Being assertive IS important in your career. Your colleagues are the unprofessional ones here. I would not tolerate someone sending me "lol" in a professional context and would quickly correct that behaviour.

A factual reply is all thats needed "you asked for a solution, this is the solution. Please do not be dismissive or rude. If you want an alternative please look for yourself, just expect the cost to be significantly higher. Otherwise I'm happy to discuss any concerns which are easily addressed such as branding".

There is a huge difference between being rude and beibg assertive. They're clearly being rude. You need to be assertive in response.

It is WILD that someone from another team asks for help and replies with "lol" to dismiss your response. You need to correct that behaviour or they will treat you like shit going forward.

If you send the link with references of big party users, and under the premise that you can make it look as professionell as you need it to be, and you still get the „lol“s for a lol-TLD: show them the finger and let them drown in their traffic.

They were not interested in your opinion from the get-go.

Edit: anubis even offers a commercial, unbranded version.

Edit 2: Maybe the confrontation isn't as harsh and the coworker sees a .lol-domain for the first time and is honestly surprised. We don't know history and tone.

No, they are replying about the tld .lol, lol

See here's the thing - the mascot and URL are serving their purpose to deter the software author's outsiders. They don't want your business, it is a social signal being sent and the reception from your coworker? - did it's job.

Kinda a genius way to deliver a free service to individuals but force companies to pay for it. Just bung some really cringe pic there..

They didn't reply "lol" they replied ".lol?" because of the tld.
I agree it sounds unprofessional though, who would choose that for their domain if its meant to be a legit/serious tool?

especially from businesses

if they want businesses to subscribe

styled to attract the decision makers in their target market

Do that, and it becomes a serious contender in the market

The market who's responsible for fucking up the internet? The market that constantly attacks websites with crawlers to steal everything for value extraction, which Anubis fights against? The market that couldn't care less about you unless you provide value to it, and even then won't give you a penny unless forced (while building the whole internet on your shoulders)? That market?

Most FOSS devs I know who aren't forced into it couldn't give less of a fart about "the market" and capitalists with sticks in their rear ends inside it. The monetization was often just attached to a project because it makes sense given we're all trapped in capitalism and perhaps have to somehow cover project costs (probably less so for Anubis), not because it's a goal to attract investment.

People who're appaled by something so simple such as a .lol domain and a cute mascot sound awful to talk to anyway.

It is a big problem with a number of opensource projects that could get wider adoption and support

I tell you how that "support" looks like. Companies who adopted the software will add your maintainer Email to their business contacts. If there are issues with your software they'll then usually ignore the developer route and directly write emails to you, and if it's a big problem for them immediately blame you and threaten legal action, blahblahblah. They'll treat you like someone they have a support contract with and be completely confused when you tell them to open an issue and that you otherwise don't care. Meanwhile they'll build an empire using your software and be a persistent nuisance.

Why should anyone not desperately needing money to survive care about this.

Thanks I've reached out to them using my EuroSky account on BlueSky

I think the "lol" is reference to the top level domain being .lol

Arguably even more stupid...

That doesn't really solve the problem. The problem arises when he presents the product. It's a very unserious and unprofessional image that professionals see immediately when OP shows them the tool, which causes the project not to be taken seriously. Which is fine, because it's not really a professional product, and isn't trying to be. OP should probably just stop trying to present it as such. Any company is going to want something more common with funding and technical support anyway. Most likely what just about everyone else uses (Cloudflare).

Nerds have dorky humor. Deal with it.

https://github.com/TecharoHQ/anubis/blob/main/docs/docs/admin/botstopper.mdx

I don't think you understand the problem.

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.

To some people, anubis is weird, there is no changing that. It does the job, the mascot can be changed by paying, but the project itself is weird to some people. Such person is asking, is there an alternative. You cannot just say "push back that is not weird".

So many unhelpful responses here... This is obviously a problem in some professional environments. Same problem with Gimp...

Sorry OP, you're probably stuck with Cloudflare.

And also tell them you dont appreciate “lol” as a response to a work suggestion.

Not sure if you're joking but the answer isn't "lol" it's ".lol?" because the tld of the website ends in lol (anubis.techaro.lol)

Pay for the unbranded version, or set it up and replace the image with whatever you want. It's open source and is trivial just to replace the image. I see it with different images all the time on other sites. Name and other branding is a little more work to replace, but can be done and that's what the paid version provides.

That'd so funny man lol i love the mascots tbh

I think people are right that the solution here isn't to try a different project.

Instead of being confrontational about it, though, I'd recommend a different aproach.

evelyn: .lol 😜

you: I know! I know. The branding is pretty silly. But this really is the right tool for the task. Unesco and Wikimedia use it. And we can do our own branding for $50/month. 🤷

A lot can be fixed by just acknowledging people. They're trying to evaluate something they don't understand, and having a reaction. It's not even unreasonable. The right thing to do is just acknowledge and move on.

Usually that's all it takes. Don't let yourself be embarrassed when you're being reasonable. If they won't move on, that's the point where I start thinking about job applications somewhere else.

Step 1: buy a Professional Domain like antibot-enterprise-pro.com

Step 2: CNAME it to techaro.lol

Step 3: Profit!!

Optionally just sell them the rebranded Anubis with a different name for 500 a month, pay 50 to techaro, rest of it to a queer friendly charity.

"Look, we don't need to use Photoshop for our shop. There's an open source option that matches our use case perfectly."

"What's it called?"

"Gnu Image Manipulation Program."

"That's an awfully long name. They should have a shorter one that's less of a mouthful to say."

"...they do not."

You can, though.

Realistically your best option is a CDN with some layer of bot detection and blocking. Cloudflare is of course the most popular choice, https://bunny.net might also work but I haven’t tried their advanced Shield level so not sure how good it is.

Some commercial advanced firewall / WAF might also be an option. Seems most of them has Bot mitigation features, but I haven’t tried their never personally tried anything like that.

There are alternatives like go-away, iocaine, etc.

You could also just send them a PDF or HTML file explaining how Anubis works, and refuse to send the URL or mascot until they are convinced to implement it.

Wow youre so alpha

Ridiculous strawman in the last sentence. A pic of a furry anime character is completely innocuous, and the only thing stopping acceptance of the service is intolerance. There really is no need to try to accommodate for the intolerant.

Like others have said, a simple rational response in the line of "yes, it initially shows an inappropriate branding for our purposes, but the nerds who made this like it. This branding does not take away from its suitability as a bot prevention tool, and the branding can be easily changed."

This is because you are mature, you came up with the mature response.

What does this even mean ? Peter explain the joke !

It's a harmless way to try and get some money from corporations for unbranded versions. A swastika would not be so harmless. What a batshit crazy analogy attempt.

they can pay a little fee to remove the catgirl, it's pretty clever business plan imho

Okay so you're talking about Paedophiles or Pedophile, and not Portable Document Format(PDF), I guess?

Took me time to convert pedophiles into PDF, must be in the last version of adobe reader

yes it is!

I thought he just really hated PDFs and honestly I was just nodding along.

You immediately trying to put an age on the mascot is totally not weird, either.

Why would anyone care what the domain name or the mascot for a tool is, if it does the job?

I'd suggest that, for the cost of an extra domain name, and a boring logo, they could probably significantly increase their subscriber base.

Here's an idea. Do this with a giant ass logo. Put a banner underneath it with a link saying something like "Add this for FREE to your own business' website!"

It would have two main benefits. First, it's still a giant ad for their project. Second, it would shame the company into sponsoring because now everyone can see how cheap they are.

God forbid they make a living themselves? Lol

Not if the stakeholders don't take it seriously enough to even consider it an option let alone agreeing to pay for it ...

Thanks yea I see there are some reasonable people here in the comments.

Nobody has suggested a solution to my problem, most responses just say that my coworkers need to grow up, or that I need to fight harder at work or some BS.

None of that address the Issue.

My response was basically something along those lines.
But it's still DOA, because that coworker now has to sell it to their team, and they won't.

Strawman

Open-Source sadly shooting itself in the foot again because of hills they choose to die on.

Xe Xaio is trying to self fund to replace their day job, so i wouldn't say there's no money motivation involved.

It was a slightly uphill battle to get my organization to adopt it for similar reasons but we got there with the branding, and we love botstopper. I put some effort into letting them know just how much it's blocking.

People shouldn't have to jump through that many hoops to recommend something, that's ridiculous

If a random visitor visits your website and they see a weird anime girl drawing talking about security, what is the chance of them just bouncing away afraid that it is a virus or an unsafe website? I'd say it's definitely higher than 0%.

Firstly, sorry you're having this problem and sorry the responses here have been nearly universally unhelpful and aggressive. This is a pretty perfect case study of what I don't like about the fediverse. There's a lot to like about this place but what drives me nuts is the unhinged and reality-divorced types who cannot understand something so simple as normal people thinking things are weird. Half the respondents here think you should scream at your coworkers about this and/or quit. You asked an incredibly reasonable and relatable question and mostly got shat on for it. Just wanted to say that someone sees how ridiculous it is, not everyone here is lost completely in their own (hateful) world. Sorry I don't have a solution for you.

OP is relaying an opinion they got from multiple people and frankly an expected one. You got weirdly mad at them for it.

Yesssssss?

I was asked by a different team how we can deal with bots

So they are not competent enough to do it on their own, but your solution gets laughed at? Why help them at all?

Let them allocate the budget for a "big boy" brand application firewall like F5 of paloalto...