards for AI developers. It works quite well, and then you can review the cards (as files) and then ask another AI agent running as whatever role is suitable for that card, to pick up the card by name and do the work. But there is no kanban board, it's just .md files in a folder. I am continuing to test this, as transfer of context between AI sessions is an interesting challenge, and leveraging md files as if they are kanban / agile style cards, is interesting.

karn97 1y ago
What is with you people and the quest of degrading your own while feeling really happy about it like it's some amazing thing?
- calrain 1y ago
  AI is just a tool, it's no more useful than a non-complaining junior dev that constantly needs direction, but it sure can cut out a lot of repetitive work. I am more productive using it, but that is just me.
  - karn97 1y ago
    I use ai myself as stack exchange but this sentiment is extremely common on HN where you have people trying to force ai to do things it's clearly shit for. Not to mention the rust your brain gathers by not doing these little 'mundane' things. LLMS are a useless dead end anyway all these billion dollar corpos building over it, even worse hype than crypto.
    - calrain 1y ago
      Without making generalisations, I'm trying to leverage LLM as much as possible to see how they can help. I know there is a lot of hype about LLM's and I'm genuinely interested in the niches that they can fill, and where they definitely shouldn't be involved in the software development process. I would say I'm an expert level programmer in the small field that I work in, and have set up development teams in the past. I think that is an advantage to working with integrating LLMs into a dev cycle as I have experience in providing structure with developers, something that LLMs 100% require, without a shred of doubt. As the capability of LLMs continues to grow, having some framework around where they are 'almost good enough' will help re-evalutate them as they improve. I'm not trying to prove anything to anyone else, just build a reference point for where we are now.

XCSme 1y ago

Congrats, any plans to add it as a Collify app?

henryball 1y ago
Cheers! Yes, I plan to make it as easy as possible to self-host so Coolify and Dokploy apps are on the roadmap

esskay 1y ago

Feels like Trello alternatives are the next ToDo list. There's so many of them these days that I struggle to grasp why anyone thinks launching an opensource one and thinking they can turn a profit with a cloud version is ever going to work. In all likelihood the project will be abandoned in 6 months and the site offline in 12.

dabeeeenster 1y ago
The market for an on-premise, developer maintained solution is way bigger for a product like this than the cloud version. We made the exact same, incorrect assumption with https://github.com/Flagsmith/flagsmith https://github.com/Flagsmith/flagsmith several years ago. The market for data sensitive on-premise delpoyments is a LOT bigger than most people would imagine. For Flagsmith, the majority of our revenue comes from on-premise deployments.
- libraryatnight 1y ago
  "The market for an on-premise, developer maintained solution..." This made me laugh because at work we've been joking, "We've finished moving to the cloud! What now? We must get out of the cloud!"
- ensemblehq 1y ago
  Wholeheartedly agree. On-prem is still a major market to play in and have worked on many consulting engagements architecting software that plays nicely. Just curious - how do you guys deploy Flagsmith on-prem? I'm still trying to find a nice deployment pattern that aligns well with both client and vendor.
  - dabeeeenster 1y ago
    99% of the time Kubernetes. Just hand over enterprise docker images and helm charts. If that's what you were asking?
    - xet7 1y ago

akshayKMR 1y ago

I'm in search of something simple like this. I tried the demo at https://kan.bn/kan/roadmap https://kan.bn/kan/roadmap but clicking on the card shows the skeleton placeholder, doesn't seem to load the card content.

tspng 1y ago

Congratulation on releasing this project, despite some of the criticism mentioned here. One issue I encountered. I cannot seem to create lists containing works like Todo, Done, .... No error message is shown. Creating lists with random strings always work though.

henryball 1y ago
Thanks for the support and for flagging - I've not seen that behaviour before, but I'll raise a ticket to investigate!

px43 1y ago

[flagged]

digger495 1y ago
WIP limits are the good stuff.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

AnonC 1y ago

Suggestion to the OP: please consider adding a family plan at a lower monthly price point. On this topic, I really love Kanban boards, but a hosted version (or self-hosted) is not as appealing to me as a native app with some sync. Years ago, I used to use a closed source but free desktop app on Windows (now long discontinued though) and found that it worked very well for me to track my work. Apple’s Reminders app has Lists that can be further divided into Sections and then viewed and used (kinda) like a Kanban board, but the UX is not great. The macOS apps, especially, are an abomination with Catalyst. I’m still looking for a native app that has a simple sync using iCloud or Dropbox. Plus no subscriptions (a one time price per version may be ok). The usage would be for one or two users.

sen 1y ago
I use the KanBan plugin for Obsidian and have quite liked it. It’s basic but it does the job and lets you sync however you want (it’s just a folder with markdown files).
rubymamis 1y ago
You can check my FOSS note-taking app: https://www.notes-foss.com https://www.notes-foss.com. It is a native Qt C++ app. It has a feature that converts your Markdown tasks into a Kanban: https://www.notes-foss.com/videos/kanban.mp4 https://www.notes-foss.com/videos/kanban.mp4 It doesn't have a built-in sync, but people have told me they managed to sync the DB using Dropbox and other such services. It has a one time payment option to unlock the Kanban feature, but you can also compile it yourself and get all the Pro features for free (all instructions are on GitHub[1]). [1] https://github.com/nuttyartist/notes https://github.com/nuttyartist/notes

Jean-Philipe 1y ago

This looks really nice! I loved trello and I'm always happy to see alternatives. My two cents: I use the keyboard a lot, so when I hit "enter" on a form, e.g. to create a board, it closes the popup instead of creating that board.

rollcat 1y ago
Yep, the "market" is littered with Trello clones. I was also a big fan - until they went downhill (basically everything post-Atlassian). What most of the clones miss, is Trello's enormous attention to details - like excellent keyboard navigation. What I also miss, is that with Trello, a board is a board, a list is a list, and a card is a card. The builtins are simple and flexible, the add-ons are optional. Most clones try too hard to guardrail boards into a ticket tracking system. We already have Jira for that.
- blackqueeriroh 1y ago
  How has Trello gone downhill post-Atlassian, exactly?

sfmike 1y ago

trello has gotten worse and worse actually could charge for features like n8n and more extensibility. Its gotten the opposite of kanban and zen where I just want clean cards it forces weird views and panels and overlays and difficult to find boards now it wants you to switch to other atlassian products from trello as a priority on the left over just trello unfortunately its the classic indie product amazing then eaten by Private equity until just crumbs are left and its just an acquisition vehicle until it turns rotten and shut down as a cost saver.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
xet7 1y ago
Maybe use n8n with WeKan? https://docs.n8n.io/integrations/builtin/app-nodes/n8n-nodes-base.wekan/# https://docs.n8n.io/integrations/builtin/app-nodes/n8n-nodes... https://wekan.github.io https://wekan.github.io https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44165008 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44165008

tarasyarema 1y ago

Nice one, more of a random question: are you planning on having paid only features for the project, or have it fully self-hosted version be the same in terms of features as the hosted one?

henryball 1y ago
The plan currently is to keep cloud and self-hosted exactly the same in terms of features. I'd only consider open-core if I can't find a reliable alternative source of income to support the development of the project :)

submeta 1y ago

I absolutely love Trello. Visually super appealing, very fast interface with shortcuts, and an API that allows me to do all sorts of automations (although it offers automations out of the box). Will check out your solution.

OsrsNeedsf2P 1y ago
> very fast interface with shortcuts Trello has either had some serious performance improvements since I last used it, or you have very few cards and no media. It used to take seconds for actions to process.

rollcat 1y ago

IMHO many "open source alternatives to" should drop that tagline. This sentence is the first thing I read, and likely the last. I don't know what "Trello" is. I don't see what your project or app could do for me. Even if I knew Trello, I wouldn't know why does it need an alternative. (Trello was (is?) great for personal use, by non-technical people.) "A powerful, flexible kanban app that helps you organise work, track progress, and deliver results—all in one place." This is your selling point, not what your app isn't.

imglorp 1y ago
Yeah the tagline is leaning on the context, saying what it replaces instead of what it does. Trello was a popular, free, simple sticky note kanban board. It was too nice, maybe competing with Jira, so Atlassian ate it, leaving a void again.
stronglikedan 1y ago
If the marketing doesn't work for you, then it's not that it's bad marketing, it's that you simply aren't the target market.
freedomben 1y ago
I would be careful suggesting this as a universal truth. I think it really depends on the receiver of the message. "An open-source alternative to Trello" is by far the best one-sentence pitch possible for me. It's something that I've wanted for years so I immediately noticed and clicked into it. Obviously I already know what Trello is, but my suspicion is the most interested people in this project are former Trello users. "A powerful, flexible kanban app that helps you organise work, track progress, and deliver results—all in one place." I would not have even clicked in. "An open source Trello" tells me way more about the app. Consider also how many apps are described as "the uber for <xyz>". For people who don't know what Uber is that message falls very flat of course, but a lot of people do know what Uber is and saying, "The Uber for handymen" immediately conveys the point of the app.
xet7 1y ago
Kanban https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban

GlacierFox 1y ago

Random curious question. I was pondering the kanban backend. How do you store the order of the kanban cards in your database and keep that in sync with what's in the UI?

loumf 1y ago
Here is the answer for Trello: each card and list has a field called “pos” which is a number. The initial values are spread out (e.g. 1000, 2000, 3000) and then when you move a card, it takes on the average of the two adjacent cards. So, if I move the 3rd card to the 2nd position, its “pos” becomes 1500. This means it doesn’t have to constantly renumber the cards -- but, every once and a while, the server does reorder the “pos” fields for a whole list and send the new values down the socket.
- GlacierFox 1y ago
  Thank you for this, that's so simple and I'd never stumble on that solution which is embarrassing haha. How do you know the Trello internals by the way? You work there?
  - loumf 1y ago
    Yes. I worked there. But it’s described in the API
- neucoas 1y ago
  This concept is called "lexorank"
  - GlacierFox 1y ago
    Well, not quite. Although lexorank is similar, the mothod described above is not lexorank. Lexorank uses strings and buckets and a completely different set of math to work it out.
- somat 1y ago
  I was going to guess linked lists/graphs as that is my goto for extremely flexible local structure. But the sparse array is probably better, relational databases hate linked lists.

oldgregg 1y ago

Great project, will give it a try, we've been using another open source trello clone that has been pretty solid and very closely clones the trello UI. https://github.com/plankanban/planka https://github.com/plankanban/planka

henryball 1y ago
Thank you! Planka is a great project, but I found the fact it closely clones Trello's UI to be its biggest downfall. I'm hoping to build on top of Trello's simplicity and customisability with a modern UI/UX interface.
tshannon 1y ago
Planka is awesome, too bad it's no longer Open Source.

chiptopher 1y ago

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singiamtel 1y ago

The project seems nice, but how good is that domain name

henryball 1y ago
I'm so glad it's getting some recognition!

Vicentjojo 1y ago

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Vicentjojo 1y ago

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ulrischa 1y ago

https://kanboard.org https://kanboard.org ist better for self hosting. Runs on any cheap LAMP

anonymous344 1y ago

biggest problems with trello, having using it 14 years or so - if user deletes card/list/board it's gone forever for whole group - i want to share board with secret link(no login) but this user cannot have rights to open any card, maybe just comment. Not available at all in trello

xet7 1y ago
WeKan https://wekan.github.io https://wekan.github.io has CommentOnly role, that can be set by BoardAdmin by clicking at board right sidebar board member avatar, or with API: https://github.com/wekan/wekan/wiki/REST-API-Role https://github.com/wekan/wekan/wiki/REST-API-Role https://github.com/wekan/wekan/blob/main/api.py https://github.com/wekan/wekan/blob/main/api.py

wood_spirit 1y ago

This will sound crazy but I wish there was an open source “everything” app. If this could grow into a slack alternative (where channels can host a kanban board) with http bot api and built in charting and dashboards and python notebook snippets etc etc so we can get things in one place… that would be great!!

deleted 1y ago
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arcastroe 1y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scope_creep https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scope_creep
xet7 1y ago
a) Nextcloud b) AFFiNE https://github.com/toeverything/AFFiNE https://github.com/toeverything/AFFiNE but check some part of server license, what is allowed: https://github.com/toeverything/AFFiNE/blob/canary/packages/backend/server/LICENSE https://github.com/toeverything/AFFiNE/blob/canary/packages/... c) Frappe: https://frappe.io/erpnext https://frappe.io/erpnext https://frappe.io/framework https://frappe.io/framework d) Odoo https://www.odoo.com https://www.odoo.com e) Sandstorm https://sandstorm.org https://sandstorm.org , although WeKan is old version, I try to update it sometime f) WeKan with webhooks https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44165008 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44165008 with RocketChat Community Edition https://github.com/wekan/wekan/wiki/RocketChat https://github.com/wekan/wekan/wiki/RocketChat with Jypyter: https://jupyter.org https://jupyter.org
- crabmusket 1y ago
  One day when I have free time I really want to build an "everything app" suite on top of Sandstorm. Kind of like your supermarket's "home brand" meant to be no-frills, functional and cheap. The way Sandstorm takes auth and hosting off your hands feels like it would make this more tractable. Business model remains an issue though, as it does for much open source work (and of course, all businesses! it's rough out there). Having played around with Sandstorm, it's just so freeing to create one sqlite file per document (or board, or whatever) and just not worry about what happens if 10,000 users turn up. Wekan, which does run admirably well on Sandstorm, pulls an entire Mongodb instance into each grain. That makes sense if you want to host an entire SaaS on one database. But not in the Sandstorm world.

subpixel 1y ago

Trello pricing just got a lot more reasonable, but there is one feature that might get me thinking of moving: conditional logic in automations. Be advised that Trello is now $5/mo. It's gonna be hard to compete here.

croes 1y ago
You can’t trust US companies anymore, they easily can become a weapon in a trade war.
- jjtheblunt 1y ago
  What's an example of a US company being weaponized in a trade war?
  - kfkdjajgjic 1y ago
    There are plenty, but most obvious nvidia which cannot even ship gpus to greenland currently.
    - SV_BubbleTime 1y ago
      Is there a ton of industry reeling on that issue? Or is that closer to a silly example?
      - croes 1y ago
        Ask Switzerland who only got restricted access to AI chips. https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/multinational-companies/us-restricts-switzerlands-access-to-ai-chips/88781270 https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/multinational-companies/us-rest... We still remeber the Crypto Wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_Wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_Wars
        xet7 1y ago
        Currently we are at Backdoor Wars https://github.com/howinfo/howinfo/wiki/Backdoor https://github.com/howinfo/howinfo/wiki/Backdoor

artur_makly 1y ago

This may sound sarcastic..but have you considered retrofitting it with LLMs? The #1 problem with Kanbans is CARD-ROT. AI should fix that in a plethora of ways. Shouldn't be too hard to vibe-code that into existing on a mate-fueled weekend !/s

xet7 1y ago
For AI with kanban, there is JustDo, but it's source available. It is not Open Source. https://forums.meteor.com/t/announcing-justdo-a-source-available-meteor-powered-project-management-platform/63046 https://forums.meteor.com/t/announcing-justdo-a-source-avail...
henryball 1y ago
I would only consider adding LLMs if they could solve a real problem for users in a unique way that couldn't be easily achieved by automation rules. I'm definitely not against it, but I would have to see a real use case first. MCP support for the API would be a good starting point!
- artur_makly 1y ago
  how can an automation rule help me as a product owner figure out: - which cards have a global common UX theme or proven Business Value? - which epic cards needs more spec detail and broken down to child-cards? - which cards have higher-risk of failure the list goes on..

capitanazo77 1y ago

Spanish language would be the only missing piece for my org, great job!

henryball 1y ago
Thank you! Added multi language support to the roadmap
xet7 1y ago
WeKan https://wekan.github.io https://wekan.github.io is translated to many languages here: https://app.transifex.com/wekan/wekan https://app.transifex.com/wekan/wekan Spanish is currently 100% translated.

satellite2 1y ago

I'll take anything that allows more than one assignee per task. Is that the case?

xet7 1y ago
WeKan https://wekan.github.io https://wekan.github.io can have many assignees and many members at tasks
henryball 1y ago
You can indeed! There's also plans to allow custom restrictions on resources if wanted to limit cards to one assignee

jacktheturtle 1y ago

Hey this is awesome. It's exciting to see people launch side projects like this. The UI/UX looks very nice. Thanks for building and sharing.

henryball 1y ago
This is really great to hear, thank you for the feedback :)

remram 1y ago

> Kanban reimagined "reimagined" is a weird tagline given that your list of features is the same as Trello's (and Taiga's, etc). Don't get me wrong, I love opensource alternatives, but you did not "reimagine" to make the same thing.

randomuxx 1y ago

what's that '.bn' extension? Banana Republic? Cool app though

henryball 1y ago
Brunei! I prefer Banana Republic though...

ramoz 1y ago

Thank you to those who referenced kanboard in this thread. I got it running and it is sweet: $ docker pull kanboard/kanboard:latest $ docker run -d --name kanboard -p 8080:80 -e PLUGIN_INSTALLER=true kanboard/kanboard:latest (admin/admin)

yolkedgeek 1y ago

Why are people still building new projects with react and next.js? This is why we have 1000 trello alternatives.

popcorncowboy 1y ago
I'm legitimately asking what people "should" be building new projects in?

column 1y ago

Feedback : when creating a workspace, a board, or a list, pressing "Enter" is not the same as clicking the "Create" button which is the only button visible. Pressing "Enter" does not create the list. For a new user like me, the difference between a workspace, a board, and a list is not obvious. A one image explanation would be welcomed.

aarreedd 1y ago

It would be interesting to build an app like this designed specifically to run on Cloudflare workers. - Essentially free for moderate use - Use CF Access for simple access control - Easier self-hosting because it is designed for a specific target environment - No servers to worry about - Could build AI integrations easily

ralusek 1y ago

Does anybody else have an issue with the like $8/user/month price point that products like this have coalesced around? I feel like a service like this should be like $1-5/user/year, at most.

banner520 1y ago

Congrats, strong start.