OccupySaaS is an open-source project that aims to recreate common software services with the help of AI. Its goal is to offer alternatives to subscription-based products, beginning with ZeroAuthy, a proposed replacement for Auth0, and SalesCompel, an alternative to Salesforce.
The project says its implementations will be developed through a clean-room process, using public documentation, APIs, development-kit behavior and applicable open standards. It prohibits decompiled code, confidential information from previous employers and copied user-interface assets or trademarks. Where possible, the replacements are intended to work as API-compatible drop-ins.
Matching a service’s documented inputs and outputs may be only part of the challenge. Hosted software can have less obvious behaviors, and compatibility may require reproducing quirks and bugs in existing APIs, the project’s account notes.
OccupySaaS also lists document and wiki management, issue tracking, feature flags, observability and customer support as areas where it hopes to develop alternatives. The source suggests these may correspond to products such as Confluence, Jira, LaunchDarkly, Datadog and Zendesk, though the project has not identified specific replacements for those categories in the material provided.
The software is being written in Go. OccupySaaS says the language makes it easier to compile dependencies into a single binary, which can be copied and run without an installer and packaged for Docker or other self-hosted deployments. The project is licensed under Apache 2.0, which also allows others to offer hosted services based on the software.
The project is described as the work of software engineer Thomas Meadows. Its website argues that per-seat licensing can constrain growth and frames the effort as a push for software users and developers to have greater control over the tools they rely on.
Sources: Tom's Hardware.