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Comment by pbhjpbhj | Hacker News Reader

Is there a better alternative to OwnCloud that doesn't have similar flaws?

I'm not being sarcastic, it's fine to say it's broken but that doesn't really make a difference if there are still no better alternatives!?

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Sandstorm, a platform which allows users to run arbitrary applications on a server in a secure sandbox. Of course, OwnCloud is at version 8 and Sandstorm is still working out its permissions UI.

I think they've got different goals.

My impression OwnCloud aims to be a replacement for "the google suite" (not search, but mail, docs, calendar, etc) -- it's really focused at the app layer. I think this is appropriate and there is a need for this.

There's also a need for "a platform which allows users to run arbitrary applications on a server in a secure sandbox", and certainly you can hypothetically build what OwnCloud is aiming at on such a platform. But it's going to take a lot more time and be harder to get right and be reliable and be easy to install and run.

I think OwnCloud is trying to be as easy to install and run as possible, to get a replacement for the google suite wwith apps that work as well as possible and are as easy to use as possible. I think this is a good goal, and they are making reasonable choices toward accomplishing that goal. I am not sure how well they've succeeded.

I believe the point of Sandstorm is to allow people to install mail/docs/calendar apps as simply as possible. It already has multiple document editors ported.

To install apps into Sandstorm, you literally just click on a link - Sandstorm will manage grabbing the app and installing it for you. Sandstorm itself is a self-contained daemon that can run on any Linux server (and, at some point, there'll be an ISO to install an auto-updating Linux with Sandstorm on it).

I've been moving my Drive sheets over to EtherCalc on Sandstorm and all of my new documents I write on Etherpad for Sandstorm. Draw.io also just released for Sandstorm, which is one of Google Drive's original third party apps.

I think Sandstorm in principle is the sort of thing that would run and deploy Owncloud. It doesn't happen to have it in its list of apps at the moment. Similarly there's indieboxproject.org, which has a lot fewer apps, but it does support Owncloud.

The issue there is that ownCloud and Sandstorm share a lot of goals and functionality. Both are meant to be app platforms in a respect. And both are meant to organize your personal data. Since Sandstorm wants every file to be a granular document, putting the entirely of ownCloud in a file would be kinda odd. It'll likely happen sooner or later though.

Shameless plug, but we use strong static typing to implement PEPS:

https://github.com/MLstate/PEPS

(will be open source AGPLv3, release this month)

The only feature it has is file sharing, but I quite like Seafile: http://seafile.com/en/home/

For file syncing, this came up on hacker news once upon a time: http://syncthing.net/

An easy to use and powerful alternative is: http://www.emitcloud.com

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