Forem
forem/forem
An open-source alternative to Circle and Tribe.
For empowering community 🌱 (from the repository)
- Stars
- 22,800
- Licence
- AGPL-3.0
- Last push
- 2026-10-16
- Written in
- Ruby
Is it alive?
Four readings from the repository, each with the rule behind it. No blended score.
Activity
Active
Last push 11 days ago
Active: pushed within 90 days. Slowing: within a year. Quiet: longer.
Releases
Ships untagged
No tagged release
Recent: a tagged release within six months. Some projects ship from the main branch and never tag.
Issues
99% closed
57 open · 5,917 closed
Share of all issues ever filed that are now closed. Under 20 issues is too few to read.
Momentum
+12 in 9 days
22,800 stars
Change in stars across our daily readings, over up to 30 days. Needs a week of readings.
What a business may do with it
Network copyleftAGPL-3.0
Like the GPL, and offering a modified version to users over a network counts: they are owed its source.
This describes the licence family GitHub identified, not legal advice about this project. The repository’s own LICENSE file is what binds you.
Run it yourself
Forem’s README does not show a docker run, docker compose up or helm install in a code block, so this page will not guess one. It may be a desktop app, a library, or documented on its website.
Forem against the other open-source options
Every project offered against Circle and Tribe, most-starred first.
| Project | Stars | Activity | Licence | Self-host | Language |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Discourse | 47,988 | Active | Copyleft | ○ | Ruby |
 Forem (this page) | 22,800 | Active | Network copyleft | ○ | Ruby |
 Flarum | 6,759 | Active | Permissive | ○ | PHP |
 phpBB | 2,101 | Active | Copyleft | ○ | PHP |
Where this page comes from
- Stars, licence, activity, issues, releases and the self-host command are read from the repository. 2026-10-19
- The pairing with Circle and Tribe and the category come from opensourcealternative.to, a community directory of open-source alternatives. We re-read it weekly.
- Star momentum comes from our own daily readings of the repository. How we collect data