OccupySaaS is a protest movement by laid-off engineers building open-source, drop-in replacements for major SaaS platforms. Inspired by Occupy Wall Street, the movement targets cloud infrastructure as toll booths, rejecting per-seat pricing and proprietary lock-ins. Using AI and public documentation, developers rebuild compatible systems without leaking confidential code.
The method involves clean-room development, strict firewalls, and compatibility testing against vendors' public SDKs. First releases include Zero Authy (an Auth0 alternative) and Sales Compel (a Salesforce replacement), both under Apache-2.0 licenses. The movement welcomes contributors and plans to expand to other SaaS categories based on community demand.
Source: Hacker News · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing