Hi everyone,
I’m a PhD student in Computer Science researching why people choose to self-host software—what motivates you, what concerns you, and what factors affect your decision-making.
To better understand this, I’ve prepared a short anonymous survey (~10 minutes). Your insights as part of the self-hosting community would be incredibly valuable for this research.
🔗 Survey link: https://survey.lpt.feri.um.si/376953?newtest=Y&lang=en&s=ls
This study is part of my doctoral research at the University of Maribor, Slovenia, conducted under the supervision of Assist. Prof. Lili Nemec Zlatolas, PhD. All responses are anonymous and used strictly for academic purposes.
If you’ve ever self-hosted anything—or even just considered it—I’d really appreciate your input.
Thanks a lot for your time, and feel free to ask me anything about the project (luka.hrgarek@um.si)!
Cheers!
Just filled it out in case you still need answers. Small note, your education answers don’t include “none”. While uncommon, some people never finished school and there is no option for that.
Hope it helps. There are whole categories of self hosted software I hadn’t thought of before. Maybe I should try some of them! 😁
Thank you for completing the survey! Glad it helped you discover new self-hosted software to try! :)
Done. Good luck.
Thanks so much – really appreciate it! :)
Done, good luck!
Thank you so much – I really appreciate it!
Done! I’ve been selfhosting for over 20 years now.
Some of the questions In this survey raise an eyebrow.
Do you use self-hosting?
Self-hosting isn’t something you use, it’s something you do.
I am concerned that using cloud services will reveal my privacy information.
If I hear about a new information technology, I look for ways to experiment with it.
Among my peers, I am usually the first to try out new information technologies.
In general, I am hesitant to try out new information technologies.
Either this was Ai generated or the author really needs to work on their English skills.
Well, they say they’re studying at a university in Slovenia, which gives it a pretty good chance that English isn’t their native language. Those questions still get across what they’re asking, so unless you’re some kind of grammatical god, I don’t think you can really complain too much
Have you thought about contacting Louis Rossmann? He created an extensive video guide on how to self host using FOSS. Perhaps he’d be willing to highlight your survey to his over 2 million subscribers.
That’s a good idea, and maybe even Henry from Techlore.
Done. Nobody else wants to know why I have 3 RasPi’s running stuff around the house, so I get to tell you in the survey, lol.
I want to know 👉👈
If I have a file, I have it.
If google has my file, they say they have it. I’m told it’s there. For how long? I dunno. Private? Hell no. Forever? Likely not.
This small discrepancy is the entire drive behind me selfhosting.
Also there’s that a file on a cloud service might change. E.g. Amazon sometimes updates ebook covers to advertise that there’s a show - even for those who have paid extra to have the ad-free option.
E.g. the sticker-type graphic on this and that the title is updated to “The Fires Of Heaven: Book 5 of the Wheel of Time (Now a major TV series)”:
I downloaded music I bought online and copied it to my Google drive once. This was years back, mid 2010s, this album just came out for my favorite artist back then. I’d downloaded it back to another pc and a week later - poof. No more mp3s. @.@
Edit: just that folder of that album’s mp3s, not my whole music library back then, just to be clear. Still, that was my first big burn from cloud services.
Can you elaborate? I keep a copy of my favorite music in Google drive just to download in different PCs or to keep a backup.
It was the Muse album Drones that I bought from the band’s website. I thiiiink I shared a link to the folder to my netbook with a different account to download to, and then I didn’t notice til later (maybe it was a week? A month?) the folder of just this muse album was empty.
Idr checking the trash can for my Google drive or anything. I don’t think I got a notice because I searched “copyright” in my emails circa 2015, and nothing related to removing my files popped up.
Just submitted, I hope my answers are useful for your research
Thank you very much – I really appreciate your time! And yes, absolutely – every response adds valuable insight to the research. :)
@SelfhostedResearch Done. But I found the survey design redundant and repetitive. Could demotivate people to complete ;(
Thank you for your honest feedback and for completing the survey. We understand that some questions may have felt redundant or repetitive, but this design is intended to ensure the reliability and accuracy of measuring the same concepts from different perspectives.
I have answered, and had to put “Other” in employment status because I am self employed. An option for self employment would have been useful in my opinion!
Thank you for your feedback! You’re right, self-employment could be listed more clearly, but choosing “Other” was absolutely fine and your response is fully valid. Thanks again!
Done, good luck!
Thank you so much, really appreciate it!
Filled in the survey. A few notes:
- Some of my answers make no sense on the surface - like the “experiment with new technology” block (4 questions). I’ve answered “Agree” to all of them, because I have taken time into account, which is not represented on the questions. Long story short - I do love experimenting with new tech, I’m almost always the first one to try something among my peers, but at the same I never blindly jump in (I’m hesitant) as most of the “new technology” is just
- Someone repackaging foss and relabeling it
- Some LLM bullshit
- An inferior product to what already exists
There are also scenarios where I have already found something that’s the best solution for my case, so I won’t even bother looking at something new, even if it might be the best thing since sliced bread for someone else.
-
TIme and effort setting up/maintaining (4 questions). It doesn’t take much time nor effort to set anything up now, but it did when I was starting out initially. I knew very little and a bunch of concepts hadn’t clicked, yet, so it took me days to set up Nextcloud and about half a year (on and off. Probably a week or so if it were all squeezed together) for email.
-
The performance and intent to use in the future questions are weird - they feel like the same question, just leveling off in intensity. I’ve selected the same answer for all of them. They probably should’ve been a single question with agree/disagree options swapped for intensity levels.
Good luck with your PhD!
- Some of my answers make no sense on the surface - like the “experiment with new technology” block (4 questions). I’ve answered “Agree” to all of them, because I have taken time into account, which is not represented on the questions. Long story short - I do love experimenting with new tech, I’m almost always the first one to try something among my peers, but at the same I never blindly jump in (I’m hesitant) as most of the “new technology” is just
This survey doesn’t distinguish between levels of cloud service provider, so I was a little confused.
Virtual private servers, cloud virtual servers (like AWS), cloud-based software where you provide code or a program and the cloud system runs it on a server of its choosing, and cloud-based systems where someone else provides the software (like Google Docs).
Thank you for your feedback and for completing the survey. The first part of the survey primarily focuses on Software as a Service (SaaS). We appreciate your input and will consider ways to clarify this in future surveys.
