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Why we revived Focalboard — the open-source project board Mattermost abandoned

Fossys Team

If you searched for “Focalboard” recently and landed here, you probably already know the story. Focalboard was one of the best open-source project management tools on GitHub — a clean, fast Trello/Asana/Notion alternative with 21,000+ stars, an MIT license, and a solid Go + React architecture that actually worked.

Then Mattermost stopped maintaining it.

This post explains what happened, why we picked it up, and what we’re building with it.

What Focalboard was

Focalboard started as an open-source project board built by Mattermost, the company behind the open-source Slack alternative. It supported Kanban boards, table views, gallery views, and calendar views — all the things you’d expect from a modern project management tool. The codebase was well-structured: a Go server handling the API and persistence layer, a React + TypeScript frontend, PostgreSQL or SQLite for storage.

Unlike most “open-source” productivity tools that gate useful features behind enterprise licenses, Focalboard was genuinely MIT-licensed. You could self-host it, modify it, embed it, build on top of it. The standalone version ran as a single binary with an embedded SQLite database — ./focalboard-server and you had a project board running on port 8000.

It had real users. Thousands of self-hosters, small teams, developers who wanted a project board that wasn’t SaaS-only. The GitHub repo was active, issues got responses, PRs got reviewed.

What happened

In 2023, Mattermost started folding Focalboard into their plugin ecosystem. The standalone version got less attention. Bug fixes slowed. Dependencies went unpatched.

By August 2024, it was official. Mattermost posted a “Call for Maintainers” on the Focalboard repo, announcing they would no longer maintain the standalone version. The plugin version would continue inside the Mattermost platform, but if you wanted Focalboard as its own tool — the thing most users actually used — you were on your own.

The call for maintainers went mostly unanswered. A few people expressed interest in the GitHub issue. Nobody shipped a maintained fork. For 18 months, the repo sat there collecting dust: unpatched dependencies, unfixed CVEs, broken Docker builds, and a growing list of issues with no responses.

This is a pattern we’ve seen before in open source. A company sponsors a project, the project gets popular, the company’s priorities shift, and the project dies — not because the code is bad, but because the sponsor moved on. The 21,000 people who starred the repo are left with a slowly rotting codebase.

Why we picked it up

We’re a small team that builds open-source productivity tools. When we saw Focalboard languishing, we saw an opportunity — not just a business one, but a responsibility one. Good open-source software shouldn’t die because its corporate sponsor lost interest.

The codebase was solid. Go is a good language for server software: fast, statically compiled, easy to deploy. The React frontend was well-organized with proper TypeScript types. The data model was flexible enough to support multiple view types without being over-engineered. Most importantly, the architecture was clean enough that we could understand it, patch it, and extend it without rewriting everything.

There were also real users looking for exactly this tool. People searching for “Focalboard alternative” or “open-source Trello alternative” or “self-hosted project board” — they wanted what Focalboard offered, they just needed someone to keep the lights on.

What we’ve done

We forked the repo and got to work. Here’s what the first few months looked like:

Security and dependency updates. The first priority was patching. We updated Go to the latest stable release, bumped every npm dependency, fixed known CVEs in transitive dependencies, and audited the authentication code. The Docker image went from a multi-hundred-MB monolith to a slim, multi-stage build.

Multi-tenant SaaS infrastructure. Focalboard was designed for single-tenant self-hosting. We added workspace isolation with per-subdomain routing, so each team gets team.boards.fossys.com with fully isolated data. The underlying storage uses PostgreSQL with schema-level separation — no shared tables, no data leakage between tenants.

AI-powered task creation. This is the feature we’re most excited about. Paste in meeting notes, a rough project description, or a stream-of-consciousness brain dump, and the AI parses it into structured tasks with titles, descriptions, labels, and suggested assignments. It works with Claude or OpenAI — bring your own API key, connect it in workspace settings, and get unlimited AI usage with no platform quotas.

Board summarization. Ask the AI to summarize what’s happening on a board: what’s blocked, what shipped this week, what needs attention. Useful for standups, status updates, or just getting oriented on a board you haven’t looked at in a few days.

Import from everything. We built importers for Trello (JSON export), Asana (CSV), Notion (Markdown + CSV), and Jira (XML). Upload your export file, map the columns, and your board is ready in under a minute. Labels, assignees, due dates, and descriptions all carry over.

What we’re offering

We believe in keeping the core open source while selling convenience:

  • Self-host for free — The open-source version is MIT-licensed, forever. Clone the repo, run it on your own server, and get the full feature set including AI (just add your own API key).
  • Pro ($8/user/month) — Managed hosting with up to 50 boards, 25 users, 50 MB file attachments, and API access. Bring your own Claude or OpenAI key for unlimited AI.
  • Team ($15/user/month) — Everything in Pro plus unlimited boards and users, 100 MB attachments, SSO/SAML, and priority support.

All paid plans get a 14-day free trial. No credit card required. AI features on all plans work with your own API key — no platform quotas, no per-request charges from us.

Self-hosting stays MIT-licensed. Forever. If you want to run Fossys Boards on your own server, clone the repo and go. We don’t cripple the open-source version to push you toward the cloud.

What’s next

We have a clear roadmap for the next few months:

  • OAuth and SSO — Google, GitHub, and SAML-based SSO for enterprise teams. Currently in development for the Team plan.
  • Mobile improvements — The responsive web UI works on mobile, but we’re building a dedicated PWA experience with offline support and push notifications.
  • More AI features — Automated task prioritization based on deadlines and dependencies. Smart suggestions for task descriptions based on similar completed tasks. Natural language board queries (“show me all blocked tasks assigned to Sarah”).
  • Stripe billing — Automated billing, self-serve plan management, and seamless upgrades between Pro and Team. Currently billing is manual while we’re in early access.
  • Webhooks and integrations — Slack/Discord notifications, GitHub issue sync, and a proper webhook system for custom integrations.

Try it

If you’re looking for a project board that’s fast, open-source, and doesn’t lock you into a proprietary ecosystem, give Fossys Boards a try. Self-host for free or use our managed hosting starting at $8/user/month. The self-hosted version is genuinely open source, and we’re building this for the long haul.

Start your free trial or check out the source code on GitHub.

If you used Focalboard before and have feedback on what we should prioritize, we’d love to hear from you. Open an issue or start a discussion on GitHub. We read everything.