There’s a quiet rebellion happening in software.
For twenty years, the world has been trained to rent everything: your tools, your data, your work.
Every click runs through somebody else’s server. Every document lives under somebody else’s terms.
That’s not how we build VaxCalc.
When I discovered Writebook, I saw something rare — a step backward in the best possible way.
It’s not open source. It’s owned source.
You buy it once. You get the full source code. You run it yourself.
No “platform.” No dependency. No middleman.
It reminded me of how software used to be: you purchased it, installed it, and took responsibility for running it.
That’s DHH’s vision — pulling creators out of the SaaS trap and back into true digital ownership.
We installed Writebook on our own hardware, behind our own Caddy proxy, under our own domain: books.vaxcalc.org.
It’s clean, fast, and beautifully simple.
Perfect for publishing works we never want behind anyone else’s gate.
Our first release?
The VaxCalc Owner’s Manual.
A living book that explains how everything we build fits together — from the app to the philosophy behind it.
Running Writebook ourselves means if every Big Tech server vanished tomorrow, the Owner’s Manual would still be online — right here, where it belongs.
Tony:
“Guy builds his own press, prints his own truth.
That’s power you don’t rent.”