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The internet was quick to celebrate this week as OpenAI announced it's shutting down Sora, a short-form AI-generated video app. The company didn't cite a specific reason behind the decision, but most of the speculation points to several potential drivers – the computational costs of generating videos, the platform's declining popularity, and controversies with creative professionals and artists.
However, the victory rang a bit hollow for self-hosted enthusiasts unhappy with AI's impact on open source projects. The announcement confirms rumors that have surfaced over the past few weeks that OpenAI is pivoting its focus to more profitable coding and business tools, a strategy already working well for competitors like Anthropic (Claude).
Unfortunately, this almost certainly includes an increased focus on bringing coding capabilities to the masses via vibe coding – the impacts of which we're all too familiar with.
If this leaves you feeling a bit hopeless, that's okay. Plenty of concerned people are working to find new ways for open source to coexist with AI; we'll get there eventually.
In other news:
- The team behind LibreOffice released a spicy response to users complaining about a donation banner that'll be included in the platform's next release
- Dockhand – a rising star in container deployment and management – issued a critical security release that users should upgrade to ASAP
- The U.S. FCC announced a new ban on foreign-made consumer routers (networking isn't for beginners, but platforms like OPNsense are incredibly enabling for self-hosted setups if you're willing to take the plunge)
- Booklore is gone and forked versions have already started popping up to take its place. So far, I have Grimmory and BookLite on my radar as potential successors.
- Plex's latest mobile apps finally allow users to edit and update metadata for media, playlists, and collections
- 404 Media exposed a shady company that has been secretly finding and recording Zoom meetings and releasing them as AI podcasts (here are some great Zoom alternatives if you're looking for one, with MiroTalk being my personal favorite)
- The developer of Apprise (notifications) released a public URL builder for users who can't be bothered to remember URL protocols for multiple providers
- A new video encoding tool wins this week's best name award: Honey, I Shrunk the Vids
Happy selfh.st/ing!
Newswire
LibreOffice and the art of overreacting - TDF Community Blog
A donation banner is not an attack to users The announcement that LibreOffice 26.8 will feature a donation banner in the Start Centre has prompted a flood of responses, ranging from positive from many FOSS supporters, who understand the need for funding, to mild apprehension to extreme alarm from others. Some articles have described the change as an “aggressive fundraising campaign” and suggested that it is part of a dangerous trend towards “freemium” models and paid features. However, it is worth taking a step back to analyse what is actually being introduced and the broader context that many of these comments have ignored. The banner will appear in the Start Centre – the screen that greets users when they launch LibreOffice without opening a specific document – and will occupy roughly the bottom quarter of the screen. It will not block any functionality, nor will it restrict access to any features. According to the implementation plan, it will appear periodically, but not at every launch. That is all that is changing. It is a request that is certainly not intrusive, given that the Start Centre is a screen that many users – at best – glance at for a few
Italo Vignoli
The Slow Collapse of MkDocs
How personality clashes, an absent founder, and a controversial redesign fractured one of Python’s most popular projects.
Florian Maas
Why Has the US Banned Foreign-Made Routers?
The FCC just banned the sale of new consumer-grade Wi-Fi routers manufactured outside the US. Here’s what it means for you.
Modernizing encryption of Home Assistant backups
We’re bringing your Home Assistant backups fully up to date. Rolling out with release 2026.4, SecureTar v3 has independently audited, best-in-class encryption.
Home AssistantErik Montnémery, Stefan Agner
FerretDB Was Eating My CPU: Migrating Komodo from SQLite to Postgres
My Docker management tool was the loudest process on the machine. That’s not how infrastructure monitoring is supposed to work. The symptom System load was sitting at 18 on a 12-core machine. Nothing heavy was running. No transcodes, no backups. Just a normal Tuesday afternoon. ps aux --sort=-%cpu
A free VPN you can trust, now built into Firefox | The Mozilla Blog
Today we’re introducing a free built-in VPN in Firefox, a new IP-protection feature designed to keep you even more private while you browse. We’re star
The Mozilla BlogAdam Fishman
Feedback
Content Spotlight
Meet Kaneo, a self-hosted project management platform. Built as a lightweight alternative to heavier solutions, Kaneo features a modern, minimal web interface for managing and organizing projects and their related tasks. Features include kanban, Gantt, and list views, multi-user support, collaboration, backlogs, workspaces, and more.
Kaneo can be easily deployed via Docker and requires a separate PostgreSQL container for data storage.
Links: Website, Source Code
Videos and Podcasts
- How to Install WG-Easy for Secure Remote Access | Servers@Home
- The Open Source Software I'm using in 2026! | Awesome Open Source
- Homebrew routers just got a whole lot more important in the US | Jeff Geerling
- The VMware Exit Strategy: Proxmox vs. XCP-ng in 2026 | Lawrence Systems
- Getting started with OpenClaw (VPS Set-Up simply + secure) Tutorial | Christian Lempa
- Breaking Down my Smart Home's Power Consumption | Cameron Gray
Command Line Corner
Use the tac command (cat backwards) to view the contents of a file in reverse order. This is particularly helpful when viewing logs, as the most recent writes are typically appended to the end of the file.
$ cat example.txt
Self-
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Weekly
$ tac example.txt
Weekly
Host
Self-Click here for an archive of commands shared in past newsletters.
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