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Sandstorm lives on. :) s/grains/durable-objects/ etc but hey, it's still all here. Would love to get a blog post or talk on the journey if you are lurking ken

by jpgvm 5y ago

Sandstorm lives on. :) s/grains/durable-objects/ etc but hey, it's still all here. Would love to get a blog post or talk on the journey if you are lurking kenton.

ryukafalz 5y ago
Yeah, though durable objects are a great idea I do wish they weren't proprietary. I hope they get enough traction to spur the development of a self-hostable FOSS competitor though. (Ideally one that's interoperable with it!)
- judge2020 5y ago
  If it helps, the concept is super-simple and reimplementing such a service won't be hard if anyone tries to make it interoperable with Workers. Miniflare (a dev environment for Workers) implements it in just over 200 loc[0], with the only backend beint Workers KV for data storage (<500 loc if you count that). 0: https://github.com/cloudflare/miniflare/blob/master/src/modules/do.ts https://github.com/cloudflare/miniflare/blob/master/src/modu...
nextaccountic 5y ago
But, does Cloudflare gives back control to the user? (like Sandstorm does) I think the spiritual successor of Sandstorm is Tim Berners-Lee's Solid https://solidproject.org/ https://solidproject.org/ that was recently cited in this thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28903601 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28903601 But, while Sandstorm is all about compartmentalizing access to data in a single server, having the document (grain) as its unit, Solid does this with multiple servers (called pods)
- jpgvm 5y ago
  Fair. Sandstorms technical ideas are well represented in Cloudflares product lineup now but not yet it's philosophy. Maybe some of that will change some day. I wasn't aware of Solid, going to check it out!
- kentonv 5y ago
  Solid is a very different approach from Sandstorm. I wouldn't call it a successor. Sandstorm gives the user control over both data and compute -- users install apps on their personal server, like installing apps on their phone. Solid focuses on data, specifying standardized storage interfaces and formats, but still expects compute will take place on machines controlled by the developer. I think Solid's approach is unrealistic. Developers want to choose their storage formats and technologies. Even developers that fully support users controlling their data are not going to want to bind their hands to standardized formats that don't support the unique features that the developer wants to implement, or standardized database interfaces that don't meet the app's specific usage model. Also, no developer wants to have to access data across the internet from potentially-unreliable servers on the other side of the world. So I think realistically the code and data have to stay together; the developer has to be able to specify both the code and the data format.
  - ryukafalz 5y ago
    Not only that, Solid goes all-in on ACLs vs. Sandstorm's capability model. It adds a lot of unnecessary complexity.
tiagod 5y ago
Sandstorm's founders Jade Wang and Kenton Varda work at Cloudflare
kentonv 5y ago
https://twitter.com/KentonVarda/status/1443242614329946118 https://twitter.com/KentonVarda/status/1443242614329946118 :)
- jpgvm 5y ago
  Self-hosted worker and object nodes? Fine grained placement policies? Now we are talking. :D

by jpgvm 5y ago

Sandstorm lives on. :) s/grains/durable-objects/ etc but hey, it's still all here. Would love to get a blog post or talk on the journey if you are lurking kenton.

ryukafalz 5y ago

Yeah, though durable objects are a great idea I do wish they weren't proprietary. I hope they get enough traction to spur the development of a self-hostable FOSS competitor though. (Ideally one that's interoperable with it!)

judge2020 5y ago
If it helps, the concept is super-simple and reimplementing such a service won't be hard if anyone tries to make it interoperable with Workers. Miniflare (a dev environment for Workers) implements it in just over 200 loc[0], with the only backend beint Workers KV for data storage (<500 loc if you count that). 0: https://github.com/cloudflare/miniflare/blob/master/src/modules/do.ts https://github.com/cloudflare/miniflare/blob/master/src/modu...

nextaccountic 5y ago

But, does Cloudflare gives back control to the user? (like Sandstorm does) I think the spiritual successor of Sandstorm is Tim Berners-Lee's Solid https://solidproject.org/ https://solidproject.org/ that was recently cited in this thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28903601 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28903601 But, while Sandstorm is all about compartmentalizing access to data in a single server, having the document (grain) as its unit, Solid does this with multiple servers (called pods)

jpgvm 5y ago
Fair. Sandstorms technical ideas are well represented in Cloudflares product lineup now but not yet it's philosophy. Maybe some of that will change some day. I wasn't aware of Solid, going to check it out!
kentonv 5y ago
Solid is a very different approach from Sandstorm. I wouldn't call it a successor. Sandstorm gives the user control over both data and compute -- users install apps on their personal server, like installing apps on their phone. Solid focuses on data, specifying standardized storage interfaces and formats, but still expects compute will take place on machines controlled by the developer. I think Solid's approach is unrealistic. Developers want to choose their storage formats and technologies. Even developers that fully support users controlling their data are not going to want to bind their hands to standardized formats that don't support the unique features that the developer wants to implement, or standardized database interfaces that don't meet the app's specific usage model. Also, no developer wants to have to access data across the internet from potentially-unreliable servers on the other side of the world. So I think realistically the code and data have to stay together; the developer has to be able to specify both the code and the data format.
- ryukafalz 5y ago
  Not only that, Solid goes all-in on ACLs vs. Sandstorm's capability model. It adds a lot of unnecessary complexity.

tiagod 5y ago

Sandstorm's founders Jade Wang and Kenton Varda work at Cloudflare

kentonv 5y ago

https://twitter.com/KentonVarda/status/1443242614329946118 https://twitter.com/KentonVarda/status/1443242614329946118 :)

jpgvm 5y ago
Self-hosted worker and object nodes? Fine grained placement policies? Now we are talking. :D