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Sounds like a similar idea as the (failed) sandstorm.io.

by bla3 7y ago

lostmsu 7y ago
I'd argue they did not exactly fail as much as ClouFlare(?) decided not to develop it further. They did acquire it, so it probably was a good exit for the original devs. And to become ready for public consumption some investment in UX was clearly needed, including a better store and some basic apps.
- kentonv 7y ago
  No, that's not correct. Sandstorm the company most definitely failed -- we ran out of money, couldn't raise more, and had negligible revenue, hence could no longer pay employees. We looked for an acquisition, but while we received multiple offers to hire the people, we received no offers to acquire the company along with them. (Well, some companies offered to buy Sandstorm for $0 and wind it down for us.) Most of the team ended up taking offers from Cloudflare, but Cloudflare did not acquire Sandstorm. Sandstorm technically still exists as a company, but with no paid employees -- it's basically just me keeping things operating in my spare time. But the vast majority of my coding energy has gone into Cloudflare Workers. OTOH in the last couple months a bunch of people in the community have started more actively contributing to Sandstorm as an open source project. So that's cool!
  - lostmsu 7y ago
    Thanks for that story, it was like reading "2 years as solo developer" in a minute. Especially curious, as making something along the lines of sandstorm would actually be what I'd be doing, if it was not for chasing the AI hype. Though I thought of it more as something, that you could "install" into your free tier cloud account with typical mobile apps (like Calendar, Contacts, Mail, Music and Drive) coming by default. Also, Cap’n Proto is just marvelous!
OJFord 7y ago
Failed? Website looks open for business, and latest commit 6d ago: https://github.com/sandstorm-io/sandstorm https://github.com/sandstorm-io/sandstorm Agree that it sounds exactly like what OP is imagining, website even has the copy 'installing apps is as easy as on your phone'. I also think Urbit is similar, but frankly I've always been too confused by the space analogies that project uses to be sure.
- anderspitman 7y ago
  Probably referring to the hosted service shutting down: https://sandstorm.io/news/2019-09-15-shutting-down-oasis https://sandstorm.io/news/2019-09-15-shutting-down-oasis
- kentonv 7y ago
  The website is a bit misleading since I haven't had the energy to really revamp it to reflect the current state of the project. A lot of the marketing material is still accurate in the details (e.g. features), but the overall presentation makes it look like a product for sale rather than an open source community... The current state is that it's "just" an open source project, not a business. There are a few people working on it in our spare time. The paid hosting service has shut down.
  - OJFord 7y ago
    Oh I see, thanks. I had heard of it before but wasn't familiar enough to know it had previously been paid-for/hosted option. I actually thought my 'open for business' turn of phrase was going to draw comments like 'its open source what are you talking about', when I only meant that it existed. --- That's a shame it didn't work out, but I think for now the vast majority of people that want 'personal clouds' are so technically minded that they will favour at least running it themselves, if not ensuring that everything is OSS. Perhaps a critical point can be surpassed after which privacy but not technically minded folks are interested in the by then popular concept, and will pay for the cloud device and then further for apps on its store app. I think it's a solid idea, but that the money at the moment is in commodity infrastructure or hardware that happens to be used for it, and to a lesser extent software licences . Did you consider selling Sandstorm licences, as a sort of iOS for a BYO phone, in the analogy?

Sounds like a similar idea as the (failed) sandstorm.io.

by bla3 7y ago

Sounds like a similar idea as the (failed) sandstorm.io.

I'd argue they did not exactly fail as much as ClouFlare(?) decided not to develop it further. They did acquire it, so it probably was a good exit for the original devs. And to become ready for public consumption some investment in UX was clearly needed, including a better store and some basic apps.

kentonv 7y ago
No, that's not correct. Sandstorm the company most definitely failed -- we ran out of money, couldn't raise more, and had negligible revenue, hence could no longer pay employees. We looked for an acquisition, but while we received multiple offers to hire the people, we received no offers to acquire the company along with them. (Well, some companies offered to buy Sandstorm for $0 and wind it down for us.) Most of the team ended up taking offers from Cloudflare, but Cloudflare did not acquire Sandstorm. Sandstorm technically still exists as a company, but with no paid employees -- it's basically just me keeping things operating in my spare time. But the vast majority of my coding energy has gone into Cloudflare Workers. OTOH in the last couple months a bunch of people in the community have started more actively contributing to Sandstorm as an open source project. So that's cool!
- lostmsu 7y ago
  Thanks for that story, it was like reading "2 years as solo developer" in a minute. Especially curious, as making something along the lines of sandstorm would actually be what I'd be doing, if it was not for chasing the AI hype. Though I thought of it more as something, that you could "install" into your free tier cloud account with typical mobile apps (like Calendar, Contacts, Mail, Music and Drive) coming by default. Also, Cap’n Proto is just marvelous!

OJFord 7y ago

Failed? Website looks open for business, and latest commit 6d ago: https://github.com/sandstorm-io/sandstorm https://github.com/sandstorm-io/sandstorm Agree that it sounds exactly like what OP is imagining, website even has the copy 'installing apps is as easy as on your phone'. I also think Urbit is similar, but frankly I've always been too confused by the space analogies that project uses to be sure.

anderspitman 7y ago
Probably referring to the hosted service shutting down: https://sandstorm.io/news/2019-09-15-shutting-down-oasis https://sandstorm.io/news/2019-09-15-shutting-down-oasis
kentonv 7y ago
The website is a bit misleading since I haven't had the energy to really revamp it to reflect the current state of the project. A lot of the marketing material is still accurate in the details (e.g. features), but the overall presentation makes it look like a product for sale rather than an open source community... The current state is that it's "just" an open source project, not a business. There are a few people working on it in our spare time. The paid hosting service has shut down.
- OJFord 7y ago
  Oh I see, thanks. I had heard of it before but wasn't familiar enough to know it had previously been paid-for/hosted option. I actually thought my 'open for business' turn of phrase was going to draw comments like 'its open source what are you talking about', when I only meant that it existed. --- That's a shame it didn't work out, but I think for now the vast majority of people that want 'personal clouds' are so technically minded that they will favour at least running it themselves, if not ensuring that everything is OSS. Perhaps a critical point can be surpassed after which privacy but not technically minded folks are interested in the by then popular concept, and will pay for the cloud device and then further for apps on its store app. I think it's a solid idea, but that the money at the moment is in commodity infrastructure or hardware that happens to be used for it, and to a lesser extent software licences . Did you consider selling Sandstorm licences, as a sort of iOS for a BYO phone, in the analogy?