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Self-Host Weekly Ethan Sholly

Self-Host Weekly (19 December 2025)

Popular open source licenses, Santa tracking, and saying goodbye to an old friend

Self-Host Weekly (19 December 2025)
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Weekly Highlights

GitHub stole most of the spotlight this week after announcing it was going to begin charging customers for self-hosted Actions runner usage while simultaneously reducing the price for those hosted by the platform. Cue the intense backlash from users who hate paying for things, which prompted the company to postpone the decision (i.e. they'll implement the new pricing after we've all moved on to the next controversy).

On the flip side of the coin, Docker open sourced the images from their Docker Hardened Image program under the Apache 2.0 license and released them to the public (source code), which will allow maintainers to leverage the hardened images when building applications. This should theoretically reduce attack vectors and produce smaller images for those utilizing them, but TBD on how much the average end user will be impacted.

And speaking of open source, the Open Source Initiative published their list of the 20 most-popular open source licenses from 2025 ranked by number of pageviews. MIT led the pack with ~1.5M pageviews, while Apache 2.0 and BSD 2/3 followed with approximately 350k views each (the disparity between the top four and bottom 16 is fairly large).

Other Highlights

Happy selfh.st/ing!

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Newswire

Self-Hosted Software Names You’re Probably Mispronouncing
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Top Open Source licenses in 2025
The top 20 OSI-Approved licenses most frequently sought out by our community in 2025 based on number of pageviews.
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Hardened Images for Everyone | Docker
Security for everyone. Docker Hardened Images are now free to use, share, and build on with no licensing surprises.
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Marginal Gains: Major Impact | Stalwart Labs
In professional cycling, the concept of marginal gains became famous through Team Sky. Rather than chasing dramatic breakthroughs, they focused on making hundreds of small improvements: slightly better bike fit, marginally lighter components, improved sleep, cleaner nutrition. None of these changes mattered much on their own, but together they reshaped performance—and helped dominate the sport for years.
StalwartMauro D.

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Content Spotlight

Meet Jellify, a cross-platform music player for Jellyfin. With Jellify, users can easily stream their music on-the-go (iOS or Android) from the comfort of a modern interface that places a heavy emphasis on library artwork (similar to popular hosted streaming services). Features include themes, music discovery, playback reporting, playlist management, offline playback, instant mixes, Google Cast support – with gapless playback and Android Auto/CarPlay support on the way.

While available in the official app stores, Android users can also install the Jellify APK directly from GitHub releases, while iOS users have the option to join the latest TestFlight or install via sideloading.



Links: Source Code, Google Play, Apple App Store

Videos and Podcasts

Command Line Corner

Use echo $RANDOM to generate a random number from the command line:

$ echo $RANDOM
  1337101

Click here for an archive of commands shared in past newsletters.

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