Open Source Web Apps Aren't Viable; Let's Fix That

I think part of it is a marketplace for apps, and a virtual server.. another is the storage and actual runtime costs.

For example, I've wanted a web based email client for a while. Think thunderbird in the cloud.. that provides a unified interface for all my email accounts. Plenty of cloudmail services will import your other accounts, some more cleanly than others. But not will let you keep the walls up between accounts while not having to logout/in multiple times.

Another such case would be the vacuum left by igoogle, and google reader. I would much rather have a simple app I could install that would use my dropbox for storage/access. I've felt for a while that dropbox would be a natural business to expand into this space. They could offer a limited/free application host, and more under paid accounts.

A shared runner for free.. vs. dedicated for paid. The use of docker for provisioning and their own storage could really be awesome. The fact that they aren't also in a lot of other businesses trying to leverage a monopoly or monopoly like position would help too. I don't trust google, apple or microsoft in this space. I also don't want to roll my own, so to speak. One could do something like this on top of Azure, Joyent, Amazon or other cloud systems, but I'd prefer it be relatively independent.

It's just my thoughts here... I wish them all the luck in the world.

Very interesting. Importantly, the alternative approach of adjusting licensing to give apps that play by open source rules an advantage (ie. AGPL) hasn't really worked out, as there are always more liberally-licensed alternatives for components, so developers tend to simply avoid the more-viral ones, which means that their ecosystems don't grow as fast, and then it is game over.

OTOH, I have a feeling that there may be a niche or two where this can work, but there has to be an interoperability argument with a strong network effect in a federated network (eg. email). If one of the social network players had gone this route we'd be looking at a very different world today.

Demo fails to load anything at all with cookies disabled.

Front page loads fine, though. But detecting disabled cookies in the demo would be a good idea.