We built an air-gapped Jira alternative for regulated industries

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Jira vs alternatives and pricing

  • Several commenters note Jira is not cloud-only: Atlassian still sells Data Center and “Government Cloud”.
  • However, Data Center is seen as effectively enterprise-only: high minimum user counts and prices (tens of thousands per year), making it inaccessible for small teams.
  • Some organizations still run legacy Jira Server in air‑gapped environments and plan to keep doing so until forced to migrate.
  • Plane is contrasted as open-core, with no minimum seat requirement for air-gapped deployments, and a community self-hosted edition.

Performance and UX

  • Many anecdotes confirm that on‑prem / LAN-hosted Jira is dramatically faster than Jira Cloud; adding internet, VPN, or ZTNA layers makes performance “in the gutter”.
  • Others report even large on-prem Jira instances being slow when misconfigured, underprovisioned, or overloaded with integrations (e.g., CI, GitHub/Bitbucket spam).
  • Cloud UIs are criticized for SPA-style placeholder loading, many async calls, and layout thrash; several people say a simple 2000s-style SSR app would feel snappier.
  • Jira’s extreme configurability is seen as a double-edged sword: powerful but easy to bog down with custom fields and workflows.

Licensing, compliance, and government use

  • Plane’s air-gapped edition uses subscription licensing, enforced via seat limits and periodic log sharing rather than online checks.
  • Some argue license enforcement in fully offline gov/defense contexts is better handled by contracts and procurement processes than technical controls.
  • One thread recounts a startup whose software was allegedly used without payment by the US military, raising concerns about recourse against government piracy.
  • DoD and ITAR-style environments are described as underserved: vendors push cloud for “recurring revenue” and sometimes even pressure customers off on‑prem.

Definition and practicality of “air-gapped”

  • Debate over terminology: historically “air-gapped” meant physically isolated with no external network at all; in practice, many now include closed, non‑internet private networks.
  • Commenters point out that true air gaps can still be bridged via physical media (USB) or exotic side channels (RF, acoustics, thermal), but that’s mostly academic here.

Plane’s model, tech choices, and critiques

  • Air-gapped edition is basically a fully bundled Docker deployment with no outbound calls: no telemetry, no license pings, all assets local.
  • Some see this as “how software used to ship” and question why it’s presented as novel; others note that unwinding modern SaaS assumptions (telemetry, cloud fonts, image pulls) is genuinely nontrivial.
  • Plane’s AGPLv3 core and open-source status are praised as improving auditability and sustainability; AGPL is framed by some as the “future of FOSS”.
  • Concerns are raised about opaque pricing, desire for buy‑once perpetual licenses for internal networks, and minor UX issues (editable-everywhere UI, search, LDAP auth).
  • A side discussion questions .so domains and potential government pressure, with replies emphasizing that in air-gapped deployments the domain is irrelevant and the code is auditable.

Broader self-hosted / alternative ecosystem

  • Multiple Jira alternatives are mentioned: Redmine, Phabricator/Phorge, YouTrack, Gitea/Forgejo boards, and several self-hosted Confluence-like wikis.
  • Opinions diverge on Jira-level “feature completeness”: some value simpler tools that cannot be over-customized by “process people”, even at the cost of missing features.