I'm a web developer, but I can't really use my skills to provide an open source web app the way I'd like to. I'd like to build a small server-side budgeting app that people can use from their computers or phones to record expenses, but there's no way I can ask people to find a web host that lets them run rails, or set up a heroku account or whatever.

So my only alternative would be to run the service myself, but then I'm storing other people's data, I have to worry about scaling if lots of people use it, and user accounts, and all this stuff.

The idea of sandstorm is folks run this platform on their personal servers, and then it lets you browse an app store like interface and one-click install these server side apps. So I'd bundle up my budgeting rails app as a sandstorm package, and if someone wants to track their expenses from a variety of devices, they install the app. Now they're running it so the data is theirs, there's no scaling issues, and user authentication is provided by sandstorm.

Sandstorm is still in its infancy so there's not a lot of apps available and the development APIs are being worked on, but I hope it's the future. It would lead to a more decentralized web with better privacy and users owning their own data.

I'm hopeful, if not optimistic, for a future where every family is expected to have their own little server running somewhere. And they access that server through the sandstorm web interface, and can easily add little apps to it. My budgeting app, a webmail app, some future federated profile app to replace facebook, etc.

The sentence you quote doesn't appear on the page. I think it might have said that at one time, but that was long ago, so I wonder if you're somehow seeing some ancient cache or something? Or are you looking at some other page?

With that said, it's true we've had a tough time coming up with a two-line summary that fully explains what Sandstorm is. If you could suggest what would have made more sense to you, that would be helpful. Otherwise our strategy has been to try to push people towards trying the demo, which I think illustrates what it is much more quickly than words can.

I'm going to guess Heroku. They pioneered PaaSes, which are intended to solve this problem. Spoiler: they solve this problem.

There's also my fave, Cloud Foundry -- try Pivotal Web Services or BlueMix.

These PaaSes have a buildpack model and basically, it Just Works.

Or OpenShift, though maybe its shift to a pure docker-y model will put you back where you started.

Disclaimer: I work for Pivotal Labs, part of the company which donates the most engineering to Cloud Foundry.