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Sandstorm.io tries to make collaborative web apps work easily with sharing for non-technical users, though we haven't solved getting people a server easily, or

Sandstorm.io tries to make collaborative web apps work easily with sharing for non-technical users, though we haven't solved getting people a server easily, or more crucially, convincing people to buy a server to do things they can do for free with ads. Unfortunately, the problem is companies powered by ad revenue have a lot more money to throw at usability than FOSS folks do.

Gigachad 4y ago
All of these apps and products I mentioned do not have ads, they are paid for directly. Users/businesses do want to pay for software, but when they do pay, they want it to just work seamlessly. No one wants to set up and maintain a server.
- ocdtrekkie 4y ago
  I mean, ultimately the answer there is... pay someone to run your open source server for you. But since the OSI hates SSPL and the like, the actual open source developers are disadvantaged in running such a service compared to someone who just downloads it and hosts it. A huge issue is that the gatekeepers of "open source" don't believe making it financially viable is something they need to address. So it's gonna end up being the best we can do in our spare time for the love of progress.
cxr 4y ago
> we haven't solved getting people a server easily It doesn't help that Sandstorm focuses on apps that are architected with a devops-heavy mindset. Many apps don't really need anything more complicated than PUT and DELETE (no POST special handling required), esp. since they're already doing so much on the client, anyway. This really calls for an auth-protected document store more than it does what Sandstorm tries to provide; the difficulties of "getting people a server" probably starts with assuming/insisting that that's what you need to do in the first place. Those kinds of architectures are only necessary when you really do need some way to offload computation to a remote, high-availability machine, but things like online image and document editors aren't that. (Even then, what you really want for that is some sort of mobile code architecture that lets you squirt lightweight payloads at some sort of fleet of faceless workers, preferably in the same/similar form to the kind of code that you write for doing useful work on the client...)
- ocdtrekkie 4y ago
  I really don't agree. I think loading a bunch of client-side crud from a random web server and storing it in opaque browser buckets is super untrustworthy. I think to some degree modern web app development has gone off the rails a bit.
  - cxr 4y ago
    Why are you moving the goalposts (ignoring the premise)? Sandstorm apps (like e.g. Etherpad, advertised right on the front page) aren't already doing lots of client-side work (locally), like I originally said?

Gigachad 4y ago

All of these apps and products I mentioned do not have ads, they are paid for directly. Users/businesses do want to pay for software, but when they do pay, they want it to just work seamlessly. No one wants to set up and maintain a server.

ocdtrekkie 4y ago
I mean, ultimately the answer there is... pay someone to run your open source server for you. But since the OSI hates SSPL and the like, the actual open source developers are disadvantaged in running such a service compared to someone who just downloads it and hosts it. A huge issue is that the gatekeepers of "open source" don't believe making it financially viable is something they need to address. So it's gonna end up being the best we can do in our spare time for the love of progress.

cxr 4y ago

> we haven't solved getting people a server easily It doesn't help that Sandstorm focuses on apps that are architected with a devops-heavy mindset. Many apps don't really need anything more complicated than PUT and DELETE (no POST special handling required), esp. since they're already doing so much on the client, anyway. This really calls for an auth-protected document store more than it does what Sandstorm tries to provide; the difficulties of "getting people a server" probably starts with assuming/insisting that that's what you need to do in the first place. Those kinds of architectures are only necessary when you really do need some way to offload computation to a remote, high-availability machine, but things like online image and document editors aren't that. (Even then, what you really want for that is some sort of mobile code architecture that lets you squirt lightweight payloads at some sort of fleet of faceless workers, preferably in the same/similar form to the kind of code that you write for doing useful work on the client...)

ocdtrekkie 4y ago
I really don't agree. I think loading a bunch of client-side crud from a random web server and storing it in opaque browser buckets is super untrustworthy. I think to some degree modern web app development has gone off the rails a bit.
- cxr 4y ago
  Why are you moving the goalposts (ignoring the premise)? Sandstorm apps (like e.g. Etherpad, advertised right on the front page) aren't already doing lots of client-side work (locally), like I originally said?