4 ms·

I know this isn't quite on topic, but this is not the web I want. I want open services to compete with the entrenched players of free-as-a-service, and I want m

by katet 7y ago

I know this isn't quite on topic, but this is not the web I want. I want open services to compete with the entrenched players of free-as-a-service, and I want more interop between these open services. I'm sure HN already gets the gist. I run as de-Googlified a stack as I can: Nextcloud, DAVdroid, LineageOS, exclusively Linux, a private cloud server, etc. This is for my personal usage - at work, we run the whole Google/Atlassian suite, and I'm (mostly) fine with that separation. But I positively pine for the ease of use and general UX of the closed services when I go back to my private, open-source stack. A quick case in point: the Conversations Android XMPP client I'm a Librem 5 backer, and I'm looking forward to the challenge of using it as a daily driver. So I'm looking to wean myself off WhatsApp in favour of something open. But Conversations isn't it. It's a great XMPP client, but it's not something I will ever convince the majority of my friends and family to use. It's couched in technical know-how, and while it's a great app for an open source project, it still manages to feel subpar to the closed-source, back-doorable, privacy-draining consumer offerings. Signal seems the closest so far. (I should add here that I am trying to do something about this: I contribute haphazardly to OSS I use and I evangelize it in my social circle, but it feels like an uphill battle) More anecdata: I run self-hosted GitLab, Nextcloud, and Wallabag. Hopefully Mastadon and Pixelfed soon. There is no freaking way to do SSO between all of these. Despite OAuth+OpenID being older than some of that software. Don't get me started on the fact that the quickest way to get a file from phone <-> PC is to Slack it to myself from my work account. The web I want will compete with closed-source ecosystems, instead of being a disparate collection of DIY server software that doesn't talk to each other in the slightest.

yorwba 7y ago
> the quickest way to get a file from phone <-> PC is to Slack it to myself from my work account. Assuming that phone and PC are on the same network, KDE Connect solves that scenario. You pair the devices once and afterwards you can not also share files, but also have access to a host of other features. The one I use most is clipboard synchronization.
- gregknicholson 7y ago
  I use Syncthing for this. I have a computer that I use to play podcasts, and the subscription list (a file) is synced to my main computer, so I can edit it from there. Syncthing is also on my Lineage OS phone (until my Librem 5 arrives) so I can have a shared Downloads folder. In the past, I used it to sync a subset of my music collection to my work computer. It's reasonably usable for a geek.
AlchemistCamp 7y ago
I'm personally a fan of Sandstorm.io and hope it can continue growing and offering an alternative much more aligned with individual's interests than what the largest few software companies in the world are creating.
- robot 7y ago
  Wow this really looks awesome! It requires polish as most oss but this idea of an open web app store / cloud that is not tied to a vendor is amazing.
- ScottFree 7y ago
  > hope it can continue growing :/ > https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20312789 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20312789 "Unfortunately Sandstorm is basically dead at this point. I kept actively working on it for a while in my spare time after the company failed in early 2017, but I haven't found any time to do serious work on it in probably a year now. I do push monthly updates to keep dependencies fresh but that's about it. Oasis takes in about $1800 per month, which is just about enough to cover serving costs and business expenses (e.g. annual tax preparation). For a while it was making only $800, with me making up the difference out-of-pocket. Then, last October I stopped offering a free plan. Remarkably, revenue more than doubled and has even gradually continued to increase over time -- I had expected a smaller spike followed by a drop-off. But now it's getting to the point where it feeling really awkward to let people pay for a service that hosts a library of apps that mostly hasn't been updated in 2.5 years or more. In theory developers could still be updating their apps and submitting new ones, but basically the only app actually getting updates is Wekan. So, not sure how long long this can really continue... :("
  - AlchemistCamp 7y ago
    Ouch. I hope that $1800 grows to enough to be sustainable for Kenton to invest some time or hire someone's time to grow the product, even if slowly.
- katet 7y ago
  I don't want to dismiss what sandstorm is doing. They've been around for a while and they've shown some incredible persistence in pursuit of their vision. I'm also a little out of date since I last checked up on it. IIRC, one example of the SSO thing I mentioned is exemplified in sandstorm. They either (I can't recall specifics) wrap or fork the relevant projects to make them "fit" within the sandstorm ecosystem. SSO, ACL, and overall storage / permissions are handled by sandstorm, which is why there's a list of supported apps - other apps that haven't been "wrapped" don't integrate with sandstorm APIs so they can't be used directly (I may be wrong now its 2019) That's...kinda my point. There's OIDC, OAuth, Unhosted, IndieWeb, microformats (repeat ad nauseum) and yet there's still somehow a need to create the XKCD #927 situation (yet another standard). There's already schema.org (OK, Google influence :shrug:), the ActivityPub vocab (still new-ish), RDF / Linked Data etc. It's not a slight against any of these projects, particularly sandstorm. IMHO the effort and onus should be placed on the component projects to play well with others. GitLab and Nextcloud deserve shout outs for exploring or working on federation strategies that should remove the need for things like sandstorm, but we should keep fighting for and implementing similar things for other projects. (This discussion is now convincing me to open a second pull request to Wallabag implementing OIDC login)
auslander 7y ago
> I want open services to compete with the entrenched players Are you ready to roll out free email, maps, photos storage on a massive scale? Cannot beat free, as they say.
- katet 7y ago
  Just to derail the conversation further, I've had a thought for that too - one I'm working up the courage to build myself :D I'm going to presume a few things to keep this short: free and advertising-supported, donation-based, and paid for. I'm focussed on the third option. Ever notice how many new (typically closed) services are "just the price of a cup of coffee a month"? What happens when I want 20 of these "coffee-priced" services? That's more than I personally spend on actual, gourmet coffee a month (of which I buy copious amounts). I think there's a decent gap for services that cost $/€/£1/month. The volume of subscriptions at that price point might break even with the profitability of higher subscriptions with a lower volume. It might not of course - but I'm tempted to try it. Mail for $1 a month. Not remotely profitable, but with elastic compute and high volume of customers...maybe. With a self hosted option to boot, to lure in the early adopters and convert them when they want to offload the hassle of running the service... I don't intend to compete with free, but I definitely think there's room for innovation here. I have a day job, but I'd drop that in a second if there was an opportunity to manage a multi-tenant cloud of Nextcloud instances for customers that a) doesn't cost more than DigitalOcean, and b) had other software bundled at the same price point, e.g. Collabora Online, LDAP auth, Mattermost, Mediawiki, etc. etc. All for $5 instead of $5 x n services.... :shrug: maybe I'm too much of an idealist ;)
  - Felz 7y ago
    From working on Purelymail (which does offer mail for ~$1 a month), I would say that it's feasible to run such a service and be profitable, but that the $5/month services have a lot more leeway in marketing, hires, opportunity for huge profits, etc.
Legogris 7y ago
I am in a pretty similar position to you. Have you taken a look at Keybase as an alternative for IM and replacement of Slack-for-sharing-with-yourself? Advantages over Signal: * Doesn't rely on phone number for auth or id * No limit on devices * Great CLI experience * Smooth to share files and messages in groups * Encryption closer to widely used protocols Downsides: * Server-side closed source (but hey, that goes for pretty much any IM alternative you hope to use outside of close circles today unfortunately) * US-based company * Can't think of much else UI/UX still has some way to go before being on par with e.g. WhatsApp or Telegram, but they've been constantly improving a lot recently so I think they might get there soon.
- katet 7y ago
  Wow, again, last time I looked at keybase I just remember it being identity verification. Glad to see they're expanding on that. I am - unfortunately - picky :D as you mention, they haven't released their server code and don't seem particularly interested in doing so (which is their full right). Good thread for that here: https://github.com/keybase/client/issues/6374 https://github.com/keybase/client/issues/6374 I get that some people aren't too fussed if the cryptography is done right, and you could reverse engineer the protocol and interop a la Amazon S3, but...yeah. Just not me I guess. I'm new to the limitations you mentioned (# of devices, phone no. Auth, etc.). I'll need to take a good look before I jump ship. But first thought is I think I'll take those downsides as part of the current status quo of messaging apps for a fully open platform I can support and possibly get my parents to use without too much trouble (yep, my principles have priorities, lower ones get sacrificed when absolutely necessary ;)) (I lied about the phone sharing bit a little - Nextcloud sync is really good somehow, I just wish there was something like AirDrop for everyone else)
  - Legogris 7y ago
    Yeah, I totally get you. Basically on Signal, you have the same issue as on WhatsApp; phone number required, unique per account, you can ever only have one device at a time (desktop apps are not first-grade clients but sync to phone), and all the privacy and other security issues that come with that... I managed to get a lot of my non-geek friends over to Signal, but if things don't change I think I will switch preference to Keybase soon in lack of better alternatives. It's unfortunate that there's no great implementation of federated IM today. XMPP is a mess and Matrix has a long way to go when it comes to that part, but from what I can tell they have a good vision and might just be able to pull it off so I am keeping a close eye on it. Then we have Secure ScuttleButt, which I find very interesting and would love to see mature.

by katet 7y ago

yorwba 7y ago

> the quickest way to get a file from phone <-> PC is to Slack it to myself from my work account. Assuming that phone and PC are on the same network, KDE Connect solves that scenario. You pair the devices once and afterwards you can not also share files, but also have access to a host of other features. The one I use most is clipboard synchronization.

gregknicholson 7y ago
I use Syncthing for this. I have a computer that I use to play podcasts, and the subscription list (a file) is synced to my main computer, so I can edit it from there. Syncthing is also on my Lineage OS phone (until my Librem 5 arrives) so I can have a shared Downloads folder. In the past, I used it to sync a subset of my music collection to my work computer. It's reasonably usable for a geek.

AlchemistCamp 7y ago

I'm personally a fan of Sandstorm.io and hope it can continue growing and offering an alternative much more aligned with individual's interests than what the largest few software companies in the world are creating.

robot 7y ago
Wow this really looks awesome! It requires polish as most oss but this idea of an open web app store / cloud that is not tied to a vendor is amazing.
ScottFree 7y ago
> hope it can continue growing :/ > https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20312789 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20312789 "Unfortunately Sandstorm is basically dead at this point. I kept actively working on it for a while in my spare time after the company failed in early 2017, but I haven't found any time to do serious work on it in probably a year now. I do push monthly updates to keep dependencies fresh but that's about it. Oasis takes in about $1800 per month, which is just about enough to cover serving costs and business expenses (e.g. annual tax preparation). For a while it was making only $800, with me making up the difference out-of-pocket. Then, last October I stopped offering a free plan. Remarkably, revenue more than doubled and has even gradually continued to increase over time -- I had expected a smaller spike followed by a drop-off. But now it's getting to the point where it feeling really awkward to let people pay for a service that hosts a library of apps that mostly hasn't been updated in 2.5 years or more. In theory developers could still be updating their apps and submitting new ones, but basically the only app actually getting updates is Wekan. So, not sure how long long this can really continue... :("
- AlchemistCamp 7y ago
  Ouch. I hope that $1800 grows to enough to be sustainable for Kenton to invest some time or hire someone's time to grow the product, even if slowly.
katet 7y ago
I don't want to dismiss what sandstorm is doing. They've been around for a while and they've shown some incredible persistence in pursuit of their vision. I'm also a little out of date since I last checked up on it. IIRC, one example of the SSO thing I mentioned is exemplified in sandstorm. They either (I can't recall specifics) wrap or fork the relevant projects to make them "fit" within the sandstorm ecosystem. SSO, ACL, and overall storage / permissions are handled by sandstorm, which is why there's a list of supported apps - other apps that haven't been "wrapped" don't integrate with sandstorm APIs so they can't be used directly (I may be wrong now its 2019) That's...kinda my point. There's OIDC, OAuth, Unhosted, IndieWeb, microformats (repeat ad nauseum) and yet there's still somehow a need to create the XKCD #927 situation (yet another standard). There's already schema.org (OK, Google influence :shrug:), the ActivityPub vocab (still new-ish), RDF / Linked Data etc. It's not a slight against any of these projects, particularly sandstorm. IMHO the effort and onus should be placed on the component projects to play well with others. GitLab and Nextcloud deserve shout outs for exploring or working on federation strategies that should remove the need for things like sandstorm, but we should keep fighting for and implementing similar things for other projects. (This discussion is now convincing me to open a second pull request to Wallabag implementing OIDC login)

auslander 7y ago

> I want open services to compete with the entrenched players Are you ready to roll out free email, maps, photos storage on a massive scale? Cannot beat free, as they say.

katet 7y ago
Just to derail the conversation further, I've had a thought for that too - one I'm working up the courage to build myself :D I'm going to presume a few things to keep this short: free and advertising-supported, donation-based, and paid for. I'm focussed on the third option. Ever notice how many new (typically closed) services are "just the price of a cup of coffee a month"? What happens when I want 20 of these "coffee-priced" services? That's more than I personally spend on actual, gourmet coffee a month (of which I buy copious amounts). I think there's a decent gap for services that cost $/€/£1/month. The volume of subscriptions at that price point might break even with the profitability of higher subscriptions with a lower volume. It might not of course - but I'm tempted to try it. Mail for $1 a month. Not remotely profitable, but with elastic compute and high volume of customers...maybe. With a self hosted option to boot, to lure in the early adopters and convert them when they want to offload the hassle of running the service... I don't intend to compete with free, but I definitely think there's room for innovation here. I have a day job, but I'd drop that in a second if there was an opportunity to manage a multi-tenant cloud of Nextcloud instances for customers that a) doesn't cost more than DigitalOcean, and b) had other software bundled at the same price point, e.g. Collabora Online, LDAP auth, Mattermost, Mediawiki, etc. etc. All for $5 instead of $5 x n services.... :shrug: maybe I'm too much of an idealist ;)
- Felz 7y ago
  From working on Purelymail (which does offer mail for ~$1 a month), I would say that it's feasible to run such a service and be profitable, but that the $5/month services have a lot more leeway in marketing, hires, opportunity for huge profits, etc.

Legogris 7y ago

I am in a pretty similar position to you. Have you taken a look at Keybase as an alternative for IM and replacement of Slack-for-sharing-with-yourself? Advantages over Signal: * Doesn't rely on phone number for auth or id * No limit on devices * Great CLI experience * Smooth to share files and messages in groups * Encryption closer to widely used protocols Downsides: * Server-side closed source (but hey, that goes for pretty much any IM alternative you hope to use outside of close circles today unfortunately) * US-based company * Can't think of much else UI/UX still has some way to go before being on par with e.g. WhatsApp or Telegram, but they've been constantly improving a lot recently so I think they might get there soon.

katet 7y ago
Wow, again, last time I looked at keybase I just remember it being identity verification. Glad to see they're expanding on that. I am - unfortunately - picky :D as you mention, they haven't released their server code and don't seem particularly interested in doing so (which is their full right). Good thread for that here: https://github.com/keybase/client/issues/6374 https://github.com/keybase/client/issues/6374 I get that some people aren't too fussed if the cryptography is done right, and you could reverse engineer the protocol and interop a la Amazon S3, but...yeah. Just not me I guess. I'm new to the limitations you mentioned (# of devices, phone no. Auth, etc.). I'll need to take a good look before I jump ship. But first thought is I think I'll take those downsides as part of the current status quo of messaging apps for a fully open platform I can support and possibly get my parents to use without too much trouble (yep, my principles have priorities, lower ones get sacrificed when absolutely necessary ;)) (I lied about the phone sharing bit a little - Nextcloud sync is really good somehow, I just wish there was something like AirDrop for everyone else)
- Legogris 7y ago
  Yeah, I totally get you. Basically on Signal, you have the same issue as on WhatsApp; phone number required, unique per account, you can ever only have one device at a time (desktop apps are not first-grade clients but sync to phone), and all the privacy and other security issues that come with that... I managed to get a lot of my non-geek friends over to Signal, but if things don't change I think I will switch preference to Keybase soon in lack of better alternatives. It's unfortunate that there's no great implementation of federated IM today. XMPP is a mess and Matrix has a long way to go when it comes to that part, but from what I can tell they have a good vision and might just be able to pull it off so I am keeping a close eye on it. Then we have Secure ScuttleButt, which I find very interesting and would love to see mature.