6mo ago

Selfhosted alternatives to Goodreads?

So I finally broke down and made a very poor purchasing decision and ordered an e-ink writer to be a notepad/e-reader hybrid. Partially so that it is less of a hassle to read books I got from kickstarters and the like while still using the kindle app for the disturbing amounts of money I throw at Amazon.

Historically? I loved goodreads because theoretically I would get good recommendations based on what I liked. In practice, that has never happened but it is still nice to see if I read something in the past. And once I have multiple ebook ecosystems, it will be nice to actually check that rather than spend the first 100 pages wondering if this is familiar.

So any good recommendations? I suspect what I SHOULD do (and will likely start doing more as a self betterment thing) is just put a note in my personal nextcloud every time I finish a book with a quick summary and some thoughts. But having the big database is also really nice.

Thanks

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24 comments

Bookwyrm
- +1 for bookwyrm
- I'm using Bookwyrm for about a year now, I think.
  I really like it and it's federated approach. Even though it has it's issues (multiple different versions of the same book over multiple servers), I still like to track my readings with it and I also love to add a new book to the server to make it available for everyone :-)
  So a +1 from me as well :-)
- Saw the headline, came in thinking "I know there's a federated version, but can't remember the name" and BAM! there it is; Abidan in with the save!
- So. Fucking. Slow.
- Only if it was Free Software or at least OpenSource…
  
  Huh? It is.
  https://github.com/bookwyrm-social
  
  No. It's not. It's just a proprietary source-available software. The license is neither Free nor Open.
  
  Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person or organization (the "User") obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to use, copy, modify, merge, distribute, and/or sell copies of the Software, subject to the following conditions:
  The conditions they attach are essentially, don't use it for corporate profit or law enforcement.
  It's not a BSD license, but if you're an individual you can do whatever you want with it.
  
  So it does violate some core rules of both FS an OS. Also the text is so full of legal holes which makes it useless in it's goal too. It only prevents good-intent individuals from contributing and acts as a tool in hand of big evil corpurates.
  
  I'm not sure what exactly you consider "core rules" but GPL3 also puts stipulations on how software can be used and who can use it but I doubt you would be complaining about that.
  I'm also not a lawyer, but I don't see how a license that says "if you're an individual, do whatever you want" is going to stop someone with good intentions from contributing.
  
  Software Freedom #0: The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose
  Open source criteria #6: The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research.
  By forbidding some entities from using the software, it violates both Free Software and Open Source and makes itself proprietary.

24 comments