[axg11]

What would it even mean to be an open source Cloudflare? The entire point of Cloudflare is that they run the tricky stuff for you. As another user said here, you can use nginx and lots of other OSS to achieve the same end goals. You will work much harder for it though.

[anyfactor]

# rant

I thought about this for a solid 15 minutes. What really is an open source of version of Cloudflare? That leads into the question of what is really Cloudflare.

An enterprise that has built something so huge that the idea it represents can not be separated from the service (as a whole) they provide. That is like saying what is the open source alternative to I don't know....Intel or Oracle. It not only covers a suite of offering that is impossible to replicate, but rather the complexity of each component of their entire service suite.

How the heck are you supposed to do open source CDN?

Then you take a step back and the question again, which still doesn't make any sense. "Open source alternative to Cloudflare". The question is supposed to be "What represents the open source alternative to what Cloudflare's XYZ does".

CDN, a network that is designed to deliver content... and needs to be open source. P2P systems? Torrenting? Some weird blockchain stuff? Are they CDN? I have no clue. You end up compromising in the definition of the service Cloudflare provides to pick something because it is supposed to be Open Source. You go down the list of each service Cloudflare with your own Open Source twist and you end up with a web service that more and more represents the Web 1.0 and arguably not reliable. What are you compromising at that point? Open source becomes an agenda rather than a solution.

Cloudflare isn't a software company, you are essentially paying them for the hardware they are carrying in their network/portfolio. They are not Open Source-able.

[newswasboring]

Now you made me think for solid 15 mins. What is an open source Intel? Intel has two or three large categories, depending on how you look at it. First the manufacturing arm, that is the trickiest to pin. Open source manufacturing doesn't really make sense, but we do have some fabs and initiatives which have an open PDK[1] and provide technology as a service. I think that is the closest you are going to get.

Then we have their chip architecture, I think RISC-V at least gives us an open ISA but I am not aware of fully open implementations. Then there is the various software Intel provides, everything from drivers to MKL. There are some open source versions of them here and there.

So can we have an open source Intel? Yes, but not in this world. Mostly because they do physical things. And I think that loops us back to CDNs because thats the point with them too.

[1]

[yencabulator]

The accumulation of services is silly, but it hits every company trying to sell to "enterprises".

Quick, how many products/services does AWS have?

[namaria]

It's hard to develop an accurate mental model of complete software/hardware technology stacks. Developers work with a lot of black box software offerings and begin to think of every component as just some software implementation they need to interface with.

[donutshop]

I guess I'm just wondering how I could piecemeal it together without using cloudflare. A friend had suggested checking out bunny DNS and that got me going down the rabbit hole.

[RijilV]

That’s not really what a CDN is/does…

The value proposition of a CDN is being physically closer to customers around the world, which means renting space in (often) expensive carrier hotels.

Yes yes all the major CDNs have loads of developer and infrastructure wizbangs to keep you on their platform but that’s not the fundamental value.

[theshrike79]

It's like trying to build an "Open Source Gas Station chain".

Yes, you can hack up a storage container and a pump with "open source" bits, but that's not what makes it useful.

What makes it useful is the fact that there is a $chain Gas Station in every nook and cranny. And that's not something openness can change.

[evolve2k]

To butcher your an analogy, an open source gas station chain would be a publicly an available light rail; one that replaces driving for many citizens along the route.

Openness helps kill off rent seekers. This might be the deeper concept that sits behind the original authors question.

[Dalewyn]

>What would it even mean to be an open source Cloudflare?

Free-as-in-beer to use everything, shaggy underdog social status, community of free-as-in-beer contributors to leech off of, keeping your teeth clean with some of that floss, and bonus points if you can stick trendy words like "federated" and "AI" in there.