At work I was asked by a different team how we can deal with bots, because someone in my team remembered that I knew how to do it.

I reluctantly suggested Anubis because I got shit for it last time, This is the URL https://anubis.techaro.lol

This is the 2nd and last time I will ever recommend Anubis anywhere at work to deal with bots because of how unprofessional, un-serious and weird others perceive it.

The mascot being a ~10 year old "cutsie" anime cat girl is weird in a work setting.
I will never put myself in a situation again where I have to explain that it's not weird to anyone again, same for that URL.

What is a professional looking open-source alternative to Anubis?

Edit: No I can't just send my colleges here https://anubis.techaro.lol/docs/admin/botstopper
The issue is they find the Mascot and domain weird, they will still run into both.

My Goal: Recommend a Open-Source bot protection tool

The Issue: When I send my coworkers to https://anubis.techaro.lol/docs/admin/botstopper they find the mascot and URL weird.

Result: They don't see Anubis as a serious tool and turn away from it

What is a professional looking open-source alternative to Anubis?

Botstopper.

Litterly the same thing but you can customise the image.

https://anubis.techaro.lol/docs/admin/botstopper

You're a business, support the project.

tell them to grow up

https://anubis.techaro.lol/docs/admin/botstopper

I imagine Anubis looking like that is because professional settings really should sponsor when using open source.
https://anubis.techaro.lol/docs/admin/botstopper/
https://github.com/sponsors/Xe

Well you can pay 50 USD / month to remove the anime jackal girl and apply your own branding. I think its a fair system: hobby & FOSS projects don't have to mind being cringe and profit-oriented operations that need to look professional can spare some of their profit for this cool service.

Great career move, run around telling people to grow up.

That URL has all the same issues I mention in my post

If I could send them to eg. botstopper.com where there is no mascot to be found, then that would be a solution.

That URL has all the same issues I mention in my post

If I could send them to eg. botstopper.com where there is no mascot to be found, then that would be a solution.

That URL has all the same issues I mention in my post

If I could send them to eg. botstopper.com where there is no mascot to be found, then that would be a solution.

Host your own redirect then? The cold feet from people like you is kinda the point, Buisnesses should be using the business tier.

I agree that if you're a business you should probably just pay so you can change the image.

I've been meaning to set up something like https://iocaine.madhouse-project.org/ though, seems interesting.

depends on what kind of relationship you have with your colleagues.

I don't have cold feet, but I need to convince others to want to use the tool.

But when others deem it weird, that doesn't succeed, and they turn away from Anubis

Look buddy I understand that URL has the same issue you mention in your post but it is the official Anubis URL.

Thus if you really want to be professional you load up the URL past the anime girl, organize a meeting and share your screen.

Tell them what it is and what it is for.

Explain what is opensource and the fact that this is free only if they accept that anime girl. Otherwise it'll be 50 bucks and they can put their own ai designed logo instead.

If they are still acting like childs treat them like childs. Recenter the meeting on what it is for. Do a proof of concept. I don't know, do something instead of stating that the official website is not how you would like it to be ?

In this case, it's a different team reaching out to me for advice.
So zero, and they potentially would have used Anubis, but given the URL and mascot, I doubt it.

I understand you are just looking for an easy open source project that solves your issue, but it seems fairly obvious to me that your real issue here is that you are not willing to push for your teammates to accept that it is a valid service even if branded a bit oddly.

You should go for the $50 professional tier and get your team to accept that as valid by respectfully asserting yourself instead of wetnoodling and trying to get a different project that requires less assertiveness on your part.

Good luck with your team.

That is not always possible, or worth the fight.

Even if I was willing to go through all of that, not everyone is, so what happens is more people turn to cloudflare instead of something Foss

Anubis is not out to make money, as such it has absolutely no obligation to try to appeal to corpos who would use it without contributing back to it.

Either your coworkers have to get over their hangups (have they not noticed that some of the best software that exists is made by furries?) or you'll have to re-implement something yourselves.

Anubis is open source. You COULD fork it and modify it for your own purposes.

If your coworkers can't separate what a piece of software is able to do from how it is branded, that's their problem.

I have tried twice to push it, and both times I've gotten weird reactions because of the branding.

It's not worth it for me to do that again, I wish Anubis had a paid version with a different domain and no cutsie anime girl branding. That would make it significantly easier to sell to me colleagues

https://anubis.techaro.lol/docs/admin/botstopper
That URL has all the same issues I mention in my post

If I could send them to eg. botstopper.com where there is no mascot to be found, then that would be a solution.

You can always contact techaro.lol and ask if they're willing to setup a secondary domain for you.

Or you can use others endorsements of the product to give it weight.
"The Linux Foundation uses Anubis to protect git.kernel.org and lore.kernel.org and seem very satisfied with the result.
For the low cost of 50USD/Month we get a custom branded version of it.

• https://social.kernel.org/objects/1bb84190-f207-4adc-ac0e-8eb87a8a60f9"

You say you have tried to convince them twice. How have you tried to pitch it so far? Like, give us a word for word and we may be able to help you workshop it.

Paying isn't the issue, it's convincing colleagues

When I try to do so they react weirdly and I am just left feeling uncomfortable recommending Anubis because of the reactions I get.

If they can’t stay professional, be the one who does.

have seen this one on the invidious instance i use https://gandalf.nerdvpn.de/

Sure, but at the end of the day Anubis will not be used, because of its branding.

I am not jumping thought hoops at work to fight this battle at work.

IMO, Anubis is no longer a tool I will recommend at work until there is a URL I can point people to without that branding, it being paid is not a issue, work will throw thousands of Euro's at the issue if they have to.
But I will never risk that mascot coming up in a meeting again.

Then point out that their way of thinking is unprofessional without saying so directly. That’s what I would do, at least.

There is a way to use something like Anubis without having to deal with the image. But you need to handle it professionally.

Then don’t recommend it to others. Keep being ashamed of the cute, anime-style picture just because everyone else is embarrassed by it. But that’s not how the world’s problems get solved.

Even after doing that, Anubis will not get used. I am in the minority.

I think the developer might benefit hearing that point of view. A separate website that only lists the paid tier without displaying the anime branding seems beneficial for them. You could suggest it to them.

Then let happen what needs to happen. The company does not have a simple and cheap solution for fighting bots.
Maybe it is better they don't have such protection.

That would solve all my problems.

It is a big problem with a number of opensource projects that could get wider adoption and support, especially from businesses, but seem to, almost deliberately, work against that with their naming and/or branding.

Anubis is a perfect example. In this case the name is ok, and by all means have a cutsey mascot for the basic offering, but if they want businesses to subscribe they need a professional offering. That should be on a separate domain, styled to attract the decision makers in their target market, and that includes having a .com or similar domain name and a more serious logo. Do that, and it becomes a serious contender in the market, rather than a technically good but excessively kooky option.

just donate to them and you can brand it however you want; but honestly if people think a tool that little makes your site better is silly then they shouldn't be in it.

either that or just set up your fail2ban and modsec rules yourself in conjuntion with crs ruleset.

100% couldn't agree more.

They'd easily pay 1000 Euro for a tool like this, and I'd be able to sell it to multiple teams.
But after my experience recommending Anubis at work, I will simply never recommend it again until they offer something like you have mentioned.

It's so frustrating.

You need to direct the conversation away from the logo to the actual product. You are having a technical discussion to fulfill a technical need. When someone brings up the logo you do 1 of 2 things.

Option 1. We will get back to that. ( and just don't, there will be more questions about other things to make people forget)
Option 2.
A. You tell them is a branding thing and we can change it to our own company logo. Or
B. Mock up the page with your logo to show them.

It sucks but you need to crank into sales mode and suck up to the manglement team who will ultimately approve the expenditure.

Anubis is open source under the MIT license. If the branding is an issue, fork it, change the branding, call it good.

The MIT license makes it, effectively, a whitebox solution. You can change the branding to whatever you want it to be.

If your colleagues are people of a technical inclination they should understand that. If they don't I would question their competence and literacy. If they're not technical in nature I would question why any such proposal is reaching their desk without having first been rebranded, implemented in a test environment, thouroughly tested, and then (and only then) being presented as a proof of concept.

I feel like you didn't understand what they are saying. That is the page of their monetization policy, not a demo.

Edit: you don't like their branding and feel weird about linking there? Make a presentation then.

Or download the .webp

I think they have a professional offering. You can give them a bit of your money to have a proper branding as you like, or just remove it. The cost-free version is not primarily meant for commercial use. Just stop thinking a company is non-commercial.

It is simply stupid if the companies prejudge a project in such a way, although there would be an offer for them, which is made especially for commercial projects.

Edit: but I see that there are not very much advantages when a project does it like they do at Anubis.

It sounds like you are still just throwing a fit over the fact that the Anubis team has set the logo as what it is.

New suggestion:
Write your own damn anti-bot code.

Sounds like you work with a bunch of short-sighted, judgemental simpletons who cannot look past initial aesthetics for a product that has nothing to do with aesthetics.

Tbh I would run far the fuck away from that company if they can't be bothered to sit down for a meeting where you explain that it's an open-source project run by an extremely small team of nerds and that there is a commercial product available without the branding issues.

Everything you're describing about your employer/coworkers gives me giant red-flag warnings regarding their decision making process.

Time to start looking for a new employer, or accept that they're idiots and next time they ask about bots tell them "I've tried explaining this already but you dismissed me for silly reasons, so go pay for CloudFlare and stop bothering me".

Your business deserves to suffer the consequences of being stuck in a juvenile mindset. Simple as. I know it's not helpful, but there's no helping your business.

I hope Ms Evelyn W. is otherwise contributing more to the company than the costs she helps cause in technology deficit. But somehow I doubt it.

Look, you suggested software that does the job. The issue is not the software, its that your colleagues are being dismissive and disrespectful.

Instead of looking for other alternatives, you need to be more assertive in your job and career. Tell them you offered an option that does the job and if they have better options its on them to offer them. And also tell them you dont appreciate "lol" as a response to a work suggestion.

Scrambling to find an alternative because your work colleagues are too immature or arrogant to get past an animal character really doea not reflect well on you. Instead you can tell them the company can pay a small amount to have their own branding, or they can go with a more expensive option like cloudflare, just because they can't be bothered to engage with the cheaper option.

But whatever you do, do not accept this dismissive treatment by your colleagues. You're just setting the standard that they can just laugh at you and insult you. That is the unprofessional behaviour by them, not some projects mascot. Do not tolerate that BS.

You've been perfectly williing to argumentative with people here. Apply that attitude to your colleagues who are the real issue.

It's not my business, and it's not even them making the decisions. it's coworkers

Why don't you just fork it, remove the logo, an set up a domain yourself?

Alternatively, you could set up a presentation that they are a white labeling service, and the reason they use that domain and mascot is to discourage corporations from using the free tier, since the free tier is meant for personal use, and that their reaction is exactly what Anubis aims for unless a corporation is willing to pay for customized service tailored to them.

That ship may have sailed by now depending on how you dealt with the situation, but that would have been the best case scenario. Advocating for something that you know is good, is also good for your career, because now, even if you do recommend something else, your reputation will still be marked by the fact you recommended Anubis and then folded without explaining well why you recommended Anubis despite the mascot. If you still can, I'd bring up the whole thing with the mascot anyway even if you move on to recommend a different service, to save your own reputation for the future, since you seem to be so focused on your perceived career.

Anyway, you can use Cloudflare. Ideologically I oppose it, but it works and is familiar with the non-tech people. There's also SilentShield, which is based in Europe and in my opinion works better than Cloudflare's protection in terms of load times.

There is a corporate friendly way to handle this discussion. Here, I'll even write it for you:

"Hi [Team],

Thanks for reaching out again about this issue.

I have made two previous attempts to provide guidance on this matter, but my recommendation was dismissed without appropriate consideration due to first-impression aesthetics of a product that is provided for free by a small team of dedicated nerds.

I attempted to explain that a corporate-friendly paid version exists but never got that far in our conversation due to your team's outright dismissal of the product I know to be both effective and appropriate for your use case.

Due to these circumstances, and your team's apparent priorities, I recommend you pursue an expensive contract with CloudFlare.

If you change your mind and would like to revisit this matter, I'm happy to set up a meeting to present the details.

Best of luck,

-Ek-Hou-Van-Braai

They do have a professional offering, but it's offered in a deeply unprofessional way. Selling to businesses means you need both the technical offering, but also the correct commercial offering. That means presenting yourself in a way that attracts the attention of the decision makers in those businesses, and telling them a compelling story of why your product is the best fit to solce their problem. A .lol domain and a cartoon catgirl doesn't do that.

I'd suggest that, for the cost of an extra domain name, and a boring logo, they could probably significantly increase their subscriber base. There's nothing stopping them keeping the current mascot on the current site at the same time.

You call it stupid to prejudge a project in such a way, but businesses need a product to buy, not a project.

I also find the logo weird. They call it Anubis, but use an anime girl instead of a sexy, shirtless jackal man like Neferu.

If the UNESCO and Wikimedia websites can use it, so does your company. Not an issue of the software, grow up.