10 ms·

Sandstorm is returning to its community roots

304 points by cjcole 10y ago

ocdtrekkie 10y ago
I am always a little nervous when the status of a project I rely on changes, but I'm pretty confident Sandstorm.io as a platform is still just beginning.
- eitland 10y ago
  Seems they have - at least for now - given up the commercial project. I would have loved it if they were successful and made a small fortune so as to encourage more innovative in this niche. That said, seems they are once again proving what they are made of and making everything available as open source.
  - kentonv 10y ago
    I indeed wanted Sandstorm to succeed as a business in order to support Sandstorm's development -- but to me the business was always a vehicle rather than the end goal. For now, the business hasn't worked. I'm actually somewhat relieved, as I've always felt more comfortable building pure-open-source projects rather than business-driven ones. The contortions we went through to try to get revenue felt very unnatural to me.
    - rmason 10y ago
      Have you considered using https://www.patreon.com/ https://www.patreon.com/ ? If there's enough interest among the people using it maybe you could pay for one full time developer. I know of multiple projects where this has happened like Vue.js and Hapi.js.
      - kentonv 10y ago
        It's unlikely that we'd collect enough money to pay a developer in the near term. Developers are expensive. But if people want to contribute financially to the project, the easiest way is to sign up for Oasis. This avoids the 5% fee that Patreon charges.
educar 10y ago
Oh dear :( Sorry to see sandstorm go. I attribute the failure to many reasons: 1. The UI was very sloppy. For the user, one had to learn many new concepts (what is a webkey? why do apps not work on mobile?) 2. New app developer model meant that it was impossible to create apps easily without insane complexity. If you see all the apps, they had to fork from the main code base and generally lagged behind because packaging for sandstorm required a LOT of work. 3. The web frame that they added around each app was annoying. This frame could not be disabled and thus made many use cases like having a public forum, blog impossible. 4. Their own infrastructure was not self-hosted including using github (when gitlab exists), google groups (when nodebb app exists). They continued to use irc despite having a rocket.chat app as the main showcase. They should be dogfooding. The alternatives today are at https://github.com/Kickball/awesome-selfhosted#self-hosting-solutions https://github.com/Kickball/awesome-selfhosted#self-hosting-.... I recommend https://cloudron.io https://cloudron.io. They focus simply on installing things and don't invent a new developer model (it's based on docker)
- kentonv 10y ago
  Thanks for the feedback! 1. We know the UI needs work and have plans to improve it. We are very aware that webkeys are not user-friendly; they were always meant as a stopgap measure while we build better UI. Some things about mobile here: https://github.com/sandstorm-io/sandstorm/tree/master/roadmap/platform/mobile https://github.com/sandstorm-io/sandstorm/tree/master/roadma... 2. The amount of work an app port requires varies a lot depending on the type of app. Self-contained apps that don't talk to the outside world can often be ported in a few minutes. But, indeed, some apps need work to integrate with the appropriate Sandstorm APIs. We've been working to make this easier by, for example, setting up an HTTP proxy inside the app which can make communicating with external OAuth services mostly transparent, while still respecting the Sandstorm permission model. With better tools we think we can automate most things, we just haven't gotten there yet. 3. There are multiple Sandstorm apps which let you post e.g. blogs with no Sandstorm UI frame around it. We have some features in-progress which extend this to more apps. But note that part of the goal of Sandstorm is to generalize a lot of the UI such that apps don't have to repeatedly build the same things, like login, access control, notifications, etc. We need to hang that UI somewhere, hence the need for that frame. But we have ideas that will make it look a lot more like an integrated part of the app UI in the future. 4. We dogfood a lot. We write design docs in Etherpad, manage tasks in Wekan, etc. Our github, google groups, and IRC existed before Sandstorm was functional. The main reason we haven't switched over is because switching is costly and it seems like there are better things we could do with our time.
mynegation 10y ago
Sad to know the business did not work out. Sandstorm is a wonderful piece of software, I was able to install and play with it without too much trouble. I hoped that would be the project that would take open source software to new heights. Software (at least software for consumption, mot for creative work) moves from desktop to cloud + mobile devices in droves. And there is no widely successful FLOSS app ecosystem that works in that direction. Basically I want to be able to get a server, install it at home or maybe in the datacentre, and I want to be able to install FLOSS server-side software that works through the web browser and mobile apps. Think my own pinboard.in, feed reader, IRC or Slack-type server, dashboard etc. Sure you can do it with Linux right now, but the amount of work you have to do configuring all this is well beyond the simplicity of 'apt-get install'. The closest thing to this is what QNAP and Synology do, but their systems are proprietary. Sandstorm has the potential to be that system and did a lot of things well, package installation experience probably the most notable. What I did not like is the grain model. I understand the security reasons behind it, but it felt like a straitjacket and URLs were ugly. There was no accompanying mobile apps (not Sandstorm's fault per se, but something to think about when building systems like that in the future)
redindian75 10y ago
I tested Sandstorm just last week, the technology maybe cutting edge but sadly the UI design /UX was from the the 90s. The various apps did not gel with either sandstorm frame or other apps at all (conceptually, not technically), almost as if they are iframed and glued together. Hope the team spends time and polish the presentation layer.
- kentonv 10y ago
  One thing we want to do to improve the UI is to remove the current black topbar and replace it with a top bar that melds better with the app. Most web apps these days have a colored topbar that contains a name, logo, document title, share button, account settings button, etc. In Sandstorm you see a lot of apps still having such a topbar of their own, but then the Sandstorm topbar lives above it, and half of the usual topbar functionality actually ends up in the Sandstorm top bar, confusing people. In order for Sandstorm to defend against app security vulnerabilities, we can't simply let the app handle its own access control, so we do need a place to hang this trusted UI. What I'd like to do is have Sandstorm render a modern-style colored top bar with all the usual elements an app would put in it -- with the ability for the app to customize the color and contents to some degree. This top bar would feel like part of the app, but would be trusted, so we could put access control and account settings there, etc.
azinman2 10y ago
I just don't see a big market for hosting FOSS apps. There are few apps, if any, that are better than a commercial equivalent already on web/iOS/android with support teams, marketing, etc. Ordinary people don't have much qualms about using a commercial service despite all the privacy warnings in the world: just look at the 1B+ users on Facebook. So if we're left with a small crowd who does care, they're also largely the same crowd who feels comfortable getting a DO droplet and apt-get installing whatever app. I fee bad for the sandstorm guys, seems like they put a lot of energy into it, but they approached it as an engineering challenge rather than from a market research "build what people want" challenge.
- ocdtrekkie 10y ago
  Open source succeeds not only when it's open, but when that openness also just makes it better than using the closed alternative. For example, I was able to send my friends a single Sandstorm sharing link that contained the equivalent of a bunch of Google Docs (Etherpad) and Trello boards (Wekan) in one easy location. Because Google Docs and Trello are closed source, separate platforms, I can't do that. But I can with Sandstorm. A lot of what Sandstorm is aiming to do is still in development feature-wise, and then people have to build apps on top of that. So I'd say this is a long haul destination here. But the key point is: Open won't win because it's more private, or more free. It'll win when it's better.
  - space_fountain 10y ago
    One of my key worries with the current walled garden approach is exactly what you describe. Value can't be easily reached by connecting products together. Every major company seems to be working hard to keep there customers completely inside there ecosystem. It makes sense for them and I certainly don't blame them, but it does seem to represent some level of failure for the current system.
    - ocdtrekkie 10y ago
      I think Android is a great example of how providers can realize that a common, unified platform has huge advantages to their business. Of course, I'd argue the largest problem with Android is the control Google exerts over it. But, as far as the manufacturers go, it's a great example of seeing the benefits of a common platform. My hope is someday everyone will use Sandstorm (I'm an optimist), and maybe you'll use Sandstorm on Google's servers or Apple's servers or whatever but you can all access the same apps everywhere, whether you're in someone else's cloud or hosting your own.
koolba 10y ago
Regarding open sourcing previously paywalled features: > We no longer have a business model to protect, so the code can now be set free. I'm pretty sure this is a big decider in whether a company open sources a piece of software.
- kentonv 10y ago
  Technically our "paywalled" features in Sandstorm for Work were actually open source all along. The paywall existed in official builds but you could easily remove it in a custom build. The line you quote is actually with regards to Blackrock, which is our scale-out technology, which we never got around to selling (except indirectly by using it to run Oasis).
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
omouse 10y ago
This is something that I would love to see happen with open source projects: 1. company is created around the project 2. other companies started using the project and find it handy 3. companies need maintenance and support: consulting companies start opening up shop and serving them 4. parent company gets more customers because they're the first/official supporting company This similiar to the Wordpress model I think and they're fairly successful, they've got a whole ecosystem. We have added the Sandstorm Technology Roadmap to the Sandstorm repo, where you can learn about everything Sandstorm has built and plans to build. Perfect, now another company can take a chance on raising VC funds for this or bankrolling it themselves.
- kentonv 10y ago
  Ehh... The support model is pretty tricky to make work. It doesn't scale well, and it creates somewhat of a conflict of interest: if you make your product work too well, people won't need support. It has worked a few times but there are a lot more failures than successes, sadly. > Perfect, now another company can take a chance on raising VC funds for this or bankrolling it themselves. Let's be honest: it would be nearly impossible for this to happen. If we couldn't get VCs to fund us, no VC is going to fund some other people -- who likely don't understand the codebase or the vision in anywhere near as much detail as we do -- to work on the same thing. Even with an extremely rational argument for why they'd be able to do better, the psychological barriers to investing in something that "already failed" are huge. But if someone did try this, they should probably hire some people from the original team, I would think. :) A more likely scenario is, if Sandstorm shows strong growth as an open source project to the point of being fundable again, then the original team (with maybe some added biz dev expertise) can restart the company in the future.
  - CiPHPerCoder 10y ago
    > A more likely scenario is, if Sandstorm shows strong growth as an open source project to the point of being fundable again, then the original team (with maybe some added biz dev expertise) can restart the company in the future. I sincerely wish you the best of luck. I think it's a valuable-to-society idea, even if it was hard to market.
hobofan 10y ago
So the paid offering of Oasis still exists and you are advertising it in the end of the blog post. It is not directly said in the post, but it sounds like you are trying to still make it work in the long run by minimizing the team and going with the slow organic growth that you have? No criticism intended there, I personally think that would be great and in the long run probably the most healthy way to make something so idealistically grounded like Sandstorm work.
- kentonv 10y ago
  Yes, exactly. Oasis brings in enough revenue to cover Sandstorm's serving costs (for Oasis itself, Sandcats, updates, etc.). Oasis is also very low-maintenance for us, since Sandstorm in general is designed to be easy to maintain. So there's no reason to shut it down. Our other paid offering, Sandstorm for Work, brought in very little revenue, so it made more sense to make it free to drive growth. I do believe there's a future business in Sandstorm, perhaps centered around the app market and supporting paid apps. I believe that as long as we keep improving Sandstorm, a few years down the road we may be in a place to revive the business. But mainly I want to keep working on it because, honestly, I really enjoy it, especially now that I don't have to think about boring business-y stuff. :)
  - e12e 10y ago
    I really hope this works out! I've yet to use Sandstorm in anger - but I strongly believe the "correct" model for a project like this is offer paid hosting managed by system experts (ie: you, the creators) - along with an easy back-and-forth transition path from self-host to paid hosting and back. Charging for ldap always felt a bit wrong to me - supporting open federated standards is kind of a selling point of Sandstorm in the first place - leaving it out felt like "demanding" payment rather than providing a tantalizing service I'd want to pay for. People point at wordpress - which are a successful business built on a rather terrible code-base, along with a rather nasty walled garden with a half-open gate (the theme ecosystem). A better model might be Ghost - they also offer paid hosting, but doesn't draw such a hard line between self-host and "ghost host" IMNHO. (I don't know how well Ghost works in terms of revenue, though). Would you be able to share some number wrt. hosting costs and current recurring revenue? How many paying users do you have, and how many more would you need to pay for the size of team you'd like?
mwcampbell 10y ago
I think Sandstorm missed out on a potential business opportunity that I will call, for lack of a better term, SaaS as a service. Here's what I mean. Suppose I develop an application that fits nicely into Sandstorm's grain-based model. But I don't want to give it away. And just as important, I don't want my users to have to deal with this weird Sandstorm thing. I want to sell the app as a SaaS subscription, like so many other web applications that people are used to. Yet, I don't want to deal with recurring billing, hosting my users' data, 24/7 availability, etc. So I develop my product as a Sandstorm app, then pay Sandstorm to host it under my own domain, with Sandstorm being invisible to the user. As far as the user is concerned, it's a SaaS product that I'm providing, like any other SaaS product. But I don't have to implement recurring billing, back up users' data, worry about availability or security, etc. Does this make sense to anyone else?
- vertex-four 10y ago
  That's missing out entirely on the point of Sandstorm, which is to provide users with the ability to host their own cloud software. Sandstorm as a business was meant to be in support of that goal, rather than the product being made to fit whatever would make the business profitable at the expense of its goals.
- simplehuman 10y ago
  I think you are talking about developing a market place. Very different ball game than sandstorm.
  - eitland 10y ago
    IMO closely related though. I wanted something like this: crowdfunding of apps, preferably open source. But while I though it could fit well in on top of sandstorm I understand it would be hard to pull of in a balanced way.
- kentonv 10y ago
  Maybe. Our feeling was that there are many other PaaS's out there already with this kind of focus, and Sandstorm doesn't really offer anything that would make it better than the alternatives. Instead, the focus of Sandstorm is to create infrastructure where the servers "report to the user" rather than to the developer, which is a very different kind of problem. I do think there are permutations of fine-grained containerization which might be interesting as a PaaS but we consciously decided not to focus there, for better or for worse.
marknadal 10y ago
So sad to see yet another blooming Open Source technology make a business/financial shutdown statement. I've been a fan of how much kentonv has hustled, not only in code, but also being a role model about being fearless to get out and post to HN about his technology. Very impressive. I'm in a similar place, and just recently wrote an article on the RethinkDB/Parse shutdowns and spoke on the Changelog podcast about it as well: https://hackernoon.com/the-implications-of-rethinkdb-and-parse-shutdowns-c076460058f7#.rvz4w04lz https://hackernoon.com/the-implications-of-rethinkdb-and-par... . Given what I say there, I actually want to encourage the sandstorm team to not give up yet - they are in the right space. Maybe wait out a year, and then hustle some marketing/bizdev/enterprise/government sales, they are in the right space and have some big opportunity ahead. Sometimes, being too early can bite though, but please please try again - don't give up. As a great example of this, look at Bitcoin. Crypto currencies were all the rage in the 90s and went nowhere. A decade and a half later... the market timing matched up, and it exploded.
- kentonv 10y ago
  Thanks! And yes, that's basically the plan. :)
- bureado 10y ago
  I read the article and my key takeaway was that licensing was a significant culprit. But Parse and Sandstorm are different. Do you think there is something systematic to open source or to VC-backed startups or to developer tools or something else?
  - marknadal 10y ago
    Great question, if I were to tackle it, I would take it like this: 1. Parse, to non-developers, was a wild success - not a failure. An $85M exit ( https://angel.co/parse https://angel.co/parse ) on a $7M investment, that is a 10X+ return in 3 years. This doesn't seem to be talked about much, especially compared to the darling Firebase. It represents exactly what an affluent ecosystem would want: A business savvy and technically proficient team that can be sold off to the highest bidder that investors vet. However, it is a "shut down" in the eyes of developers because the tool was overlooked. 2. Sandstorm is so advanced that it isn't quite understood yet, partly because nobody has invented the catchy phrase for it (even if they did, the timing is still too early). While most first-world users now have multiple devices, they only use 1 at a time, and they don't see these two problems: (A) They don't know their devices should sync more than what Apple tells them they should (B) They don't know that their devices, which they own physically, should be their private servers for all their services. That is why I think Sandstorm shouldn't give up, because with the addition of 5B+ new people coming online, I don't care how scalable Google/Amazon/Apple/Microsoft are, things are going to be a lot more powerful/reliable/customer-satisfaction if people own and run their own services (fully automated by things like sandstorm). This isn't just a privacy/ownership thing, it is a customer expectation "thing" - using a service is like using a public bathroom, but owning that service is like using your apartment's bathroom. It doesn't matter how gross/nice any 1 experience is, ultimately the consistency of expectation wins out. So yes, there is something systematic to VC-backed startups (like Parse, they're ultimately a hiring/resume gig - or randomly big industry creators, like Dropbox, Uber/Lyft, AirBnB), and there is something systematic to Open Source and developers (we often value different things). Developer Tools aren't particularly unique, other than the fact that they are either industry causing/creating architectures, or unfortunately on the tail end of a dying architecture. They are black and white in their success, high risk, with no middle ground - and since risks often fail, and humans are loss averse, the failures often seem to outweigh or overwhelm the successes. The important thing to remember though is that the winners cause and create prosperity for entirely new industries/sectors, for people and companies around the world, and for generations to come.
simplehuman 10y ago
So the business has failed but the managed hosting is still available? What does that mean? Who keeps it running?
- kentonv 10y ago
  I do. (With help from some trusted people if I'm unavailable.) Oasis pays for itself and Sandstorm is intentionally designed to be low-maintenance (for the benefit of self-hosters), so keeping it going is actually not very hard. We don't foresee any need to shut down any of Sandstorm's services.
  - simplehuman 10y ago
    Thanks for clarifying. So you are going to run Oasis full time all by yourself ? Would be great to put this as part of your post since it's not clear how much one can depend on Oasis.
    - kentonv 10y ago
      I will handle most of it, but there will be fallbacks when I'm not available. FWIW, Oasis takes only a few minutes of work per week to operate...
      - eitland 10y ago
        FWIW, Oasis takes only a few minutes of work per week to operate... Well, today I learned. A bit humbling I guess as someone who typically use more hours to support smaller infrastructure:-]
notheguyouthink 10y ago
How simple is Sandstorm to run? I want to use something like sandstorm, but i want stupidly simple deployments, even if at the cost of features. Eg, my killer "sandstorm" like feature would be a single binary, or perhaps 1 binary per service type, that i run with no auth, not exposed to public, a single backup dir, no config, etc. I want low maintenance from the user side. How much does Sandstorm fit this? Also, as a side note i feel quite sad for Sandstorm. It's a difficult concept to monetize even if for continued development. Ie, even if i can be convinced that this will be "easy enough" to use, i'd be hard pressed to pay for a service.. i want to keep it on my network, that's the point to me. I'd have to donate, i suppose. Which is unfortunate. Perhaps they could offer an encrypted backup solution? Eg, i want to self host, but they could easily store an encrypted and versioned backup of my entire sandstorm db? I'd pay for that! I'm doing that from someone anyway, why not sandstorm.io?
- kentonv 10y ago
  > How simple is Sandstorm to run? Extremely so. Installation is via an interactive process (no config files) and optionally automatically provisions DNS and TLS certificates for you (if you choose a hostname under sandcats.io). Once installed, Sandstorm auto-updates without any intervention. Apps are installed as easily as installing apps on your phone, and also auto-update. The system is intended to be feasible for non-technical people to manage. I suggest trying it out. :) https://sandstorm.io/install https://sandstorm.io/install
  - notheguyouthink 10y ago
    Do you have any plans to monetize users like me? Eg, i want to run it at home behind a firewall. I'd love to purchase something, but not at the cost of privacy/etc. How do i fit in your long term goals?
    - kentonv 10y ago
      Well, we had a product called "Sandstorm for Work" which was self-hosted and which people could pay for, and a lot of people said they'd love to pay for it, but very few people ever did. :/ So now we've removed the paywall and the Sandstorm for Work premium features are available in all self-hosted Sandstorm servers for free. If you'd like to help the project monetarily, you can sign up for an Oasis account, even if you intend to primarily use Sandstorm self-hosted. That said, at present, we've stopped worrying about monetization and are only worried about making the platform better and getting more users. Simply installing a server and using it helps us! The more users we have, the more interest there will be from developers, and vice-versa.
ar-jan 10y ago
Sorry to hear this! :( I use a self-hosted Sandstorm instance almost daily, and I'm very happy with it. I don't really agree with some of the critiques posted here regarding the UI and UX. Sure, it could have used further improvements, but I feel it's simple, functional, and intuitive enough. Not at all a critical shortcoming imo (well, perhaps for use cases where mobile support is essential). For me a limiting factor is that some of the apps do not have feature-parity with their regular version. In particular, plugin support, which is very important for example for WordPress, ShareLaTeX, and IPython. Another thing is the pace in which new apps are packaged for Sandstorm, and the trust that there will be regular and timely updates. Of course this also depends very much on the community, and the ease with which things can be packaged, but it felt like app porting lost a bit of momentum. Regarding the future of the project, are there any other potential avenues for financing further development, other than buying Oasis hosting? I very much want to see this project continued!
- kentonv 10y ago
  I'd love to see the community using Bounty Source or the like to finance projects, e.g. packaging particular apps. For my part, I don't need any financial incentives -- I'll keep coding regardless.
ben_says 10y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HQaBWziYvY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HQaBWziYvY I can't help it...
shezi 10y ago
Just this week, I was on the fence about whether I should get a hosted environment of Sandstorm on the Basic level. Your sad tale of failing as a business gave me the push I needed and I just subscribed. Sorry to see it go this way, and sorry I couldn't help sooner.
- kentonv 10y ago
  Thank you!
azirbel 10y ago
Sad to hear this news, but also excited to hear that Sandstorm is continuing as an open source project. I'm mainly excited because Sandstorm makes indie web apps viable. I've been amazed to see how quickly members of the Sandstorm community can spin up sophisticated apps like collaborative editing or file sharing. If you have a framework like Meteor to handle sync, and Sandstorm handles authentication and sharing, then you can make a serious multi-user app in a weekend. Even better, once you've made your app, you don't have to worry about security or scaling. So a junior developer could make an app which stores my sensitive financial information, and I'd still try it because I trust Sandstorm to keep my data safe even if the app is poorly written. Sandstorm's foundation is solid, and I think a few UI and developer-happiness improvements will make this a reality. Wishing the team all the best!
mempko 10y ago
If only sandstorm sold a box with it pre-installed. Kind if like a Pogo plug.
- skinnymuch 10y ago
  Pogoplug did stop selling their hardware years ago. So it probably wasn't working out either :/
xg15 10y ago
This is avery sad thing to hear and one can only wish the best of luck to the open source project. I think especially in current times, user-friendly alternatives to the cloud are badly needed. By the way, I really appreciate the honest style of the message. Sentences like Unfortunately, Sandstorm the business has now run out of money, and we have been unable to raise more. are refreshing in contrast to the usual "the next chapter of our journey" speeches.
TeMPOraL 10y ago
Sorry to see the business fail. I was recommending people to check out the project since the day I learned about it here. I hope the development will continue without problems though :). A quick question, if I may: say I want to test Sandstorm, first on Oasis, but then I want to migrate to self-hosting. Is there a way to move all the data I stored on my Oasis instance to the self-hosted one?
- kentonv 10y ago
  Yes. You can click the "download backup" button in the top bar when you have a grain open to download a zip file of all its contents. You can then upload that to any other server to restore the grain there. Currently there is not a mass-download or mass-transfer feature; you have to do each grain one at a time. But you probably won't generate that many grains if you're just testing it out, so it ought to be OK. We plan to add mass-transfer in the future. See also: https://github.com/sandstorm-io/sandstorm/tree/master/roadmap/platform/grains#backup https://github.com/sandstorm-io/sandstorm/tree/master/roadma...
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    Thanks!
api 10y ago
I'd love to see a meta-analysis of OSS-oriented companies that have succeeded vs. those that have failed and what they did.
- ocdtrekkie 10y ago
  The best thing, IMHO, is that pretty much every OSS-oriented company that has "failed" has left behind valuable work for the community. And non-OSS-oriented companies that failed largely have not.
dyu- 10y ago
Saw this coming :-/ I anticipated this one after app.net shut down. Next one up, cozy.io?
caretStick 10y ago
Wow, I've been a big fan of Darude even while hoping they were more prolific. Whoever those agents were keeping them on the run, we lost a lot of art thanks to you.
losvedir 10y ago
Oh no! I really believe sandstorm (or something like it) is what we need the future to be. Rather than having everything get sucked up into Google, Facebook, Apple, or these other few centralized services, imagine where everyone has a personal (or family, or church group or whatever) server, and they can one-click install their email apps, their document apps, etc. The basic issue is that everyone wants "cloud" apps, so that their emails and chats appear on their phones and their tablets or home computers. But unfortunately it seems we leapt straight from the PC paradigm where your email is stored on your computer straight to the "centralized, 3rd party cloud" paradigm, where Google owns all your stuff. But with a "cloud" that you still control, tough problems like end-to-end encryption fall away, since it only needs to be encrypted from one person's cloud to another, while the messages themselves could be synced between all the user's connected devices. Linux was a beautiful, world changing thing. If we could establish an open-source platform seeking to replicate a lot of things Google and Facebook do now, but without the privacy implications, that could be equally world changing. Sandstorm, at least as far as I understand it, definitely has the vision right, so I'm hoping despite Sandstorm for Work not panning out, the technology will continue to grow.
Nadya 10y ago
I'm glad to hear the plan is to continue the dream. When I first heard about Sandstorm I thought it was a fantastic concept. Unfortunately it wasn't user-friendly enough and I walked away. I'd always peak at updates whenever the name popped up but I was waiting for it to be more user-friendly. Outside of what sounds to be a lack of a sales/marketing team - the UX/UI is what prevented me from forking over cash. I hope it works well enough to try and bounce back for a round 2. Best of luck.
notheguyouthink 10y ago
As an aside, how easy is it to create your own apps for Sandstorm? edit: Found this, https://docs.sandstorm.io/en/latest/vagrant-spk/packaging-tutorial/ https://docs.sandstorm.io/en/latest/vagrant-spk/packaging-tu...

304 points by cjcole 10y ago

I am always a little nervous when the status of a project I rely on changes, but I'm pretty confident Sandstorm.io as a platform is still just beginning.

eitland 10y ago
Seems they have - at least for now - given up the commercial project. I would have loved it if they were successful and made a small fortune so as to encourage more innovative in this niche. That said, seems they are once again proving what they are made of and making everything available as open source.
- kentonv 10y ago
  I indeed wanted Sandstorm to succeed as a business in order to support Sandstorm's development -- but to me the business was always a vehicle rather than the end goal. For now, the business hasn't worked. I'm actually somewhat relieved, as I've always felt more comfortable building pure-open-source projects rather than business-driven ones. The contortions we went through to try to get revenue felt very unnatural to me.
  - rmason 10y ago
    Have you considered using https://www.patreon.com/ https://www.patreon.com/ ? If there's enough interest among the people using it maybe you could pay for one full time developer. I know of multiple projects where this has happened like Vue.js and Hapi.js.
    - kentonv 10y ago
      It's unlikely that we'd collect enough money to pay a developer in the near term. Developers are expensive. But if people want to contribute financially to the project, the easiest way is to sign up for Oasis. This avoids the 5% fee that Patreon charges.

educar 10y ago

Oh dear :( Sorry to see sandstorm go. I attribute the failure to many reasons: 1. The UI was very sloppy. For the user, one had to learn many new concepts (what is a webkey? why do apps not work on mobile?) 2. New app developer model meant that it was impossible to create apps easily without insane complexity. If you see all the apps, they had to fork from the main code base and generally lagged behind because packaging for sandstorm required a LOT of work. 3. The web frame that they added around each app was annoying. This frame could not be disabled and thus made many use cases like having a public forum, blog impossible. 4. Their own infrastructure was not self-hosted including using github (when gitlab exists), google groups (when nodebb app exists). They continued to use irc despite having a rocket.chat app as the main showcase. They should be dogfooding. The alternatives today are at https://github.com/Kickball/awesome-selfhosted#self-hosting-solutions https://github.com/Kickball/awesome-selfhosted#self-hosting-.... I recommend https://cloudron.io https://cloudron.io. They focus simply on installing things and don't invent a new developer model (it's based on docker)

kentonv 10y ago
Thanks for the feedback! 1. We know the UI needs work and have plans to improve it. We are very aware that webkeys are not user-friendly; they were always meant as a stopgap measure while we build better UI. Some things about mobile here: https://github.com/sandstorm-io/sandstorm/tree/master/roadmap/platform/mobile https://github.com/sandstorm-io/sandstorm/tree/master/roadma... 2. The amount of work an app port requires varies a lot depending on the type of app. Self-contained apps that don't talk to the outside world can often be ported in a few minutes. But, indeed, some apps need work to integrate with the appropriate Sandstorm APIs. We've been working to make this easier by, for example, setting up an HTTP proxy inside the app which can make communicating with external OAuth services mostly transparent, while still respecting the Sandstorm permission model. With better tools we think we can automate most things, we just haven't gotten there yet. 3. There are multiple Sandstorm apps which let you post e.g. blogs with no Sandstorm UI frame around it. We have some features in-progress which extend this to more apps. But note that part of the goal of Sandstorm is to generalize a lot of the UI such that apps don't have to repeatedly build the same things, like login, access control, notifications, etc. We need to hang that UI somewhere, hence the need for that frame. But we have ideas that will make it look a lot more like an integrated part of the app UI in the future. 4. We dogfood a lot. We write design docs in Etherpad, manage tasks in Wekan, etc. Our github, google groups, and IRC existed before Sandstorm was functional. The main reason we haven't switched over is because switching is costly and it seems like there are better things we could do with our time.

mynegation 10y ago

Sad to know the business did not work out. Sandstorm is a wonderful piece of software, I was able to install and play with it without too much trouble. I hoped that would be the project that would take open source software to new heights. Software (at least software for consumption, mot for creative work) moves from desktop to cloud + mobile devices in droves. And there is no widely successful FLOSS app ecosystem that works in that direction. Basically I want to be able to get a server, install it at home or maybe in the datacentre, and I want to be able to install FLOSS server-side software that works through the web browser and mobile apps. Think my own pinboard.in, feed reader, IRC or Slack-type server, dashboard etc. Sure you can do it with Linux right now, but the amount of work you have to do configuring all this is well beyond the simplicity of 'apt-get install'. The closest thing to this is what QNAP and Synology do, but their systems are proprietary. Sandstorm has the potential to be that system and did a lot of things well, package installation experience probably the most notable. What I did not like is the grain model. I understand the security reasons behind it, but it felt like a straitjacket and URLs were ugly. There was no accompanying mobile apps (not Sandstorm's fault per se, but something to think about when building systems like that in the future)

redindian75 10y ago

I tested Sandstorm just last week, the technology maybe cutting edge but sadly the UI design /UX was from the the 90s. The various apps did not gel with either sandstorm frame or other apps at all (conceptually, not technically), almost as if they are iframed and glued together. Hope the team spends time and polish the presentation layer.

kentonv 10y ago
One thing we want to do to improve the UI is to remove the current black topbar and replace it with a top bar that melds better with the app. Most web apps these days have a colored topbar that contains a name, logo, document title, share button, account settings button, etc. In Sandstorm you see a lot of apps still having such a topbar of their own, but then the Sandstorm topbar lives above it, and half of the usual topbar functionality actually ends up in the Sandstorm top bar, confusing people. In order for Sandstorm to defend against app security vulnerabilities, we can't simply let the app handle its own access control, so we do need a place to hang this trusted UI. What I'd like to do is have Sandstorm render a modern-style colored top bar with all the usual elements an app would put in it -- with the ability for the app to customize the color and contents to some degree. This top bar would feel like part of the app, but would be trusted, so we could put access control and account settings there, etc.

azinman2 10y ago

I just don't see a big market for hosting FOSS apps. There are few apps, if any, that are better than a commercial equivalent already on web/iOS/android with support teams, marketing, etc. Ordinary people don't have much qualms about using a commercial service despite all the privacy warnings in the world: just look at the 1B+ users on Facebook. So if we're left with a small crowd who does care, they're also largely the same crowd who feels comfortable getting a DO droplet and apt-get installing whatever app. I fee bad for the sandstorm guys, seems like they put a lot of energy into it, but they approached it as an engineering challenge rather than from a market research "build what people want" challenge.

ocdtrekkie 10y ago
Open source succeeds not only when it's open, but when that openness also just makes it better than using the closed alternative. For example, I was able to send my friends a single Sandstorm sharing link that contained the equivalent of a bunch of Google Docs (Etherpad) and Trello boards (Wekan) in one easy location. Because Google Docs and Trello are closed source, separate platforms, I can't do that. But I can with Sandstorm. A lot of what Sandstorm is aiming to do is still in development feature-wise, and then people have to build apps on top of that. So I'd say this is a long haul destination here. But the key point is: Open won't win because it's more private, or more free. It'll win when it's better.
- space_fountain 10y ago
  One of my key worries with the current walled garden approach is exactly what you describe. Value can't be easily reached by connecting products together. Every major company seems to be working hard to keep there customers completely inside there ecosystem. It makes sense for them and I certainly don't blame them, but it does seem to represent some level of failure for the current system.
  - ocdtrekkie 10y ago
    I think Android is a great example of how providers can realize that a common, unified platform has huge advantages to their business. Of course, I'd argue the largest problem with Android is the control Google exerts over it. But, as far as the manufacturers go, it's a great example of seeing the benefits of a common platform. My hope is someday everyone will use Sandstorm (I'm an optimist), and maybe you'll use Sandstorm on Google's servers or Apple's servers or whatever but you can all access the same apps everywhere, whether you're in someone else's cloud or hosting your own.

koolba 10y ago

Regarding open sourcing previously paywalled features: > We no longer have a business model to protect, so the code can now be set free. I'm pretty sure this is a big decider in whether a company open sources a piece of software.

kentonv 10y ago
Technically our "paywalled" features in Sandstorm for Work were actually open source all along. The paywall existed in official builds but you could easily remove it in a custom build. The line you quote is actually with regards to Blackrock, which is our scale-out technology, which we never got around to selling (except indirectly by using it to run Oasis).

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

omouse 10y ago

This is something that I would love to see happen with open source projects: 1. company is created around the project 2. other companies started using the project and find it handy 3. companies need maintenance and support: consulting companies start opening up shop and serving them 4. parent company gets more customers because they're the first/official supporting company This similiar to the Wordpress model I think and they're fairly successful, they've got a whole ecosystem. We have added the Sandstorm Technology Roadmap to the Sandstorm repo, where you can learn about everything Sandstorm has built and plans to build. Perfect, now another company can take a chance on raising VC funds for this or bankrolling it themselves.

kentonv 10y ago
Ehh... The support model is pretty tricky to make work. It doesn't scale well, and it creates somewhat of a conflict of interest: if you make your product work too well, people won't need support. It has worked a few times but there are a lot more failures than successes, sadly. > Perfect, now another company can take a chance on raising VC funds for this or bankrolling it themselves. Let's be honest: it would be nearly impossible for this to happen. If we couldn't get VCs to fund us, no VC is going to fund some other people -- who likely don't understand the codebase or the vision in anywhere near as much detail as we do -- to work on the same thing. Even with an extremely rational argument for why they'd be able to do better, the psychological barriers to investing in something that "already failed" are huge. But if someone did try this, they should probably hire some people from the original team, I would think. :) A more likely scenario is, if Sandstorm shows strong growth as an open source project to the point of being fundable again, then the original team (with maybe some added biz dev expertise) can restart the company in the future.
- CiPHPerCoder 10y ago
  > A more likely scenario is, if Sandstorm shows strong growth as an open source project to the point of being fundable again, then the original team (with maybe some added biz dev expertise) can restart the company in the future. I sincerely wish you the best of luck. I think it's a valuable-to-society idea, even if it was hard to market.

hobofan 10y ago

So the paid offering of Oasis still exists and you are advertising it in the end of the blog post. It is not directly said in the post, but it sounds like you are trying to still make it work in the long run by minimizing the team and going with the slow organic growth that you have? No criticism intended there, I personally think that would be great and in the long run probably the most healthy way to make something so idealistically grounded like Sandstorm work.

kentonv 10y ago
Yes, exactly. Oasis brings in enough revenue to cover Sandstorm's serving costs (for Oasis itself, Sandcats, updates, etc.). Oasis is also very low-maintenance for us, since Sandstorm in general is designed to be easy to maintain. So there's no reason to shut it down. Our other paid offering, Sandstorm for Work, brought in very little revenue, so it made more sense to make it free to drive growth. I do believe there's a future business in Sandstorm, perhaps centered around the app market and supporting paid apps. I believe that as long as we keep improving Sandstorm, a few years down the road we may be in a place to revive the business. But mainly I want to keep working on it because, honestly, I really enjoy it, especially now that I don't have to think about boring business-y stuff. :)
- e12e 10y ago
  I really hope this works out! I've yet to use Sandstorm in anger - but I strongly believe the "correct" model for a project like this is offer paid hosting managed by system experts (ie: you, the creators) - along with an easy back-and-forth transition path from self-host to paid hosting and back. Charging for ldap always felt a bit wrong to me - supporting open federated standards is kind of a selling point of Sandstorm in the first place - leaving it out felt like "demanding" payment rather than providing a tantalizing service I'd want to pay for. People point at wordpress - which are a successful business built on a rather terrible code-base, along with a rather nasty walled garden with a half-open gate (the theme ecosystem). A better model might be Ghost - they also offer paid hosting, but doesn't draw such a hard line between self-host and "ghost host" IMNHO. (I don't know how well Ghost works in terms of revenue, though). Would you be able to share some number wrt. hosting costs and current recurring revenue? How many paying users do you have, and how many more would you need to pay for the size of team you'd like?

mwcampbell 10y ago

I think Sandstorm missed out on a potential business opportunity that I will call, for lack of a better term, SaaS as a service. Here's what I mean. Suppose I develop an application that fits nicely into Sandstorm's grain-based model. But I don't want to give it away. And just as important, I don't want my users to have to deal with this weird Sandstorm thing. I want to sell the app as a SaaS subscription, like so many other web applications that people are used to. Yet, I don't want to deal with recurring billing, hosting my users' data, 24/7 availability, etc. So I develop my product as a Sandstorm app, then pay Sandstorm to host it under my own domain, with Sandstorm being invisible to the user. As far as the user is concerned, it's a SaaS product that I'm providing, like any other SaaS product. But I don't have to implement recurring billing, back up users' data, worry about availability or security, etc. Does this make sense to anyone else?

vertex-four 10y ago
That's missing out entirely on the point of Sandstorm, which is to provide users with the ability to host their own cloud software. Sandstorm as a business was meant to be in support of that goal, rather than the product being made to fit whatever would make the business profitable at the expense of its goals.
simplehuman 10y ago
I think you are talking about developing a market place. Very different ball game than sandstorm.
- eitland 10y ago
  IMO closely related though. I wanted something like this: crowdfunding of apps, preferably open source. But while I though it could fit well in on top of sandstorm I understand it would be hard to pull of in a balanced way.
kentonv 10y ago
Maybe. Our feeling was that there are many other PaaS's out there already with this kind of focus, and Sandstorm doesn't really offer anything that would make it better than the alternatives. Instead, the focus of Sandstorm is to create infrastructure where the servers "report to the user" rather than to the developer, which is a very different kind of problem. I do think there are permutations of fine-grained containerization which might be interesting as a PaaS but we consciously decided not to focus there, for better or for worse.

marknadal 10y ago

So sad to see yet another blooming Open Source technology make a business/financial shutdown statement. I've been a fan of how much kentonv has hustled, not only in code, but also being a role model about being fearless to get out and post to HN about his technology. Very impressive. I'm in a similar place, and just recently wrote an article on the RethinkDB/Parse shutdowns and spoke on the Changelog podcast about it as well: https://hackernoon.com/the-implications-of-rethinkdb-and-parse-shutdowns-c076460058f7#.rvz4w04lz https://hackernoon.com/the-implications-of-rethinkdb-and-par... . Given what I say there, I actually want to encourage the sandstorm team to not give up yet - they are in the right space. Maybe wait out a year, and then hustle some marketing/bizdev/enterprise/government sales, they are in the right space and have some big opportunity ahead. Sometimes, being too early can bite though, but please please try again - don't give up. As a great example of this, look at Bitcoin. Crypto currencies were all the rage in the 90s and went nowhere. A decade and a half later... the market timing matched up, and it exploded.

kentonv 10y ago
Thanks! And yes, that's basically the plan. :)
bureado 10y ago
I read the article and my key takeaway was that licensing was a significant culprit. But Parse and Sandstorm are different. Do you think there is something systematic to open source or to VC-backed startups or to developer tools or something else?
- marknadal 10y ago
  Great question, if I were to tackle it, I would take it like this: 1. Parse, to non-developers, was a wild success - not a failure. An $85M exit ( https://angel.co/parse https://angel.co/parse ) on a $7M investment, that is a 10X+ return in 3 years. This doesn't seem to be talked about much, especially compared to the darling Firebase. It represents exactly what an affluent ecosystem would want: A business savvy and technically proficient team that can be sold off to the highest bidder that investors vet. However, it is a "shut down" in the eyes of developers because the tool was overlooked. 2. Sandstorm is so advanced that it isn't quite understood yet, partly because nobody has invented the catchy phrase for it (even if they did, the timing is still too early). While most first-world users now have multiple devices, they only use 1 at a time, and they don't see these two problems: (A) They don't know their devices should sync more than what Apple tells them they should (B) They don't know that their devices, which they own physically, should be their private servers for all their services. That is why I think Sandstorm shouldn't give up, because with the addition of 5B+ new people coming online, I don't care how scalable Google/Amazon/Apple/Microsoft are, things are going to be a lot more powerful/reliable/customer-satisfaction if people own and run their own services (fully automated by things like sandstorm). This isn't just a privacy/ownership thing, it is a customer expectation "thing" - using a service is like using a public bathroom, but owning that service is like using your apartment's bathroom. It doesn't matter how gross/nice any 1 experience is, ultimately the consistency of expectation wins out. So yes, there is something systematic to VC-backed startups (like Parse, they're ultimately a hiring/resume gig - or randomly big industry creators, like Dropbox, Uber/Lyft, AirBnB), and there is something systematic to Open Source and developers (we often value different things). Developer Tools aren't particularly unique, other than the fact that they are either industry causing/creating architectures, or unfortunately on the tail end of a dying architecture. They are black and white in their success, high risk, with no middle ground - and since risks often fail, and humans are loss averse, the failures often seem to outweigh or overwhelm the successes. The important thing to remember though is that the winners cause and create prosperity for entirely new industries/sectors, for people and companies around the world, and for generations to come.

simplehuman 10y ago

So the business has failed but the managed hosting is still available? What does that mean? Who keeps it running?

kentonv 10y ago
I do. (With help from some trusted people if I'm unavailable.) Oasis pays for itself and Sandstorm is intentionally designed to be low-maintenance (for the benefit of self-hosters), so keeping it going is actually not very hard. We don't foresee any need to shut down any of Sandstorm's services.
- simplehuman 10y ago
  Thanks for clarifying. So you are going to run Oasis full time all by yourself ? Would be great to put this as part of your post since it's not clear how much one can depend on Oasis.
  - kentonv 10y ago
    I will handle most of it, but there will be fallbacks when I'm not available. FWIW, Oasis takes only a few minutes of work per week to operate...
    - eitland 10y ago
      FWIW, Oasis takes only a few minutes of work per week to operate... Well, today I learned. A bit humbling I guess as someone who typically use more hours to support smaller infrastructure:-]

notheguyouthink 10y ago

How simple is Sandstorm to run? I want to use something like sandstorm, but i want stupidly simple deployments, even if at the cost of features. Eg, my killer "sandstorm" like feature would be a single binary, or perhaps 1 binary per service type, that i run with no auth, not exposed to public, a single backup dir, no config, etc. I want low maintenance from the user side. How much does Sandstorm fit this? Also, as a side note i feel quite sad for Sandstorm. It's a difficult concept to monetize even if for continued development. Ie, even if i can be convinced that this will be "easy enough" to use, i'd be hard pressed to pay for a service.. i want to keep it on my network, that's the point to me. I'd have to donate, i suppose. Which is unfortunate. Perhaps they could offer an encrypted backup solution? Eg, i want to self host, but they could easily store an encrypted and versioned backup of my entire sandstorm db? I'd pay for that! I'm doing that from someone anyway, why not sandstorm.io?

kentonv 10y ago
> How simple is Sandstorm to run? Extremely so. Installation is via an interactive process (no config files) and optionally automatically provisions DNS and TLS certificates for you (if you choose a hostname under sandcats.io). Once installed, Sandstorm auto-updates without any intervention. Apps are installed as easily as installing apps on your phone, and also auto-update. The system is intended to be feasible for non-technical people to manage. I suggest trying it out. :) https://sandstorm.io/install https://sandstorm.io/install
- notheguyouthink 10y ago
  Do you have any plans to monetize users like me? Eg, i want to run it at home behind a firewall. I'd love to purchase something, but not at the cost of privacy/etc. How do i fit in your long term goals?
  - kentonv 10y ago
    Well, we had a product called "Sandstorm for Work" which was self-hosted and which people could pay for, and a lot of people said they'd love to pay for it, but very few people ever did. :/ So now we've removed the paywall and the Sandstorm for Work premium features are available in all self-hosted Sandstorm servers for free. If you'd like to help the project monetarily, you can sign up for an Oasis account, even if you intend to primarily use Sandstorm self-hosted. That said, at present, we've stopped worrying about monetization and are only worried about making the platform better and getting more users. Simply installing a server and using it helps us! The more users we have, the more interest there will be from developers, and vice-versa.

ar-jan 10y ago

Sorry to hear this! :( I use a self-hosted Sandstorm instance almost daily, and I'm very happy with it. I don't really agree with some of the critiques posted here regarding the UI and UX. Sure, it could have used further improvements, but I feel it's simple, functional, and intuitive enough. Not at all a critical shortcoming imo (well, perhaps for use cases where mobile support is essential). For me a limiting factor is that some of the apps do not have feature-parity with their regular version. In particular, plugin support, which is very important for example for WordPress, ShareLaTeX, and IPython. Another thing is the pace in which new apps are packaged for Sandstorm, and the trust that there will be regular and timely updates. Of course this also depends very much on the community, and the ease with which things can be packaged, but it felt like app porting lost a bit of momentum. Regarding the future of the project, are there any other potential avenues for financing further development, other than buying Oasis hosting? I very much want to see this project continued!

kentonv 10y ago
I'd love to see the community using Bounty Source or the like to finance projects, e.g. packaging particular apps. For my part, I don't need any financial incentives -- I'll keep coding regardless.

ben_says 10y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HQaBWziYvY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HQaBWziYvY I can't help it...

shezi 10y ago

Just this week, I was on the fence about whether I should get a hosted environment of Sandstorm on the Basic level. Your sad tale of failing as a business gave me the push I needed and I just subscribed. Sorry to see it go this way, and sorry I couldn't help sooner.

kentonv 10y ago
Thank you!

azirbel 10y ago

Sad to hear this news, but also excited to hear that Sandstorm is continuing as an open source project. I'm mainly excited because Sandstorm makes indie web apps viable. I've been amazed to see how quickly members of the Sandstorm community can spin up sophisticated apps like collaborative editing or file sharing. If you have a framework like Meteor to handle sync, and Sandstorm handles authentication and sharing, then you can make a serious multi-user app in a weekend. Even better, once you've made your app, you don't have to worry about security or scaling. So a junior developer could make an app which stores my sensitive financial information, and I'd still try it because I trust Sandstorm to keep my data safe even if the app is poorly written. Sandstorm's foundation is solid, and I think a few UI and developer-happiness improvements will make this a reality. Wishing the team all the best!

mempko 10y ago

If only sandstorm sold a box with it pre-installed. Kind if like a Pogo plug.

skinnymuch 10y ago
Pogoplug did stop selling their hardware years ago. So it probably wasn't working out either :/

xg15 10y ago

This is avery sad thing to hear and one can only wish the best of luck to the open source project. I think especially in current times, user-friendly alternatives to the cloud are badly needed. By the way, I really appreciate the honest style of the message. Sentences like Unfortunately, Sandstorm the business has now run out of money, and we have been unable to raise more. are refreshing in contrast to the usual "the next chapter of our journey" speeches.

TeMPOraL 10y ago

Sorry to see the business fail. I was recommending people to check out the project since the day I learned about it here. I hope the development will continue without problems though :). A quick question, if I may: say I want to test Sandstorm, first on Oasis, but then I want to migrate to self-hosting. Is there a way to move all the data I stored on my Oasis instance to the self-hosted one?

kentonv 10y ago
Yes. You can click the "download backup" button in the top bar when you have a grain open to download a zip file of all its contents. You can then upload that to any other server to restore the grain there. Currently there is not a mass-download or mass-transfer feature; you have to do each grain one at a time. But you probably won't generate that many grains if you're just testing it out, so it ought to be OK. We plan to add mass-transfer in the future. See also: https://github.com/sandstorm-io/sandstorm/tree/master/roadmap/platform/grains#backup https://github.com/sandstorm-io/sandstorm/tree/master/roadma...
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  Thanks!

api 10y ago

I'd love to see a meta-analysis of OSS-oriented companies that have succeeded vs. those that have failed and what they did.

ocdtrekkie 10y ago
The best thing, IMHO, is that pretty much every OSS-oriented company that has "failed" has left behind valuable work for the community. And non-OSS-oriented companies that failed largely have not.

dyu- 10y ago

Saw this coming :-/ I anticipated this one after app.net shut down. Next one up, cozy.io?

caretStick 10y ago

Wow, I've been a big fan of Darude even while hoping they were more prolific. Whoever those agents were keeping them on the run, we lost a lot of art thanks to you.

losvedir 10y ago

Oh no! I really believe sandstorm (or something like it) is what we need the future to be. Rather than having everything get sucked up into Google, Facebook, Apple, or these other few centralized services, imagine where everyone has a personal (or family, or church group or whatever) server, and they can one-click install their email apps, their document apps, etc. The basic issue is that everyone wants "cloud" apps, so that their emails and chats appear on their phones and their tablets or home computers. But unfortunately it seems we leapt straight from the PC paradigm where your email is stored on your computer straight to the "centralized, 3rd party cloud" paradigm, where Google owns all your stuff. But with a "cloud" that you still control, tough problems like end-to-end encryption fall away, since it only needs to be encrypted from one person's cloud to another, while the messages themselves could be synced between all the user's connected devices. Linux was a beautiful, world changing thing. If we could establish an open-source platform seeking to replicate a lot of things Google and Facebook do now, but without the privacy implications, that could be equally world changing. Sandstorm, at least as far as I understand it, definitely has the vision right, so I'm hoping despite Sandstorm for Work not panning out, the technology will continue to grow.

Nadya 10y ago

I'm glad to hear the plan is to continue the dream. When I first heard about Sandstorm I thought it was a fantastic concept. Unfortunately it wasn't user-friendly enough and I walked away. I'd always peak at updates whenever the name popped up but I was waiting for it to be more user-friendly. Outside of what sounds to be a lack of a sales/marketing team - the UX/UI is what prevented me from forking over cash. I hope it works well enough to try and bounce back for a round 2. Best of luck.

notheguyouthink 10y ago

As an aside, how easy is it to create your own apps for Sandstorm? edit: Found this, https://docs.sandstorm.io/en/latest/vagrant-spk/packaging-tutorial/ https://docs.sandstorm.io/en/latest/vagrant-spk/packaging-tu...