Why an Open Source Hosting Platform Makes Sense for the Open Website Alliance
Bryan Gruneberg
Professional Services by Workshop Orange | Enterprise Hosting by amazee.io | Building Bagel.Blue
As an advocate for the open web, I'm here to share my perspective and thoughts on why an open-source hosting platform is crucial for the Open Website Alliance.
Disclosure: This post is about Lagoon (https://lagoon.sh ) and Open Source Hosting. While I am presenting an Open Source opinion, I work with amazee.io as a Consulting Solutions Architect on selected accounts and opportunities.
The Open Website Alliance: A Community of Communities
Before diving into the core of my argument, let me briefly introduce what the Open Website Alliance represents. The alliance is a collaborative effort between major open-source Content Management Systems (CMS) - specifically Drupal, WordPress, TYPO3, and Joomla.
Its mission is twofold:
1. To educate about open source benefits and principles
2. To advocate for these benefits and principles
The alliance seeks to promote and defend the rights of open-source projects, aiming to create a better web. It encourages website owners and developers to choose open-source over proprietary systems and educates decision-makers on why this should be the first and most important decision in a website project.
At its core, the Open Website Alliance is a community of communities, built on and furthering openness, trust, and quality. It serves as a platform for members to share and discuss best practices that benefit the public perception of open-source projects, the reliability of open-source software, and the quality and safety of open-source communities.
The Open Web: More Than Just Technology
Central to the Alliance's mission is the concept of the Open Web. It's crucial to understand that the open web is more than just a technology - it's a cause.
Let me break down the key principles that define the open web:
Built on freedom: With open web technologies, you don't need permission to learn, build, or advance. Anyone, anywhere can contribute to making the open web better.
Defined by decentralization: No single person or entity controls the open web.
Thrives on inclusion: Everyone in the world can have a home on the open web as a consumer, user, creator, architect, or innovator, regardless of background, identity, ability, wealth, or status.
Requires participation: The open web is a shared resource and a shared responsibility, sustained by deliberate choice and collaborative effort.
Exists for empowerment: It's fueled by humanity's collective quest for information, connection, and progress, but strengthened by individual rights to choice, privacy, and security.
The Open Web Manifesto
To live up to the ideals listed above, the open web cannot be built on proprietary technology, and it...
The Logical Conclusion: Open Source Hosting Platforms
Now, here's where I believe the argument for an open-source hosting platform becomes compelling. If we truly buy into these open-web values, then embracing a fully open-source hosting platform is a logical conclusion.
Think about it: If your CMS is open-source, your tooling is open-source, and your contributions are open-source... shouldn't your hosting platform be too?
Measuring the PaaS ecosystem
Let's examine how the industry-standard application hosting platforms stack up against the principles outlined in the Open Web Manifesto:
Protecting personal data and public discourse
Most platforms take personal data protection seriously, but protecting public discourse runs on a spectrum from total "freedom of speech" to total "protection of the people hearing the speech".
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If you want to be in total control of your hosting platform's data and implement your vision of "protecting public discourse", you're often limited to picking the provider with the most aligned policies and hoping it works out.
Enabling competition for innovators and entrepreneurs
Scalability and flexibility are key here. Many platforms struggle with scalability because it often requires having capacity available all the time to account for infrequent spikes.
Flexibility is another challenge - if you use a platform built (for example) for Drupal, it can be difficult or impossible to run a Node application alongside it. It gets increasingly challenging to host different technologies, forcing innovators to use either use tools in ways they weren't designed to be used, or to adopt multiple platforms for their different toolsets.
Resilience and decentralized control
Currently, in the Drupal world, there are only approximately four major Drupal hosting Platform-as-a-Service offerings. And in the WordPress world, almost 1% of all websites are hosted on a single platform (Automattic).
This concentration of power is at odds with the principle of decentralization.
An Open Source Hosting Platform
This is where I believe Lagoon, an open-source application delivery platform for Kubernetes, presents a compelling solution. Here's how Lagoon addresses each of these points:
Data protection and control: Being fully open-source, Lagoon allows organizations to run their own platform or hire a company to do so. This gives them complete control over data and policies.
Enabling innovation: Lagoon's flexibility allows it to host various technologies in Docker containers, deployed to Kubernetes. If you can run it in a Docker Container, Lagoon can deploy it to Kubernetes for you. This facilitates diverse and innovative projects.
Resilience and decentralization: As an open-source platform, Lagoon empowers organizations to run their own Platform-as-a-Service, reducing dependence on a few major providers.
The Trust Factor in Open Source
Now, let's consider how open-source CMS platforms like Drupal, WordPress, TYPO3, and Joomla have earned the trust placed in them. I would argue that among the top sources of trust are:
How do hosting platforms stack up against these trust factors?
Social Proof: The popular hosting platforms have done a great job of driving broad adoption of the Platform-as-a-Service model, with plenty of social proof across various sectors.
Partner Ecosystem: Here too, popular hosting platforms have excelled in building partner ecosystems, which helps drive social proof and adoption.
Customization and Flexibility: There's a spectrum here, with some platforms being difficult to customize and others being super flexible. However, almost none embrace the emerging open standards for containerizing web apps.
Open Source Development Model: This is where most Platform-as-a-Service providers fall short. While they promote and support the open-source software they host, almost none of the actual code underlying their Platform-as-a-Service is open-source. I find this perplexing at best and contradictory at worst.
Why Lagoon Stands Out
Lagoon as an Open Source product, I believe, ticks all the boxes:
Open Source Based Hosting Is A Logical Choice
I believe that if you're convinced by the Open Web Alliance's mission and values, you're already convinced of the value of an open-source hosting platform. The adoption of a truly open-source hosting platform becomes a logical conclusion of the Open Web Alliance's principles.
While there are very few fully open-source hosting platforms available, I hope I've convinced you that Lagoon deserves your attention. It embodies the principles of the open web and provides the flexibility, scalability, and openness that the next generation of web innovators will need.
If you're intrigued and want to explore Lagoon further, I invite you to join us on the Lagoon Discord, check out our code on GitHub, or reach out to amazee.io (the commercial Lagoon offering) for a free sandbox environment.
The open web is a shared responsibility, and by embracing open-source solutions at every level, we can ensure its continued growth and success.
Director of Global Demand Generation | Author of 'Becoming a Digital Marketer'
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