Offen Fair Web Analytics is a open and self hosted web analytics tool that treats operators and users as equal parties.

Reach maturity | Offen
03 Jul 2024, Hendrik Niefeld

Episode Fourteen — Reach maturity

Hii. Long time no read. How are things? After a hiatus of one and a half years, here is the last update on this blog for the time being.

Since our last post we have made it possible to override the default language, added support for reading all configuration values from files/secret, dropped the browser extension and left Twitter.

As usual, some minor bugs have been fixed and the dependencies updated. We have published these new versions:

Download the latest release from https://get.offen.dev or pull it from Docker Hub.

Maturity

Offen Fair Web Analytics has always been intended as a fair, self-hosted alternative to common web analytics tools. From the very beginning, we had a rather lightweight and minimalist approach, not least due to our strict concept of privacy on the web.

In 2019, we started working on the core analytics tool and have added more elements like the Offen Protocol and Offen Consent Tool over the years. We were generously supported in this project by NLNet Foundation as part of its Next Generation Internet initiative. Among other things, they really helped us to refine and further develop our ideas.

Now, in summer of 2024, all Offen elements have reached maturity. This is good news because we are more convinced than ever they make the web a better place. Here is an outline of how we intend to proceed with the individual components.

Offen Fair Web Analytics

As of summer 2024, OFWA is no longer in active development but is still being maintained until further notice. You can test drive it on your system today. Everything you need to use Offen Fair Web Analytics in production is available here. News about upcoming releases will be available via the Offen GitHub repo or on our Mastodon profile.

As we continue to see a lot of interest and keep hearing about new installations, we are still looking for new language versions. If you want to support fair web analytics by contributing Italian, Dutch, Polish or any other language version, don't hesitate to request an invite.

Offen Docs

Our documentation website is still being maintained and will remain online until further notice.

Offen Protocol and Offen Consent Tool

Our consent tool is still available to the public but is no longer in active development. Our protocol is still open to the interested community.

If you have any questions about implementation or ideas for further development, do not hesitate to send us an email at hioffen@posteo.de.

Offen Browser Extension

Since it is too time-consuming for us to keep up with the pace of browser extension development, it seemed only honest to us to stop developing and distributing the extension. Still, all published versions remain available.

offen.dev website and Fair Analytics Blog

This blog post also marks the end of our contributions to the blog and whole website. All content will remain online until further notice.

analytics.txt

Our proposed standard to allow websites and services to disclose information about their use of analytics software and user tracking is still relevant. The draft will therefore remain online as we are always happy to receive feedback and helpful remarks on our idea. Send us an email at hioffen@posteo.de.

Keep in touch

Are you recently discovered Offen Fair Web Analytics or using it for some time? We're happy to feature you in this README. Send a PR adding your site or app to this section.

And as we will continue to maintain OFWA we definitely need your continued support. Test and install it and share your experience with us. If you have feedback, comments or bug reports let us know and open an issue.

offen.software

Now some may be wondering what comes after Offen Fair Web Analytics for us.

In a nutshell, we want to continue to support change-makers by providing them with independent, fair and customized software that meets the highest standards of transparency, integrity and data protection.

That is why we have a new presence as a development outfit.

Based in Berlin, we're a small, reliable and well-rehearsed team of seniors that can take care of your software project from initial brainstorming to going live. Working fully open source, we value simple, resilient and accessible tools that are effortless to run and everyone can use, reuse and benefit from. 🙂 Book a call.