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From their homepage, "this is the only way to make Open Source web apps viable." What does viable mean in this context? Why is this service different from hos

by jonahx 12y ago

From their homepage, "this is the only way to make Open Source web apps viable." What does viable mean in this context? Why is this service different from hosting on heroku or my own free Amazon instance? Is it just convenience or is there something more?

ocdtrekkie 12y ago
Recommendation: Try the demo, it'll take you less than ten seconds. Also, they have a whole blog on that subject: https://blog.sandstorm.io/news/2014-07-21-open-source-web-apps-require-federated-hosting.html https://blog.sandstorm.io/news/2014-07-21-open-source-web-ap...
kentonv 12y ago
Basically, heroku or random IaaS providers require some level of technical expertise and time commitment to run. That drastically limits who will use them, leading proprietary SaaS providers to dominate the market. If open source and federated web apps were easy and safe for everyone to run, they'd have a wider audience. Sandstorm aims to make that the case. Longer version: https://blog.sandstorm.io/news/2014-07-21-open-source-web-apps-require-federated-hosting.html https://blog.sandstorm.io/news/2014-07-21-open-source-web-ap...
- jonahx 12y ago
  Thank you for answering. After reading that, it sounds very cool and is a great vision. Please take it as constructive criticism that I had no idea based on the homepage that the product was anything like what is described in the blog. I get that it's not necessarily easy to describe a new paradigm in a few tag lines, but there's probably room for improvement.
  - kentonv 12y ago
    Yeah, I think we need to convince more people to try the demo, or maybe just throw a video of the demo on the front page. Out of curiosity, what made you not try it at first? Did you expect it to take a long time? What might have convinced you to try?
    - jonahx 12y ago
      Actually, one of my first actions was to click the demo button in the top nav, then I got the page with the big blue button that said "Start Demo," and at this point I was already a little skeptical because typically I expect "Demo" in a web app to take me right into some app I'm about to use. But I clicked the big blue button and then saw this page: https://demo.sandstorm.io/ https://demo.sandstorm.io/, which felt like an admin panel that was going to take some effort to understand -- at this point I gave up. This is, of course, totally unfair to you, and was based on assumptions that don't apply to your product, but there you have it. It's even worse, because I'm a developer and with just a little effort could have understood everything, but since it wasn't immediately obvious, I made the assumption that the business model itself was vague, or didn't apply to me, as is often the case with SaaS products. Pretty standard Steve Krugg "Don't Make Me Think" stuff, but accurate to my experience when I'm just casually checking something out.
      - kentonv 12y ago
        Thanks, that's great feedback. Yeah, I guess we need some way to show that clicking "install apps" will be easy and fast.
        jonahx 12y ago
        To offer a couple of hopefully useful ideas, you could: 1. Have the demo take you directly to the page where you choose an app, rather than to the admin page which manages your installed apps. 2. Focus even more on the "like installing phone apps but for websites" metaphor. I think that metaphor works very well as soon as you understand it, and elicits a "Yeah... why don't web apps work like that?" epiphany. 3. Continuing 2., you might consider focusing the home page advertising on the most popular apps themselves (more than you do currently), rather than the conceptual idea that you can install your own apps (which is harder to grok, or at least to differentiate from heroku et al). Ie, "Run your own X in 10 seconds", where X is something I already know and think is cool, might be easier to understand, and more motivating. Just as most users think of their phones as indistinguishable from the specific apps they love and use every day, rather than as an abstract platform for running those apps.

by jonahx 12y ago

ocdtrekkie 12y ago

Recommendation: Try the demo, it'll take you less than ten seconds. Also, they have a whole blog on that subject: https://blog.sandstorm.io/news/2014-07-21-open-source-web-apps-require-federated-hosting.html https://blog.sandstorm.io/news/2014-07-21-open-source-web-ap...

kentonv 12y ago

Basically, heroku or random IaaS providers require some level of technical expertise and time commitment to run. That drastically limits who will use them, leading proprietary SaaS providers to dominate the market. If open source and federated web apps were easy and safe for everyone to run, they'd have a wider audience. Sandstorm aims to make that the case. Longer version: https://blog.sandstorm.io/news/2014-07-21-open-source-web-apps-require-federated-hosting.html https://blog.sandstorm.io/news/2014-07-21-open-source-web-ap...

jonahx 12y ago
Thank you for answering. After reading that, it sounds very cool and is a great vision. Please take it as constructive criticism that I had no idea based on the homepage that the product was anything like what is described in the blog. I get that it's not necessarily easy to describe a new paradigm in a few tag lines, but there's probably room for improvement.
- kentonv 12y ago
  Yeah, I think we need to convince more people to try the demo, or maybe just throw a video of the demo on the front page. Out of curiosity, what made you not try it at first? Did you expect it to take a long time? What might have convinced you to try?
  - jonahx 12y ago
    Actually, one of my first actions was to click the demo button in the top nav, then I got the page with the big blue button that said "Start Demo," and at this point I was already a little skeptical because typically I expect "Demo" in a web app to take me right into some app I'm about to use. But I clicked the big blue button and then saw this page: https://demo.sandstorm.io/ https://demo.sandstorm.io/, which felt like an admin panel that was going to take some effort to understand -- at this point I gave up. This is, of course, totally unfair to you, and was based on assumptions that don't apply to your product, but there you have it. It's even worse, because I'm a developer and with just a little effort could have understood everything, but since it wasn't immediately obvious, I made the assumption that the business model itself was vague, or didn't apply to me, as is often the case with SaaS products. Pretty standard Steve Krugg "Don't Make Me Think" stuff, but accurate to my experience when I'm just casually checking something out.
    - kentonv 12y ago
      Thanks, that's great feedback. Yeah, I guess we need some way to show that clicking "install apps" will be easy and fast.
      - jonahx 12y ago
        To offer a couple of hopefully useful ideas, you could: 1. Have the demo take you directly to the page where you choose an app, rather than to the admin page which manages your installed apps. 2. Focus even more on the "like installing phone apps but for websites" metaphor. I think that metaphor works very well as soon as you understand it, and elicits a "Yeah... why don't web apps work like that?" epiphany. 3. Continuing 2., you might consider focusing the home page advertising on the most popular apps themselves (more than you do currently), rather than the conceptual idea that you can install your own apps (which is harder to grok, or at least to differentiate from heroku et al). Ie, "Run your own X in 10 seconds", where X is something I already know and think is cool, might be easier to understand, and more motivating. Just as most users think of their phones as indistinguishable from the specific apps they love and use every day, rather than as an abstract platform for running those apps.