What do I think?

Common question is, as maintainer of WeKan FLOSS kanban, what do I think about Fizzy, “Fun, modern take of kanban”. I’m big fan of all FLOSS work DHH does, DHH is Cross-Platform FLOSS maintainer like me. I do agree with DHH about some things, like having more color, and about MongoDB license.

37signals Company of DHH

DHH has for-profit company that is funded by their propietary Basecamp SaaS product.

WeKan Company

WeKan is non-profit at Finland, meaning that self-employed CEO Lauri Ojansivu https://github.com/xet7 usually does everything (maintaining, coding features, replying to about 100 emails per day, releases for all platforms of Bundle/Docker/Snap/UCS/Sandstorm for amd64/arm64/s390x, Commercial Support, etc) , and there is not yet enough money to pay monthly bills, reduce debt, or make any profit. Some customers are waiting for updates or features to be finished before sending more money for yearly support or ordering new features, making survival quite challenging – big thanks to those sponsors that have sent even small amount of money, you don’t know how critical that money was to keep me alive. This is why there is in progress of reducing costs (recently moved to cheaper rent apartment but moving costs maxed out debt, changing WeKan to use less server resources like CPU and RAM like with WeKan Wami prototype original design also because prices of RAM are rising a lot) , funding WeKan with other non-WeKan work (like teaching using computers, installing Linux to Windows/Mac/Chromebook computers, making websites, fixing computers, etc). Sometime WeKan has been at some EU project. WeKan paying customers and sponsors of WeKan Commercial Support for optional Features/Fixes/Support/Hosting usually are from public sector at Europe and USA.

37signals: Once Campfire Chat, Once Again Fizzy Kanban

37signals has experimental “Once” product line, that is targeted to find new business models, like making paid products for something between Open Source and Propietary. The gap between Open Source and Propietary is very wide.

First “Once” product was Slack competitor Campfire, that is now MIT license Open Source , like DHH annouced at Rails World 2025 keynote about 3 months ago at 2025-09-04 . Before open sourcing it, it was pay once $299 product. Campfire is designed to be self-installed by customer that paid only once. When open sourcing Campfire, DHH added requirement that someone should extract some part of from Campfire to be used as gem for Ruby on Rails web framework, so that is could be used at other products.

Jira

At Propietary high-end, there is Atlassian Jira, that is made with Java, and has all Enterprise features of endless checklist. Atlassian has been discontinuing self-hosted On-Premise versions of Jira, and rising prices of Jira.

DHH has some videos about comparing Jira and Fizzy. Point with Fizzy is to have the right opinionated small amount of features to improve productivity. Not to have endless checklist of too many features like Jira.

Trello

At Propietary high-end, there is also Trello, that was acquired by Atlassian. Trello is SaaS-only, there is no self-hosted On-Premise version of Trello.

WeKan FLOSS kanban

At FLOSS high-end, there is WeKan that has many features. Originally WeKan was created by Maxime Quandalle with Meteor Full Stack Web Framework, and there was WeKan redesign to be different than Trello. xet7 did translate WeKan to Finnish. At December 2016 was WeKan Fork that was merged to original Wekan, xet7 continuing maintaining of WeKan. Since December 2016, xet7 has added and removed over 4 million lines of code to WeKan. Every WeKan version increments WeKan version by 0.01, so newest version 8.17 means that xet7 has released about 800 versions of WeKan, about one version per every 3 days, for 9 years. There has been about 300 contributors to WeKan. WeKan is used at most countries of the world. WeKan is translated to 70+ languages. Some of the biggest WeKan users have 30k+ users using WeKan at their internal Kubernetes cluster. WeKan has specific targeted niche and specific original WeKan design that is also Monkey Proof Software, currently targeting future original WeKan Wami design that is also partially inspired by Dillo. WeKan has many features that are only at WeKan, and some features that are at Trello, Jira and ClickUp. Recently, Trello had UI redesign that received some mixed feedback, and Trello added some new features like Inbox, and some features that were previously long time ago already at WeKan .

Fizzy and WeKan: Modern Shiny Colorful Web UI

Fizzy has Modern Colorful web UI.

After many years since previous fashion change to rounded corners at WeKan at 2022-01-31, flat design and grey icons, shiny colors of MacOS X 10 Aqua and Windows Vista are back as the old new normal: iOS/macOS 26 Liquid Glass, Win11, MS365 colorful glass icons.

WeKan already had possibility to change board theme and colors of swimlanes, lists and cards, this is what some versions of older Microsoft kanban software does not have. Some weeks ago WeKan changed from old grey Font Awesome 4.7 to new colorful Unicode Emoji Icons. This made possible to remove all that extra code, files etc from WeKan, making WeKan boards loading faster, because colorful Unicode Emoji icon is just one Unicode character, it does not require any additional code. Some have asked to get the grey back, it could be possible with some CSS to make colorful unicode grey, or by changing to icons I converted from Font Awesome 4.7 SVG to GIF to be compatible with all browsers, because there is plans for WeKan to support all browsers sometime in the future.

At 2025-12-12 there was WeKan interview where is shown newest WeKan colorful Unicode icon UI. WeKan has recent new feature of Workspaces, that is a little similar like at Trello and ClickUp, but in different opinionated way, so that All Boards that have not been yet moved to some Workspace or Sub-Workspace are at Remaining.

Fizzy: Modern only CSS

Fizzy uses newest modern CSS for popups etc, and supports only newest modern browsers. More about that has someone else written at https://www.zolkos.com/2025/12/03/vanilla-css-is-all-you-need

WeKan: Modern only CSS. In Future: Legacy+Modern CSS

WeKan has plans to at future be compatible with all browsers, also those that do not support Javascript, including Elinks, w3m, Netsurf, Amiga IBrowse, Dillo, IE, etc, by using http://aminet.net style CSS. More about this fashion has Dillo webbrowser maintainer written at https://dillo-browser.github.io/news/migration-from-github/ . For browsers that do not support Javascript, this means moving cards with source and target checkboxes, move buttons, arrows direction buttons, like seen at WeKan Go native UI prototype. For modern browsers that support Javascript, Javascript is used to provide additional features like drag drop etc. There are very many WeKan prototypes made with different programming languages and web frameworks, some of prototypes are mentioned at upgrade webpage.

Fizzy Backend: Modern Production Omakase Frankenstein Stack

Because I had many programming languages installed, I wrote install.sh script to uninstall many programming languages and install Fizzy at Kubuntu 25.10. Fizzy installs many newest programming languages like Go, Ruby, OpenJDK, Elixir etc. These are used for realtime updates, search, etc, using opinionated best tool for the job. There was previously separate repo for Fizzy SaaS version, but it was merged to saas directory main Fizzy repo.

Nextcloud also nowadays uses Omakase Frankenstein stack. Originally Nextcloud was PHP backend, but then they added serverside running AI features with Python, etc, so they also use many programming languages at backend, like CEO of Nextcloud mentioned at some interview.

Meteor 2 WeKan Frontend and Backend: Javascript Stack

Node.js was originally created, so that Javascript could also be used at backend, reducing mental switching costs between programming languages. There was a dream about using same Javascript programming language for frontend and backend, making frontend developers full-stack developers (bonus points to your CV), and running frontend code also at backend. In practice, there are many differences between frontend and backend. At frontend, there is DOM (Document Object Model), but at backend needs to be manually created virtual DOM, or alternatively run full headless webbrowser at serverside.

I have not yet figured out, would it be possible to run Mermaid.js diagramming and drawing tool  serverside with Node.js, because having all that Mermaid.js code browserside did break or often cause Maximum Call Stack Exceeded bug both at Meteor 2 WeKan and Meteor 3 protype version of WeKan, so I had to remove Mermaid.js from WeKan.

Fizzy License: Not Open Source

Fizzy has O’Saasy License, that has no-compete for providing paid SaaS, similar like MongoDB SSPL.

MongoDB originally was AGPLv3, but changed to SSPL, because they did not like AWS providing paid SaaS. According to X/Twitter and blogs, DHH has very strong opinions about very many things, including MongoDB license.

According to OSi (Open Source Initiative) that has list of Open Source licenses, MongoDB is not Open Source. But OSi has no control to term “Open Source”. OSi also has some AI licenses where content of license shows that it is not actually Open Source. WeKan creator Maxime Quandalle selected MIT license for WeKan. Meteor 2 WeKan is made with Meteor Full Stack Web Framework, that also has MIT license.

Fizzy niche is at very different than WeKan niche . Niches of software license categories are, from most permissive to most limited:

1. Permissive MIT/BSD https://copyfree.org , like WeKan (Node.js/FerretDB2/PostgreSQL) and Kanboard (PHP, in maintenance mode). You need to include license. You can use, modify, distribute, and provide competing paid SaaS. While you are not required to provide source code changes, there are benefits from contributing to upstream.
2. GPL and AGPL, like OpenProject that is integrated to Nextcloud (some companies do not allow using GPL software at their company). If you distribute or sell it to outside of your company, you need to provide source code changes.
3. Open Core: Community version and Enterprise version, like RocketChat and Gitea, https://sso.tax . Enterprise version costs Enterprise levels of money.
4. Source Available, Source First from FUTO, Fizzy O’Saasy, MongoDB SSPL, BSL (Business License). You use and see the Source Code, but you are not allowed to use it to provide competing paid SaaS.
5. Propietary: Closed Source. You are not allowed to use it to provide competing paid SaaS, and you usually do not get source code at all. Usually 90% of Closed Source Software is outdated vulnerable FLOSS code, and remaining is small amount of propietary changes. Usually real FLOSS software has up-to-date newest secure dependencies.

WeKan License: Open Source MIT permissive license

All code for all WeKan platforms is MIT license at https://github.com/wekan/wekan . It is possible to provide paid SaaS, and run WeKan offline at internal networks at these platforms https://wekan.fi/install/ .

Instead of MongoDB, it is possible to use FerretDB2/PostgreSQL, to have all FLOSS stack.

Previously I also had fork of WeKan where was GPLv2 Gantt Chart component, so that viral GPLv2 license infected MIT WeKan to be GPLv2 WeKan. That Gantt Chart feature was originally contributed to WeKan as pull request by developer from Ukraine, but he did not continue improving Gantt feature or sending any other features of WeKan, because he’s kind of too busy when Ukraine is at war with Russia. I discontinued that GPLv2 version of WeKan, and there are some discussions to add Gantt feature to MIT license version of WeKan.

Fizzy GitHub Discussions vs WeKan GitHub issues

Fizzy only allows to add GitHub discussions. For those discussions, where something is agreed, there is some issue about what will be done.

WeKan only allows to add GitHub issues. Previously, discussions were enabled, but there was some spam messages at discussions that were not possible to remove, so xet7 disabled discussions.

WeKan Free Public FLOSS Support is at GitHub issues.

Private paid Commercial Support is at email, currently at ProtonMail. Previously, Commercial Support also had private chat using RocketChat, but because RocketChat takes too much resources and does not stay running, requiring restarts etc, support chat is in progress of being migrated to some different chat.

Previously, WeKan had docs at many different GitHub wikis. Wikis were open to edit for any logged in GitHub user, but because there came spam messages from unfamiliar GitHub newbies wondering “why they can edit wiki”, write access was disabled. After that, docs were combined from many wikis to wekan repo docs directory.

Originally, WeKan website was at some domain WeKan original creator Maxime Quandalle bought, but that domain expired and was bought by someone that made it virus website. xet7 registered WeKan trademark and tried to use it to get control of that domain, but that was not possible. WeKan was originally spelled Wekan, but because Finland trademark office registered it as WeKan, xet7 changed at website etc everywhere Wekan to WeKan.

xet7 also did not have full access to WeKan Twitter page where Maxime Quandalle had link to that old domain that had virus website. xet7 then registered new domain wekan.team that was available, and created new Twitter page WeKanTeam that had correct link to wekan.team website. At that time, wekan.github.io was WeKan FLOSS website, and wekan.team was WeKan Company website. At local computer shop at Finland someone asked from xet7 about WeKan company email address, and it did take too much time to explain that domain is wekan.team, not wekan.fi . At the same time, there was increasing amount of spam emails and SMS about .com and other domains that were not .fi . So xet7 decided to combine websites from wekan.github.io and wekan.team to wekan.fi . Official domain is now wekan.fi , while WeKan app still uses subdomain of wekan.team .

There was also some security researcher that sent email to WeKan Security about security issues at some non-GitHub discussion platforms, so links to those platforms were removed from WeKan website. Only Public FLOSS WeKan issues at GitHub are used for public discussions.

There is nothing propietary at WeKan. xet7 has coded only FLOSS code for many years, some more info about it at xet7 personal website.

What happened immediately after publishing this blog post

Someone sent email to WeKan Support, asking this question. It is not the first time, and will not be the last time.

Q: We have a family office who has a strong interest in acquiring companies in WeKan’s vertical. Can we set up a time to discuss this opportunity?

A: No.

In Other News: xet7 sometimes receives fake email and SMS. Nowadays, it is possible to fake image, audio, video, SMS (sender name can also be faked, usually there is some virus webpage link), email (can be seen from sender email address and email headers), faces at video meetings, news, etc.