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.
If the UNESCO and Wikimedia websites can use it, so does your company. Not an issue of the software, grow up.
Did you read my post at all?
https://codeberg.org/wheresalice/go-away
Even if you didn’t have the issues with branding, this is just generally better than Anubis.Anubis is pretty weird, I can see why.
I think cloudflare is an alternative
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
MBAs love getting ripped off.
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? 😂
Irony of ironies: the new logo looks like a glyphic anus.
ANUS SHIELD
Considering the current state of the internet, anus is pretty apt here…
Uh oh, signs of life and whimsy! Close the iris!
The laws of pneumatics and hydraulics dictate that closing the iris not fully makes the produce go uuuuuh
stronger.
Looks more like the Aperture logo with a malformed triangle on top. Not sure where you get anus from, maybe a bot’s anus could look like that? xd
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 complains and accusations for how the og software looks
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.
If they pay for something they can hold someone accountable. Not a good excuse, but i don’t know any other reason.
This is it.
It’s about risk management. If you don’t have a vendor to provide measured performance criteria, you have no idea how it will perform.
Businesses are data-centric. Without that data, a product effectively doesn’t exist.
is crowdsec no longer the gold standard? I’ve been sself hosting since … forever and I’ve never heard of anubis, but I’ve seen it in the wild.
Suggesting a self hosted alternative in an enterprise environment is a no-no (unless you’re in a startup)
Any self respecting enterprise level business will require warranty and support which self hosted solutions do not offer. Good luck trying to get an “SLA” out of Anubis support, if it even exists.
Sounds to me like you need a WAF (if you want to self host it for some reason) there are other enterprise level services that specialize in this. Zscaler comes to mind, but there are dozens.
Free plug for my company because they help pay the bills.
https://www.imperva.com/products/web-application-firewall-waf/
I wrote a crowdsec bouncer that outputs an anubis config. They work together well.
Anubis doesn’t try to do any detection or blocking by itself.
A WAF is a completely different thing than Anubis. And it also has an enterprise version with support.
Kinda pretty opinionated reply for not knowing what OP is about
Is this something I can deploy on my homeland for my web facing services? Or am I miss understanding the purpose
Yes, your reverse proxy serves this and only then the actual service when the client solved it
So it is like a captcha?
Kind of, but your browser needs to solve it (which classic ai scrapers weren’t able to)
So it is not something that a normal user sees like a puzzle you need to solve before accessing a certain service?
The user sees it but just has to wait a bit, see the screenshot in the OP.
It is a big problem with a number of opensource projects that could get wider adoption and support, especially from businesses, but seem to, almost deliberately, work against that with their naming and/or branding.
Anubis is a perfect example. In this case the name is ok, and by all means have a cutsey mascot for the basic offering, but if they want businesses to subscribe they need a professional offering. That should be on a separate domain, styled to attract the decision makers in their target market, and that includes having a .com or similar domain name and a more serious logo. Do that, and it becomes a serious contender in the market, rather than a technically good but excessively kooky option.
I think they have a professional offering. You can give them a bit of your money to have a proper branding as you like, or just remove it. The cost-free version is not primarily meant for commercial use. Just stop thinking a company is non-commercial.
It is simply stupid if the companies prejudge a project in such a way, although there would be an offer for them, which is made especially for commercial projects.
Edit: but I see that there are not very much advantages when a project does it like they do at Anubis.
They do have a professional offering, but it’s offered in a deeply unprofessional way. Selling to businesses means you need both the technical offering, but also the correct commercial offering. That means presenting yourself in a way that attracts the attention of the decision makers in those businesses, and telling them a compelling story of why your product is the best fit to solce their problem. A .lol domain and a cartoon catgirl doesn’t do that.
I’d suggest that, for the cost of an extra domain name, and a boring logo, they could probably significantly increase their subscriber base. There’s nothing stopping them keeping the current mascot on the current site at the same time.
You call it stupid to prejudge a project in such a way, but businesses need a product to buy, not a project.
I’d suggest that, for the cost of an extra domain name, and a boring logo, they could probably significantly increase their subscriber base.
Here’s an idea. Do this with a giant ass logo. Put a banner underneath it with a link saying something like “Add this for FREE to your own business’ website!”
It would have two main benefits. First, it’s still a giant ad for their project. Second, it would shame the company into sponsoring because now everyone can see how cheap they are.
<rant>
especially from businesses
if they want businesses to subscribe
styled to attract the decision makers in their target market
Do that, and it becomes a serious contender in the market
The market who’s responsible for fucking up the internet? The market that constantly attacks websites with crawlers to steal everything for value extraction, which Anubis fights against? The market that couldn’t care less about you unless you provide value to it, and even then won’t give you a penny unless forced (while building the whole internet on your shoulders)? That market?
Most FOSS devs I know who aren’t forced into it couldn’t give less of a fart about “the market” and capitalists with sticks in their rear ends inside it. The monetization was often just attached to a project because it makes sense given we’re all trapped in capitalism and perhaps have to somehow cover project costs (probably less so for Anubis), not because it’s a goal to attract investment.
People who’re appaled by something so simple such as a .lol domain and a cute mascot sound awful to talk to anyway.
It is a big problem with a number of opensource projects that could get wider adoption and support
I tell you how that “support” looks like. Companies who adopted the software will add your maintainer Email to their business contacts. If there are issues with your software they’ll then usually ignore the developer route and directly write emails to you, and if it’s a big problem for them immediately blame you and threaten legal action, blahblahblah. They’ll treat you like someone they have a support contract with and be completely confused when you tell them to open an issue and that you otherwise don’t care. Meanwhile they’ll build an empire using your software and be a persistent nuisance.
Why should anyone not desperately needing money to survive care about this.
</rant>
100% couldn’t agree more.
They’d easily pay 1000 Euro for a tool like this, and I’d be able to sell it to multiple teams. But after my experience recommending Anubis at work, I will simply never recommend it again until they offer something like you have mentioned.
It’s so frustrating.
I understand you are just looking for an easy open source project that solves your issue, but it seems fairly obvious to me that your real issue here is that you are not willing to push for your teammates to accept that it is a valid service even if branded a bit oddly.
You should go for the $50 professional tier and get your team to accept that as valid by respectfully asserting yourself instead of wetnoodling and trying to get a different project that requires less assertiveness on your part.
Good luck with your team.
I have tried twice to push it, and both times I’ve gotten weird reactions because of the branding.
It’s not worth it for me to do that again, I wish Anubis had a paid version with a different domain and no cutsie anime girl branding. That would make it significantly easier to sell to me colleagues
I think the developer might benefit hearing that point of view. A separate website that only lists the paid tier without displaying the anime branding seems beneficial for them. You could suggest it to them.
That would solve all my problems.
If they can’t stay professional, be the one who does.
Sure, but at the end of the day Anubis will not be used, because of its branding.
Then point out that their way of thinking is unprofessional without saying so directly. That’s what I would do, at least.
There is a way to use something like Anubis without having to deal with the image. But you need to handle it professionally.
Even after doing that, Anubis will not get used. I am in the minority.
Then let happen what needs to happen. The company does not have a simple and cheap solution for fighting bots. Maybe it is better they don’t have such protection.
You say you have tried to convince them twice. How have you tried to pitch it so far? Like, give us a word for word and we may be able to help you workshop it.
I am not jumping thought hoops at work to fight this battle at work.
IMO, Anubis is no longer a tool I will recommend at work until there is a URL I can point people to without that branding, it being paid is not a issue, work will throw thousands of Euro’s at the issue if they have to. But I will never risk that mascot coming up in a meeting again.
It sounds like you are still just throwing a fit over the fact that the Anubis team has set the logo as what it is.
New suggestion:
Write your own damn anti-bot code.Then don’t recommend it to others. Keep being ashamed of the cute, anime-style picture just because everyone else is embarrassed by it. But that’s not how the world’s problems get solved.
Your work environment is bad if they are so easily distracted by branding and can’t deal with ‘unporfessional’ and ‘weird’ things.
Brother I hear you, I do. The problem isn’t the workplace, the problem is that some people will find this unprofessional enough to bitch. Any public facing anything for any company will be heavily scrutinized by a subset of people who actively look for things to bitch about.
The professional, whitewashed and soulless veneer on every professional website is the direct result of hoards of bored idiots with nothing better to do than bitch about any perceived insult, however slight. You either have an organization that absolutely revels in it, or you end up with the same safe corporate bullshit everyone else has.
You forget the legal angle. That’s really what drives this stuff (and marketing).
Exactly.
I think I’ve just never worked in an environment like this it was always either a startup where nobody cares about branding of some tool (also there wouldn’t even be a discussion about it) or places where it wasn’t a priority as long as it worked because menagerial class was limited in numbers so they couldn’t poke where it wasn’t required.
If they’re that picky about it just point them to cloudflare and let them solve their own issues.
but using Cancer emoji… very professional.
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.
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.
came here to say just that
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.
Let’s expand this thought: we should put anime girls everywhere in order to filter corpo dorks. Making something look “silly” is actually a great ideia to shit on those “serious companies”.
You seem to have rediscovered why some open source projects use names like GIMP. 🤣
Say what you will about having an anime girl wrap on your car, but everyone sees you and gives you plenty of space on the road.
I might mock the method, but I can’t argue with the results.
There is a debranded version you can pay for
