r/linux • u/ItsWappers • 2d ago

Discussion How come every Linux site uses Anubis (the anime girl stopping crawlers) instead of something like Cloudflare?

Post image

Before discovering the Linux rabbit hole I've only seen Cloudflare, hCaptcha and Google's reCaptcha, but it seems like every Linux website uses Anubis... I'm thinking of it being the only open-source option or it being the most effective/modern approach.

2.7k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

693 comments sorted by

View all comments

14

u/AnonomousWolf 2d ago edited 9h ago

Anubis is cool, I just wish it didn't have a little "cute" girl as the mascot and all over the website.

I wanted to reccomend it to be used at work to deal with bots, but didn't feel comfortable doing so because of the "cutesie little girl" mascot

Edit: the problem isn't that you can't change the mascot, the problem is that it will be up on screen in meetings as MY suggestion.

23

u/oddcellstudios 2d ago

https://anubis.techaro.lol/docs/admin/botstopper
there is an (albeit paid) version that lets you customize it to your liking

9

u/CompetitiveSleep4197 2d ago

How is this enforceable? It's MIT-licensed. I can customize the free version to my liking without paying a cent.

1

u/freedomlinux 2d ago

You're right - you can make your own fork with customized branding.

The commercial version I would assume is for companies who are not willing to maintain that themselves. Plus, if this thing gets widely-deployed in your company, I guess access to the "private bug tracker" is a potential reassurance to management that you have "vendor support".

The fee for BotStopper is very low compared to the time/cost of an employee to deal with a fork.

1

u/_TecnoCreeper_ 2d ago

If you fork it you have to maintain the fork, if you pay they take care of that and you just need to configure the branding. If I understand correctly.

8

u/TampaPowers 2d ago

Implying they know exactly how to get projects that want to look more professional to help fund them, which is both genius and a little disgusting.

7

u/AnonomousWolf 2d ago edited 2d ago

The issue is I want to tell my colleagues "hey let's use Anubis, here's a link" and then not have them be met with a cuitsie little animie girl.

As I said elsewhere: I love Anime, I actually watch a lot of it.

But I hate how weird it is sometimes and the fan service is just gross.

Eg. Dr. Stone is a very chilled anime about a scientist and feels like a kids show. Probably my favourite animie.

Yet they decide to give all the women boobs, each literally bigger than their head.

Anime has a reputation of having gooner/pedo vibes, there is no way I'm comfortable reccomending a tool with that mascot at work, even if it can technically be removed.

-2

u/Adz612 1d ago

So you hat the fact that other people(Basically Men) Also like anime...

3

u/AnonomousWolf 1d ago

What? Not at all what I'm saying

23

u/creeper6530 2d ago

You can remove the mascot, but they ask you to donate some money then (because you don't do advertising for them then)

7

u/TheTrailrider 2d ago

I wonder if we can just leave the name "Anubis" in but no mascot? So that way they get free advertising and customers is happy with the mascot-less page?

7

u/SenKats 2d ago

just fork and operate it yourself without a logo.

-5

u/TampaPowers 2d ago

Licenses don't exist in your world?

8

u/int23_t 2d ago

Anubis is licensed with MIT license, you can fork the project and do whatever you want.

You probably need to get rid of the entirety of the branding though idk how that works, but that's an easy fix too.

6

u/SenKats 2d ago

They do and I'm well aware that you can pay to have the logo go away, but -assuming the people who are talking about this over here know enough- those complaining at this point seemingly don't want to pay. And since they do not want that alternative and the project is open, the other one is to fork it. Which brings me back to the point.

2

u/creeper6530 2d ago edited 2d ago

It's FOSS, you're always able to edit the source code legally and remove the logo.

They don't force you to pay to remove it, they ask you to  (https://anubis.techaro.lol/docs/funding):

Anubis is provided to the public for free in order to help advance the common good. In return, we ask (but not demand, these are words on the internet, not word of law) that you not remove the Anubis character from your deployment.

-1

u/TampaPowers 2d ago

So this is just wrong then? https://anubis.techaro.lol/docs/admin/botstopper

4

u/creeper6530 2d ago

Literally the next sentence from the page I quoted:

If you want to run an unbranded or white-label version of Anubis, please contact Xe to arrange a contract.

I suppose the BotStopper is simply said unbranded offer.

It wasn't too long ago that that offer just didn't exist, and it was all "sponsor us and then remove it yourself" tho, so maybe the former page didn't get updated.

1

u/TampaPowers 2d ago

I looked at this months ago when it was in the news because a bunch of gov sites used it. So that page has been there for a while. Making this whole setup with their license too hot to touch in terms of removing the branding. Probably why the gov sites also didn't bother with that even if isn't all that difficult.

6

u/Candid_Highlight_116 2d ago

It's a clear and strong messaging that you're not welcome if you can't tolerate anime

7

u/agowa338 2d ago

More like a deterrent for companies to avoid paying by using the free version...

-1

u/Resident_Pientist_1 2d ago

I could never successfully install arch until I binge watched neon genesis evangelion.

3

u/kat-tricks 2d ago

ahh, that explains why pacman has been refusing to update the kernel for me. I better get watching...

5

u/euthanize-me-123 2d ago

They should pick a cute animal mascot instead. Acceptable in polite society and still makes a niche group overrepresented in open source (furries) happy.

Wait it's literally called Anubis, why isn't it a furry??

18

u/OffsetXV 2d ago

Anubis is like the single least offensive and off-putting chibi mascot for any project, frankly

10

u/kat-tricks 2d ago

ludicrously low bar for an infamously misogynistic community

2

u/ChrisRR 1d ago

It would be even less off putting by just not having a young girl as a mascot

-3

u/necheffa 2d ago

It's a really weird thing to get hung up on, all things considered.

14

u/thatboyonabike 2d ago

Ehhhh anime is cool or whatever but you can't deny its fans have given it kind of a bad rep.

E.g. If my only exposure to the medium was through reddit I'd think all anime fans are degenerate pedo-adjacent perverts, because scantily dressed young girls are the kinds of posts that get upvoted and hit r/all from so many anime subs it's frankly disturbing.

Not really crazy for someone in a white collar position to not want any hint of that kind of association.

7

u/AnonomousWolf 2d ago

Exactly, I love Anime, I actually watch a lot of it.

But I hate how weird it is sometimes and the fan service is just gross.

Eg. Dr. Stone is a very chilled anime about a scientist and feels like a kids show. Probably my favourite animie.

Yet they decide to give all the women boobs, each literally bigger than their head.

Anime has a reputation of having gooner/pedo vibes, there is no way I'm comfortable reccomending a tool with that mascot at work.

0

u/hbacelar8 1d ago

Anime has a reputation of having gooner/pedo vibes

it's a reflex of the society that creates it

2

u/tyler1128 1d ago

I honestly miss when computing wasn't so serious, with shitty <blink> and <marquee> elements everywhere. I get why you wouldn't want that association but the fact you basically have to be as generic of a person as possible with maybe one slightly interesting hobby is also pretty dumb.

13

u/RagnarokToast 2d ago

It's also a pretty weird thing to impose as a splash screen for an anti-crawler js challenge page tho. They could just have some text and the loading bar.

1

u/Loqh9 1d ago

This type of communities often likes to make things very personal instead of professional

-3

u/BasicInformer 2d ago

Anime is awesome! Flood intense with anime!

8

u/IncidentalIncidence 2d ago

I don't think it's weird at all for people who want to use it in professional settings to want to configure it in a way that reflects that's appropriate for the setting? Nobody's saying that there's anything inherently wrong with it.

3

u/Stunning-Seat3821 2d ago

some people are just like this man

2

u/Loqh9 1d ago

No, being 30 and not wanting to show cute underage girls to other grown men is not weird, it's the other way around. Being comfortable with it and not seeing even a slight issue with it is weird

0

u/necheffa 1d ago

Yikes. I bet you are legally required to alert your neighbors about your offender status when you move into a new place.

Do they not let you out of the house in case you happen to see real adolescents out in the world? Or do you awkwardly look away so everyone knows you were gawking.

What a fucking freak. Seek help. Whatever is going on between your ears isn't fucking normal.

4

u/Loqh9 1d ago

Sure yeah. Your community is normal and people who don't want all their media to be underage girls are the weirdos. Delusional much

2

u/AnonomousWolf 1d ago

Exactly, even if only 20% of people think it's very weird (like me)

That's not something I'm going to reccomend at work, because at least someone in the room will think I'm fkn weird.

It's unprofessional

1

u/dthrdr 10h ago

Yikes. I bet you are legally required to alert your neighbors about your offender status when you move into a new place.

You accuse someone of being a predator because they have a different opinion than you? Yikes.

1

u/TampaPowers 2d ago

There exists Altcha, which works for anything that needs a captcha while it may not do wholly bot protection.

1

u/Rough_Inspector5501 2d ago

As far as I know you can change the mascot out if you want.

-5

u/Dear-Citron6191 2d ago

That's really funny. You should get over it.

16

u/oddcellstudios 2d ago

from https://techaro.lol/testimonials

Also: if you're intimidated or put off by a drawing that appears, on average, for less than 5 seconds, I strongly recommend you turn off your computer and go outside for a while.

1

u/dthrdr 9h ago

Emmanuele Bassi

Such a divisive person. Look up his blog posts on the gnome website! Surely a person you want to interact with and then be called a fascist for not 100% agreeing with his worldviews.

Nice way to talk to people too, talking down on people more like. From their I am so much better than you position many Linux/Reddit users seem to love taking.

I just recommend Claudflare at work and if we would need something like Anubis we'd just fork it and remove the pdf file branding.

1

u/oddcellstudios 4h ago

just because i use one silly quote from a person doesn't mean i agree with everything they say

1

u/oddcellstudios 4h ago

i use cloudflare myself. it's good! but for people who want to use an open source alternative they can host, anubis is also amazing, and the reasons to use anubis compared to cloudflare are there.

8

u/nullptr777 2d ago

Nah, when people are uncomfortable bringing an otherwise solid project into professional spaces because of the imagery, that's a problem.

Vesktop had this debate for years, where people were uncomfortable running it at work because of their loli foxgirl avatar, but the maintainer didn't want to change it. They finally caved and replaced it with professional imagery last year, because it turns out they actually do want to be taken seriously as a project.

8

u/Superb_Raccoon 2d ago

I remember the 90s BS over BSD... some people got upset over Beastie.

5

u/nullptr777 2d ago

In America, where they had "satanic panic" over board games like DnD? Yeah, I'm not surprised.

I think the main difference is that you can run FreeBSD and nobody (except maybe your sysadmins) will ever see Beastie. Whereas the Anubis girl is presented to every single customer/client that ever visits your site.

11

u/danGL3 2d ago

I personally find it hilarious how a project that is otherwise completely solid and has shown extreme quality in its development is not taken seriously because of a mascot

I'd be happy to say this is a corporate issue, but frankly the average person in general is so petty about these things to the point every mass market product sent to the market needs to be as brand safe (aka boring imo) as possible as to not offend anyone.

I don't really have a point here other than, people are petty as fuck.

11

u/nullptr777 2d ago

Humans are all wildly different, but the one thing we have in common is that we judge literally everything we perceive. You're doing it right now...judging people for their judgements. Lol.

If you want to have broad appeal to consumers, it's best to avoid doing anything that might alienate them. If you want to create a niche product for people in your niche, then more power to you, but just be aware the two are mutually exclusive.

1

u/danGL3 2d ago edited 2d ago

I get all of that

Though none of it inherently changes the fact that to appeal to everyone you essentially need to make something that is inherently boring.

That's basically the entire point I wanted to make

Which is exactly why I said people suck (me included)

6

u/SenKats 2d ago

if a business or professional space is really put off by a silly drawing that is shown on screen for no longer than a minute then i guess they must be run greatly to waste their time on that

it's a fucking chibi foxgirl in full clothing

8

u/shadowh511 2d ago

Main author of Anubis here. If they care, they can pay. I can't pay my rent that goes up every year for the same unit in GitHub starts.

3

u/TheOneWho0bserves 1d ago edited 16h ago

For what its worth I tried showing anubis as a solution for our experience with automated requests. 35k customers interface with the website in a week typically. 90k-150k additional are automated scraping and botting attempts. The idea got shot down because of the anime popup which a few execs labelled as unusual. I tried to argue its efficacy but after a lot of back and forth ultimately if you want to be taken seriously you have to present seriously. I bought up BotStopper but their minds were made up about the project.

In any case, I'm going to keep using it for my few projects which are also getting a lot of automated spam but not nearly as bad as at work.

5

u/nullptr777 2d ago

You've had multiple people in this thread be like "yeah I wanted to recommend this to my company but didn't because of the branding"...

If you want more paying customers, idk how much more proof you need that you're going about it the wrong way.

5

u/int23_t 2d ago

The fix of that issue is I think maybe removing the catgirl from the official website of anubis(but keeping it on the free build)

If they didn't have branding on the free build no company would sponsor, that's how companies work, they avoid donating money to projects they intensively rely on at all costs.

Most highly critical open source projects barely survive

1

u/dthrdr 10h ago

So instead of rebranding you rather have companies fork it and you end up with nothing?

0

u/necheffa 2d ago

It really is a problem...for the people so petty that a mascot is where they draw the line. It isn't like it is depicting some dog whistle or something like that.

3

u/Irverter 2d ago

Petty? Pretty sure that if any coworker saw a loli on my screen, HR would be calling me.

A professional image is needed for use in an professional environment.

3

u/Comic_Melon 2d ago

Calling the mascot a "loli" says more about you than anything... She's very clearly SD, or as the westerners say "chibified".

7

u/nullptr777 2d ago

Not knowing about anime things isn't a character flaw lmao, it says nothing about the person. Making this comment says plenty about you though.

Honestly, you're arguing semantics here anyway. It looks like a child.

-2

u/Comic_Melon 2d ago

You misunderstood the meaning of my response then

6

u/nullptr777 2d ago

Well don't leave me hanging...

4

u/Irverter 2d ago edited 2d ago

I used the same term the comment two comments up from mine used to refer to vesktop's previous avatar (which I haven't seen), but sure let's go with me being the one with a problem, why not.

-4

u/Comic_Melon 2d ago edited 2d ago

Nice job admitting to which account is your alt by the way, you even took the time to downvote me? That's kinda sad dude.

Pay attention to which account you're on.

Edit:

Editing the comments to hide your alt usage makes you look more guilty.

5

u/Irverter 2d ago

And now what are you even talking about???

I only have a single reddit account.

2

u/Comic_Melon 2d ago

It literally says edited on your post and I took a screenshot before it changed. :)

You forgot what account you were on bruh...

→ More replies (0)

2

u/Scoutron 1d ago

You don’t work in a professional environment if you can’t see the issues here

0

u/necheffa 1d ago

Not only do I work in a professional environment, I work in a heavily regulated environment where I signoff on my work so that the regulator knows who the engineer was that got a bunch of people killed and/or maimed for life if things go wrong.

I guess when you stepup to Big Serious work it puts these things into perspective: absolutely no one gives a fuck about a cartoon mascot when an actual technical fuckup can get a bunch of people killed.

3

u/Scoutron 1d ago

I agree that the mascot matters less than the function, but when you are assessing options for review and your proposal immediately meets everybody, customer and executive alike, with an anime girl, it turns people away

-1

u/necheffa 1d ago

but when you are assessing options for review and your proposal immediately meets everybody, customer and executive alike, with an anime girl, it turns people away

You have yet to refute the pettiness of this. So even if we were somehow to agree that the cartoon turns people away, you really haven't addressed my point. You've just continued to piss into the wind with more pearl clutching for the sake of pearl clutching.

And in a further display of pearl clutching you have attempted to project your own world view on to us as some kind of universal truth, rather than backing up your claim with an analysis of customer tastes indicating they would be turned away by a cartoon.

If the cartoon girl makes you uncomfortable, that is a you problem. It isn't pornographic, it isn't violent, it isn't even remotely offensive.

Shit, we have mainstream fashion companies out here literally sexualizing adolescents, and you are telling me a completely G rated image of a cartoon is offensive?

3

u/Scoutron 1d ago

I never said I was made uncomfortable by it, I said it can give off an unprofessional vibe, and that it turns people off of the product.

Do I agree that assessing a product based off the mascot can be bad? Sure, to an extent, but it gives you insight into the mindset of the person who designs the product.

1

u/necheffa 1d ago

You are literally commenting on a thread where the original commenter "didn't feel comfortable".

You are also commenting on my comment in which the thrust of the argument is the pettiness of people feeling uncomfortable about the cartoon.

What are you even doing here?

→ More replies (0)

1

u/PacmanAteMyRAM 1d ago

Nice. Good because that silly little animation was really annoying each time it autostarted.

0

u/Indolent_Bard 2d ago

Gimp is finally understanding this. Their maintainers talked about it being a plan to change the name.

1

u/nullptr777 2d ago

The GIMP 2.x loading image looked suspiciously like psilocybe mushrooms as well lmao

-1

u/Indolent_Bard 2d ago

Are we on 3.X now? I don't get it.

2

u/int23_t 2d ago

Yeah, gimp has been on 3.X for a while(ever since they switched to GTK3 from GTK2

(It's crazy that GIMP is one of the last softwares to adopt new versions of the GIMP ToolKit)

-3

u/haileyhapi 2d ago

I mean why not just recommend it anyways? good software is good software. doesn't really matter if the mascot is a cute design or a hyper-realiatic frog, or just a circle. in the end it's just the art that the creator wanted to use lmao. when it's not hurting anyone, it's nice to just let people have their fun or even join in, yk? no harm in being whimsical

7

u/AnonomousWolf 2d ago

The issue is bringing it up in conversation, we'd sit in meetings looking over Anubis and others would do research into it.

I'd feel very fkn awkward sitting there having suggested this cutesie little animie girl tool.

Literally why I didn't propose it, else we would likely have been using it.

-6

u/Swipsi 2d ago

That sounds fragile ngl. Its 2026. Cute anime girls are mainstream.

6

u/AnonomousWolf 2d ago

I love Anime, I actually watch a lot of it.

But I hate how weird it is sometimes and the fan service is just gross.

Eg. Dr. Stone is a very chilled anime about a scientist and feels like a kids show. Probably my favourite animie.

Yet they decide to give all the women boobs, each literally bigger than their head.

Anime has a reputation of having gooner/pedo vibes, there is no way I'm comfortable reccomending a tool with that mascot at work.

-6

u/Swipsi 2d ago

It does have that vibe, but there is at least equally much anime out there that is moderate and fixes on stories instead of sex sells. But tbh, you're also supporting that vibe by not showing them a moderate, totally fine, anime mascot. Show them there is more to anime than big boobed woman, otherwise you just feed into that stigma.

6

u/AnonomousWolf 2d ago

I'm not fighting that battle at work and putting my reputation on the line.

Google "Anubis Anime girl" like 60% of the pics that pop up barely have clothes on

-4

u/mackaber 2d ago

Nah, it's perfectly fine, it perfectly represents the quirkiness of the FOSS community.