[opensourcedex]

Campfire is a free, open source collaboration & communication project written in Ruby and released under MIT. It has 4,629 GitHub stars, 792 forks and 37 open issues, and was last pushed 4 days ago. On this registry it ranks #23 of 41 tracked projects in Collaboration & Communication, with 5 head-to-head comparisons available. It gained 9 stars over the last 6 tracked days.

What is Campfire?

What it is

Campfire is a web-based group chat application in the Business Software / Collaboration & Communication category. It is written in Ruby, released under the MIT license, and presented as a self-hosted service that avoids recurring subscription fees. The project lives in the Ruby and Docker self-hosting ecosystem, with its homepage at https://once.com/campfire and its published Docker image at ghcr.io/basecamp/once-campfire:latest.

The concrete problem it solves is the need for a simple team chat system that can be operated without paying a subscription. Instead of relying on a hosted provider, an organization can run Campfire on its own machine, where the Docker image contains the web app, background jobs, caching, file serving, and SSL for a fully functional single-machine deployment. This makes the project relevant to teams that want rooms, direct messages, attachments, search, notifications, mentions, and bot integration under their own control.

Key capabilities

  • Campfire supports multiple rooms with access controls.
  • Campfire provides direct messages.
  • Campfire allows file attachments with previews.
  • Campfire includes search.
  • Campfire sends notifications through Web Push.
  • Campfire supports @mentions.
  • Campfire exposes an API with support for bot integrations.

Who uses it and how

  • Organizations use Campfire when they want to run group chat on their own machine rather than through a subscription service.
  • Operators deploy it with the pre-built Docker image ghcr.io/basecamp/once-campfire:latest, or they build their own image from the repository.
  • Teams use ONCE to install Campfire, choose it from the application list, and let ONCE keep the instance updated automatically.
  • Administrators can deploy Campfire from the command line with once deploy ghcr.io/basecamp/once-campfire --host chat.example.com.
  • Developers modify Campfire locally by following docs/development.md, while vulnerability reporters follow SECURITY.md.

Getting started

The typical setup is to install ONCE with curl https://get.once.com | sh and deploy ghcr.io/basecamp/once-campfire, or to run the Docker image directly according to docs/self-hosting.md. After the first start, a wizard creates the admin account.

When to use it — and when not to

It suits teams that want a self-hosted group chat without recurring subscription fees and that can accept a single-machine Docker deployment. A self-hoster must operate the web app, background jobs, caching, file serving, and SSL, although ONCE can guide setup and keep the instance updated automatically. The facts also show that the admin email is visible on the sign-in page unless another admin account is created, and the repository metadata lists 0 contributors, 37 open issues, and a repository age of 0 years.

project readme (upstream, from github) — read inline

Campfire

Campfire is a web-based chat application. It supports many of the features you'd expect, including:

  • Multiple rooms, with access controls
  • Direct messages
  • File attachments with previews
  • Search
  • Notifications (via Web Push)
  • @mentions
  • API, with support for bot integrations

Running your own Campfire instance

Campfire's Docker image contains everything needed for a fully-functional, single-machine deployment. This includes the web app, background jobs, caching, file serving, and SSL. You can use our pre-built image at ghcr.io/basecamp/once-campfire:latest, or build your own from this repo.

Deploying with ONCE

The easiest way to self-host Campfire is with ONCE. It will guide you through the initial set up and then keep your instance up to date automatically.

If you don't already have once installed, run this on the machine you want to run Campfire on:

curl https://get.once.com | sh

once will launch as soon as the install is finished.

Choose Campfire from the list of applications, follow the instructions, and ONCE will take care of the rest.

If you prefer the command line to the dashboard, you can deploy directly:

once deploy ghcr.io/basecamp/once-campfire --host chat.example.com

Deploying with Docker

If you'd rather run the Docker image yourself, you can read more about that in the self-hosting guide.

[!TIP] When you start Campfire for the first time, you'll be guided through a wizard to create an admin account. The email address that you enter for the admin account will be visible on the sign-in page, it's there so that people have someone to contact if they need help with their account. If that bothers you, put in any email address you want and create yourself a new admin account.

Development

You are welcome - and encouraged - to modify Campfire to your liking. Please see our development guide for how to get Campfire set up for local development.

Security

See SECURITY.md for how to report a vulnerability and a description of our trust model.

Frequently asked questions

Is Campfire free to use?

Campfire is open source under the MIT licence. There is no licence fee and no seat count — you can self-host it or, where the project offers one, pay a vendor for a managed version instead.

What does Campfire do?

Self-hosted group chat without recurring subscription fees

What is Campfire written in?

Campfire is primarily written in Ruby. Its source is publicly available at https://github.com/basecamp/once-campfire, and it has 4,629 GitHub stars.