Self-Hosted Apps Licensed GPL-2.0-or-later

6 self-hostable apps released under GPL-2.0-or-later you can run on your own server — compared on specs, deployment difficulty, and the SaaS each one replaces.

Forum

Discourse

Community forum software built on Ruby on Rails, Ember.js, PostgreSQL and Redis, licensed GPL-2.0-or-later. Chat, polls, solved answers, reactions, assignments and an AI plugin ship in the core repository. The only officially supported install is Docker through the discourse_docker launcher, which builds one container from YAML templates; there is no Compose file.

Ruby on RailsEmber.jsPostgreSQLRedis

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CMS & blogging

Drupal

A PHP content management framework for structured, multilingual websites, extended with contributed modules and themes.

PHPSymfony

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CMS & blogging

Joomla

A PHP content management system for websites, with built-in multilingual support, access control and an extension directory.

PHPMySQL

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Forms & surveys

LimeSurvey

A full survey platform: 30+ question types, skip logic and question branching, multilingual surveys, closed-access mode with personal invitation links, response statistics, plugins and a RemoteControl API. GPL-2.0-or-later PHP that needs MySQL/MariaDB or PostgreSQL; upstream ships no container image, so the snippet runs the community-maintained martialblog/limesurvey image (Apache + PHP) next to MariaDB.

PHPYiiMariaDB

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Wiki & docs

MediaWiki

The PHP wiki engine behind Wikipedia, licensed GPL-2.0-or-later and built for large public knowledge bases: wikitext markup, categories, templates, full revision history, and a vast extension ecosystem. It runs on MariaDB/MySQL (recommended), PostgreSQL, or SQLite, and its own documentation recommends no Docker image for third-party production use — the Docker Hub image is community-maintained and the install still ends with you saving a generated LocalSettings.php.

PHPMariaDB

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CMS & blogging

WordPress

The PHP and MySQL content management system for websites and blogs, extended with themes and plugins.

PHPMySQL

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