I looked into Sandstorm when I moved away from NethServer; I'm a strong believer in self-hosting. Sandstorm was too haphazard with apps and security of apps didn't seem to be their highest priority. I went with Cloudron, it's a nice mix of good app selection and security.
> Kenton Varda [NB: kentonv around here] launched Sandstorm in 2014 via an Indiegogo campaign, before co-founding Sandstorm Development Group with Jade Wang to develop Sandstorm as both a Software-as-a-Service [...]
> In early 2017, Sandstorm Development Group ran out of funding and the team primarily joined Cloudflare. [NB: Where kentonv works to this day, leading the Cloud Workers team. Arguably related?] [...]
> In 2020, a group of Sandstorm enthusiasts began a community effort to revive development of Sandstorm. [...] As of 2022, Sandstorm Development Group has been completely dissolved, and development of the Sandstorm project has transitioned to a community-run model.
Is it just me, or is Sandstorm just not maintained any more?
The most recent closed issues were self closed rather than as the result of development, while meanwhile the open issues continue to pile up with virtually no code changes made to the tree…
It’s a shame because it seems like it could have been a thing. Sadly though it’s hard to justify time investment into a platform like this if you know there’s little to no chance of getting any issues fixed.
There is a small community working on it (hi!) but there is several hard problems in the way of moving forward, all of which can be solved with time and money, neither of which we have a lot of. :/
I think ten years on there remains nothing even remotely comparable to Sandstorm for a dozen reasons, but I also can't assure you an issue you find would get fixed expediently, for sure.
Hello everyone. I have been using Sandstorm and put it to good use in the last few years.
I used it with Wekan for project management and I also run Dokuwiki for self-hosted docs. It has been zero maintenance for me so it has been great.
However, the packages ecosystem seems unmaintained. It is a pitty because I think the tool has a ton of potential and I really liked it.
I am considering moving to Yunohost or something similar but right now my little server hosts, together with other services, Sandstorm and I think Yunohost needs to monopolize the server.
So I would ask for recommendations on similar tools. Not bare Docker containers but fully lanaged platforms wirh one click installs where it is easy to add/remove users.
I was initially enthousiastic about sandstorm when I encountered it, but in the end my preferred solution for self hosting has been Docker Swarm. Dead simple setup, low maintenance, everything easily deployable within Swarm (crons, backups, first deployment setup, reverse proxy config incl. certificates, etc).
Additionally a lot of projects provide a Docker compose file which is mostly compatible with swarm. I started using Swarm [1] when k8s was already ruling, but never regretted my choice.
What I do want to understand is, why would anyone use this instead of NextCloud, for example.
I'm all for having local setups though, as a general policy.
It's just that from what I know, the difference in feature sets is just too huge right now.
Sandstorm was like an App Store for any server app. You could install nextcloud with it.
Was a pretty good idea but there wasn’t any sustainable business model/funding and it was also pre docker era which would have made things more secure/containerised and easier to maintain.
I remember Sandstorm but don't remember it ever billing itself as a web productivity suite... It was a repository of self-hostable apps with their own auth layer integrated so managing users and permissions was easier.
This always sounded like a monumental task. I've since gone with Authelia.
I think this particular marketing choice was at the time intended to pursue enterprise users. It's been there since before the original startup shut down.
sandstorm.org is an offshoot of sandstorm.io, my old (failed) startup. Some folks who really wanted to keep the project running took over ownership of the open source code. I'm not involved these days. Full story at: https://sandstorm.io/news/2024-01-14-move-to-sandstorm-org
The people still trying to run it are good people, so I hate to say this, but... it doesn't seem like they are going to make progress. There hasn't been a new release in years, and the codebase is rotting. I wouldn't recommend running it in its current state.
Meanwhile, though, I feel like the advent of vibe coding has made Sandstorm's approach seem newly relevant. Sandstorm's architecture made "novice" code safe to run even for users with sensitive security needs. Well well well, suddenly we have a whole lot more novice code than we used to.
Is it... time for me to take another pass at this?
> Is it... time for me to take another pass at this?
Yes please. I was very excited for Sandstorm when it first started. Sad to see it's current stage.
Also I think the world around has evolved quite a bit wrt containerization from when Sandstorm first started. I wonder how you would build it today, if you were to build from scratch. Could you utilize docker for most of the containerization?
There are a lot of people talking about Docker, Cloudron, etc. as alternatives, but nothing else approaches Sandstorm's grain concept, which is a huge differentiator.
As an internet random, please believe I have the least creepy intentions when I say I really enjoy following your career. Through Cap'n Proto, Sandstorm, CF Workers and Durable Objects, there's a throughline I feel you have ben chasing. And it's a super interesting thing, a unique emphasis you seem to have brought to the world in several different ways. So, keep up the good work :).
18 comments
[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 51.2 ms ] threadTaking from https://sandstorm.org/about
> Kenton Varda [NB: kentonv around here] launched Sandstorm in 2014 via an Indiegogo campaign, before co-founding Sandstorm Development Group with Jade Wang to develop Sandstorm as both a Software-as-a-Service [...]
> In early 2017, Sandstorm Development Group ran out of funding and the team primarily joined Cloudflare. [NB: Where kentonv works to this day, leading the Cloud Workers team. Arguably related?] [...]
> In 2020, a group of Sandstorm enthusiasts began a community effort to revive development of Sandstorm. [...] As of 2022, Sandstorm Development Group has been completely dissolved, and development of the Sandstorm project has transitioned to a community-run model.
kentonv actually posted a recap of the history, including the tragic passing of Ian "zenhack" Denhart who was leading the community effort https://sandstorm.io/news/2024-01-14-move-to-sandstorm-org
The most recent closed issues were self closed rather than as the result of development, while meanwhile the open issues continue to pile up with virtually no code changes made to the tree…
It’s a shame because it seems like it could have been a thing. Sadly though it’s hard to justify time investment into a platform like this if you know there’s little to no chance of getting any issues fixed.
I think ten years on there remains nothing even remotely comparable to Sandstorm for a dozen reasons, but I also can't assure you an issue you find would get fixed expediently, for sure.
I used it with Wekan for project management and I also run Dokuwiki for self-hosted docs. It has been zero maintenance for me so it has been great.
However, the packages ecosystem seems unmaintained. It is a pitty because I think the tool has a ton of potential and I really liked it.
I am considering moving to Yunohost or something similar but right now my little server hosts, together with other services, Sandstorm and I think Yunohost needs to monopolize the server.
So I would ask for recommendations on similar tools. Not bare Docker containers but fully lanaged platforms wirh one click installs where it is easy to add/remove users.
Additionally a lot of projects provide a Docker compose file which is mostly compatible with swarm. I started using Swarm [1] when k8s was already ruling, but never regretted my choice.
1: https://www.yvesdennels.com/posts/docker-swarm-in-2022/
Was a pretty good idea but there wasn’t any sustainable business model/funding and it was also pre docker era which would have made things more secure/containerised and easier to maintain.
This always sounded like a monumental task. I've since gone with Authelia.
The people still trying to run it are good people, so I hate to say this, but... it doesn't seem like they are going to make progress. There hasn't been a new release in years, and the codebase is rotting. I wouldn't recommend running it in its current state.
Meanwhile, though, I feel like the advent of vibe coding has made Sandstorm's approach seem newly relevant. Sandstorm's architecture made "novice" code safe to run even for users with sensitive security needs. Well well well, suddenly we have a whole lot more novice code than we used to.
Is it... time for me to take another pass at this?
Yes please. I was very excited for Sandstorm when it first started. Sad to see it's current stage.
Also I think the world around has evolved quite a bit wrt containerization from when Sandstorm first started. I wonder how you would build it today, if you were to build from scratch. Could you utilize docker for most of the containerization?
As an internet random, please believe I have the least creepy intentions when I say I really enjoy following your career. Through Cap'n Proto, Sandstorm, CF Workers and Durable Objects, there's a throughline I feel you have ben chasing. And it's a super interesting thing, a unique emphasis you seem to have brought to the world in several different ways. So, keep up the good work :).