But can you run it without docker? I have some FreeBSD hosts, for example, making a dependency on docker a no-go.

I'm not the author of this post or the software, but as a general rule, if docker can run it, so can a host machine without docker (unless docker itself is a dependency which is rare and generally only done for Docker specific tooling).

Here you can see the the image is based on buster which is a Linux type host. So you can almost certainly get it working on FreeBSD

https://github.com/gristlabs/grist-core/blob/main/Dockerfile

> you can almost certainly get it working

Which means that only enthusiasts will do it.

Yup :). See the top level ancestor comment:

>An enthusiast can host it and publish it to non-enthusiasts as a web application.

So the person "getting it working" would need to be enthusiastic about it!