This is a wonderful effort! I very much hope that either Sandstorm or OwnCloud or both start to gain more features, more power and more popularity at least among the people who care about privacy and like to keep data under their own control.
Let's face it, Linux should not try to win the battle for the desktop. Not only it is already lost, its is pretty much irrelevant. I feel that instead of producing another fork of desktop office package, efforts of open source contributors would be much better spent on creating Open Source counterpart of Google Apps.
I do a lot of things with my linux-based NAS already: it is backup server, git server, hub for online and offsite backup, media storage, and much more. But I wish more apps would be easily available for an easy installation, without fiddling with database settings and ruby versions. I want my own pinboard.in, I want my own RSS reader, I want my own mint.com installable on my NAS with few clicks. I would definitely pay for good commercial apps too! I just want them to run on my server with the data I control.
> "... creating Open Source counterpart of Google Apps"
I concur and this is the kind of thing I'm working on but we're looking at the components from the ground up. Given how the cloud works today and the coming wave of connected devices (aka internet of things), it's worth re-evaluating the assumptions we've made and looking for ways to improve (even if this takes us somewhere radical). There's a post with some background [1] but in essence we're starting out by creating the basic building blocks to deal with deploying applications, managing identity and connectivity as well as co-ordinating sync/history.
> Let's face it, Linux should not try to win the battle for the desktop.
That is kind of a narrow view in regards to today's architectures.
I think another way to look at is once you have a nice backend with a good API you can then build:
* A desktop app
* A web-page
* A command line utility
* An SDK in a number of languages or frameworks.
How pluggable any of those are is another axis. You can make it monolithic or make it so you can plug in functionality. Plugins are harder than it seems to get right, and so is a good stable API.
Think about Android, are some of the native apps that just deliver HTTP REST-ful requests back and forth really a Desktop app or closer to a single page app. Maybe there is nothing to win on the Desktop anymore.
Yes! "The open source counterpart of Google Apps" indeed. The thing that motivated me to do this in the first place was observing that we have whole open source desktop environments containing just about everything many of us need on a day-to-day basis, but in "The Cloud" open source options seem totally lacking. I use gmail. What else can I use? There are many open source web mail clients but to use them I need to run my own server, which is too much friction for me.
But if I could just install an e-mail client on Sandstorm with a couple clicks... I'd totally do that.
I was just thinking today about how cool it would be if I could easily deploy an email service that was entirely under my control. I've allowed MS and Google full access to my email only because I don't know how to setup an email server with appropriate spam filtering and reliable security. I have my own RSS aggregation server and I don't ever have to worry about it going away as a service.
Brian K. Vaughan's The Private Eye [1] was on my mind when I was thinking about an individual being entirely in control of all their data without compromising on functionality or usability.
Let's face it, Linux should not try to win the battle for the desktop. Not only it is already lost, its is pretty much irrelevant. I feel that instead of producing another fork of desktop office package, efforts of open source contributors would be much better spent on creating Open Source counterpart of Google Apps.
I do a lot of things with my linux-based NAS already: it is backup server, git server, hub for online and offsite backup, media storage, and much more. But I wish more apps would be easily available for an easy installation, without fiddling with database settings and ruby versions. I want my own pinboard.in, I want my own RSS reader, I want my own mint.com installable on my NAS with few clicks. I would definitely pay for good commercial apps too! I just want them to run on my server with the data I control.