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Comment by kentonv | Hacker News Reader

"N self-hosted alternatives to popular cloud services" is becoming a meme.

Here's 43 self-hosted alternatives to popular cloud services, with one-click demos you can try yourself!

https://apps.sandstorm.io/

Tiny Tiny RSS, Ghost, Gitlab, and Rocket.Chat are in there.

ownCloud is missing, but you can try Davros, which is compatible with the ownCloud client apps. https://apps.sandstorm.io/app/8aspz4sfjnp8u89000mh2v1xrdyx97...

Ampache is missing, but you could try Groove Basin for music -- it's neat in that you can share control of the playback with other people, to implement a communal music player. https://apps.sandstorm.io/app/wfg1r0qra2ewyvns05r0rddqttt57q...

(But also someone should package ownCloud and Ampache for Sandstorm! https://docs.sandstorm.io)

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If someone wants to push forward porting ownCloud to Sandstorm, check out this existing issue about it: https://github.com/sandstorm-io/sandstorm/issues/89

For any help regarding ownCloud internals, everyone is very welcome in our IRC channel #owncloud-dev (on freenode).

Working on the other mentioned project, I've laid some of the groundwork in the last few months (Sandstorm now supports WebDAV, and the OwnCloud sync clients modified to connect) so it's certainly worth picking back up.

The problem with sandstorm is the dependence on third-party auth. Until sandstorm has internal user stores, it's not a viable self-hosting solution.

You can log in to Sandstorm using any email address.

Eventually, we plan to support logging in using a PGP key.

We see "internal user stores" (e.g. basic username/password with no connected email address) as problematic because a major design goal of Sandstorm is the ability to move data between hosts easily. Say you and five friends have been using Rocket.Chat on Sandstorm Oasis, and then you decide to transfer it to a self-hosted Sandstorm server -- or vice versa. It would be nice if after moving, Rocket.Chat can still recognize your five friends and being the same people, so that you don't lose your PM history and such. This is only possible by using some form of federated identities which all Sandstorm servers can independently authenticate. Username/password is inherently per-server so doesn't provide that.

It's not a bad option, and you make a decent case for that. However, the entire point of self-hosting for me is to be entirely self-reliant. Why would I use a github account to login to a Sandstorm Gitlab instance?

Well, it's entirely up to you what login mechanism you want to use, so if Github isn't what you want, then by all means don't use it. You can be completely self-reliant using email login, or eventually PGP login. But some people find Google and Github login convenient.

FWIW we're currently working on a change that will allow you to attach multiple such "identities" to a single account, after which we plan to open up the door to a lot more authentication providers, including other "open" federated options like OpenID or Shibboleth (as well as popular proprietary services like Twitter, Facebook, etc. -- again, it's up to each user to decide what's most convenient for them).

Probably at some point you'll be able to host your own IDP as a Sandstorm app, if that's what you want. Other Sandstorm servers would be able to rely on that IDP as well, so it meets the federated requirement.

Have you thought about adding Persona auth?

This seems like something we'd be interested in.

Of course, we have a lot on our plate, so I can't guarantee anything. Happy to accept pull requests. :)

My first RSS reader was self-hosted. When I went away on vacation and came back to learn that my computer had shut down during that time, I switched to Google Reader.

Curious. I had the opposite experience. Went away on vacation and came back to learn Google Reader had shut down.

LOL, sorry. Brilliant.

Must have been a pretty long vacation. ;)

The other replies are far more hilarious but you should consider a VPS for this reason rather than a computer at home or similar. They are extremely affordable and can be restarted/restored from backup remotely easier.

... except that it doesn't have basic stuff like email. For that I use Mail-in-a-Box [0], but I would love to see both projects merging.

[0] https://mailinabox.email/

Sandstorm does have an email app (roundcube), though admittedly it's a little weird to use right now. We plan to make Sandstorm work better as an email server in the future, probably early 2016-ish.

I am talking about an email server, not an email client.

I would also love to see two other things for Sandstorm, though they might not be a good fit:

- A web IDE

- A container to run web stuff I'm working on (ie hook it up to the ide through rsync or something)

That's because MSaaS is fast becoming a new way to ship software. ISVs are taking a serious look at it to improve customer satisfaction and security concerns.

Sandstorm!

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