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I would use an open source version of this immediately. I've written several hacked up projects using google spreadsheets and it works, but its unreliable. I wo

I would use an open source version of this immediately. I've written several hacked up projects using google spreadsheets and it works, but its unreliable. I would not want to use a smaller 3rd party service as I would be afraid of the service getting shutdown or neglected. I would be much more inclined to use and pay for this service if they also open sourced it. Maybe run it like wordpress, they make a lot of money :)

rudasn 11y ago
Same here. I'm really excited about what these people (and others) are doing in this space, but the lack of an open source code and the service lock-in (mostly) are huge turn offs for me. I've started building a prototype of this idea using PouchDB/CouchDB (data is stored locally in PouchDB, synced to your own CouchDB server or Cloudant). As with most of my side projects, it remains abandoned waiting for some love.
- fiatjaf 11y ago
  Where is your PouchDB/CouchDB prototype? Can I see it? I want take some ideas from it, perhaps fork it.
iheartmemcache 11y ago
Wordpress is kind of a "one-off" in the same way that Farmville and Minecraft were (i.e. right place, right time -- Newspro and Perl CGI was falling out of fashion, PHP4/MySQL3.23 were common everywhere, shared hosting was easy, and Wordpress came bundled with CPanel IIRC). A more sustainable business model would be, I think, the safe middle-ground for both the consumer and the developer-- the Atlassian model. Offer an absurdly cheap .jar/.dmg/.exe out of the box which you can run locally for the end-user/small-business (what is it like a dollar a user a year for the self-hosted binaries?) and limit it to 5 or 10 seats. If the acquire-hire-kill by GoogAplTwitSquare happens, you still have a local copy of your data and the ability to migrate off the platform. If >(5||10) employees are using the application as a critical component of your business, making the seat-fee price-jump at that point is worth it (value provided > cost of seats, even at a few hundred dollars a month).
- huskyr 11y ago
  WordPress 4.4 comes with a new REST API that might change some things: http://v2.wp-api.org/ http://v2.wp-api.org/
j45 11y ago
I would use this, even license it, if it could handle forms and I could reliably run it for the foreseeable future if the hosted version went away. DabbleDB was real interesting and it sadly went away.
DarrylD 11y ago
I too would like open source, hard to pitch this to peers when no open source option is available.
jermo 11y ago
What if they offered a data export/backup option? Since the Api is there you could even write one yourself
reitanqild 11y ago
Seems to me that unless they are lucky and get under the protecting wings of Red Hat or something, most Open Source developers do it for free even if the work is worth good money. I'm hoping that sandstorm or another hosting provider that makes a business out of reselling open source anyway can try out one or more models where a fraction of the revenue is fed back to the creators / the community to encourage more development. Don't know if it would work but I can hope.
- sysk 11y ago
  I'm working on exactly that. However, I'm a bit fearful it will be received negatively by developers.
  - reitanqild 11y ago
    Of course it will, by some. Hopefully most should see some value in getting their software in the hands of more users while also getting a little money without doing anything extra.
  - aleksei 11y ago
    If they receive it negatively, perhaps they should have put more thought into licensing - or commercialised it themselves.
eob 11y ago
We (Cloudstitch) would love to help you migrate your GSheet-driven pages onto our platform. We provide all the middleware tooling to run a GSheet-driven page or web app at production scale.

rudasn 11y ago

Same here. I'm really excited about what these people (and others) are doing in this space, but the lack of an open source code and the service lock-in (mostly) are huge turn offs for me. I've started building a prototype of this idea using PouchDB/CouchDB (data is stored locally in PouchDB, synced to your own CouchDB server or Cloudant). As with most of my side projects, it remains abandoned waiting for some love.

fiatjaf 11y ago
Where is your PouchDB/CouchDB prototype? Can I see it? I want take some ideas from it, perhaps fork it.

iheartmemcache 11y ago

Wordpress is kind of a "one-off" in the same way that Farmville and Minecraft were (i.e. right place, right time -- Newspro and Perl CGI was falling out of fashion, PHP4/MySQL3.23 were common everywhere, shared hosting was easy, and Wordpress came bundled with CPanel IIRC). A more sustainable business model would be, I think, the safe middle-ground for both the consumer and the developer-- the Atlassian model. Offer an absurdly cheap .jar/.dmg/.exe out of the box which you can run locally for the end-user/small-business (what is it like a dollar a user a year for the self-hosted binaries?) and limit it to 5 or 10 seats. If the acquire-hire-kill by GoogAplTwitSquare happens, you still have a local copy of your data and the ability to migrate off the platform. If >(5||10) employees are using the application as a critical component of your business, making the seat-fee price-jump at that point is worth it (value provided > cost of seats, even at a few hundred dollars a month).

huskyr 11y ago
WordPress 4.4 comes with a new REST API that might change some things: http://v2.wp-api.org/ http://v2.wp-api.org/

j45 11y ago

I would use this, even license it, if it could handle forms and I could reliably run it for the foreseeable future if the hosted version went away. DabbleDB was real interesting and it sadly went away.

DarrylD 11y ago

I too would like open source, hard to pitch this to peers when no open source option is available.

jermo 11y ago

What if they offered a data export/backup option? Since the Api is there you could even write one yourself

reitanqild 11y ago

Seems to me that unless they are lucky and get under the protecting wings of Red Hat or something, most Open Source developers do it for free even if the work is worth good money. I'm hoping that sandstorm or another hosting provider that makes a business out of reselling open source anyway can try out one or more models where a fraction of the revenue is fed back to the creators / the community to encourage more development. Don't know if it would work but I can hope.

sysk 11y ago
I'm working on exactly that. However, I'm a bit fearful it will be received negatively by developers.
- reitanqild 11y ago
  Of course it will, by some. Hopefully most should see some value in getting their software in the hands of more users while also getting a little money without doing anything extra.
- aleksei 11y ago
  If they receive it negatively, perhaps they should have put more thought into licensing - or commercialised it themselves.

eob 11y ago

We (Cloudstitch) would love to help you migrate your GSheet-driven pages onto our platform. We provide all the middleware tooling to run a GSheet-driven page or web app at production scale.