Taking from https://sandstorm.org/about
> Kenton Varda [NB: kentonv around here] launched Sandstorm in 2014 via an Indiegogo campaign, before co-founding Sandstorm Development Group with Jade Wang to develop Sandstorm as both a Software-as-a-Service [...]
> In early 2017, Sandstorm Development Group ran out of funding and the team primarily joined Cloudflare. [NB: Where kentonv works to this day, leading the Cloud Workers team. Arguably related?] [...]
> In 2020, a group of Sandstorm enthusiasts began a community effort to revive development of Sandstorm. [...] As of 2022, Sandstorm Development Group has been completely dissolved, and development of the Sandstorm project has transitioned to a community-run model.
kentonv actually posted a recap of the history, including the tragic passing of Ian "zenhack" Denhart who was leading the community effort https://sandstorm.io/news/2024-01-14-move-to-sandstorm-org
I used it with Wekan for project management and I also run Dokuwiki for self-hosted docs. It has been zero maintenance for me so it has been great.
However, the packages ecosystem seems unmaintained. It is a pitty because I think the tool has a ton of potential and I really liked it.
I am considering moving to Yunohost or something similar but right now my little server hosts, together with other services, Sandstorm and I think Yunohost needs to monopolize the server.
So I would ask for recommendations on similar tools. Not bare Docker containers but fully lanaged platforms wirh one click installs where it is easy to add/remove users.
Why are we going dehydrated in the middle of the ocean, with docker and so many open source alternative to the common software and services ?
My conclusion is this: just pick the distro you like, whether it is Debian, Fedora, Arch or FreeBSD. Preferably one with the selection of package you need. All those will be maintained in a few years too, you just need to upgrade.
Because in the end the solution was the problem. A Debian for example was meant to host Internet services, it is well put together and has a large selection of software and can be trusted. It is more than enough security features for hosting your own apps, especially if you access them through something like tailscale.
A lot of people (me included) thought that since containers were the hype we should build something new and setup everything like a corporation would do. Looking back it was a bad idea and it did not work (fact).
I've done a similar journey for my self-hosted stuff, started with Sandstorm, moved to Yunohost, but got frustrated with the configuration, and how different every package was and eventually have landed on using NixOS for my home servers. It's not a "fully managed platform" in the traditional sense, but if you're a developer, that's almost what you get. Adding new services is usually just adding the configuration for them.
Bit of a learning curve learning the language, tooling and ecosystem, but once you're over that hurdle, having all declerative configuration in SCM together with easy linking of configuration options together (define service ports once, reference them in other services, for example), and everything being easy to rollback, have been a god-send so far. Been running it for maybe 2 years or something by now, with more or less zero issues besides the ones I introduce myself.
Adding/removing users can be as easy as adding/remove one line of configuration, and redeploying. Simple enough for me and my family so far.
Additionally a lot of projects provide a Docker compose file which is mostly compatible with swarm. I started using Swarm [1] when k8s was already ruling, but never regretted my choice.
I am not the craziest self-hoster, but I've got several things now. I run a core syncthing node, Immich, Jellyfin, and Pihole. (Honorable mention I suppose to a Vaultwarden image, which is run on the public internet but my scripts treat it like it's another self-hosted option, rsync'ing it down locally and including it in the daily backup.) None of those are on Sandstorm, and a major reason why is the security system. They don't match it and porting it is a rather large amount of effort.
I haven't used any of the self-hosting options, so I can't review if any of them are as nice as Sandstorm. All of the above is running in Docker on an Ubuntu N150 and a USB hard drive, home-grown, with a backup script (restic over S3, true backup) that covers them all. It ought to in principle do most of what Sandstorm does now by driving docker, albeit missing the sharing, which I can't say looked all that compelling anyhow, automatic backup integration, etc., because it really isn't all that hard to set up.
IIRC idea was that all security was done by sharing links (with capabilities) to documents.
The most recent closed issues were self closed rather than as the result of development, while meanwhile the open issues continue to pile up with virtually no code changes made to the tree…
It’s a shame because it seems like it could have been a thing. Sadly though it’s hard to justify time investment into a platform like this if you know there’s little to no chance of getting any issues fixed.