Personal data store timelines

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I’ve been saying that remoteStorage.js was local-first before the term became popular and it just led me down a rabbit hole to figure out when this and related projects started. If there’s anything missing or incorrect, please let me know (or you could edit yourself as I’ve enabled ‘wiki mode’ on this post).

[2026-02-24: also noting references for Project History pull request]

name start
Gears 2007
Socially aware cloud storage 2009-08-17
Camlistore (now Perkeep) 2010-06-11
unhosted 2010-09-09
remoteStorage.js 2010-10-31
Locker 2010-12-07
crowdfunding 2011
nlnet funding 2011-09-09
remoteStorage spec 2011-03-25
freedom.js 2012 / 2013-01-15
Hacker Beach 2012-09-02
Hoodie 2012-11-18
Sockethub 2012-12-09
noBackend 2013-03-31
Offline First 2013-11-05
byoFS 2013-11-09
hacker news 2015
Solid 2016-08-10
Upspin 2017-02-21
Local-first 2019-04-01
rs.js typescript 2025-08-13
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I added Hoodie, the website of which now redirects to a different project that is a more generic local-first JS library than Hoodie was.

Shoutout to Gregor from Hoodie for starting the noBackend website as the first-ever place to inform about different approaches for implementing local/offline-first Web apps at the time (after the Unhosted one was first, but focused on the PDS approach only).

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Agree that local-first came after offline-first which came after noBackend which Gregor started.

I updated the start dates of Unhosted (based on when I registered the domain name and told Kenny about it) and of remoteStorage spec (based on what was then called Unhosted v0.3 but which was the first time it had CORS, OAuth WebFinger and DAV.

You could do a separate timeline for personal data stores but then you should also include TimBL’s 2009 blogpost about socially aware cloud storage, and personal data store projects that came before Unhosted. I’ll try to remember which ones they were but from memory I think Locker Project, FreedomBox, ownCloud/Nextcloud, CrossCloud, Diaspora Project and maybe even older ones I’m forgetting now.

Thanks for making this list, very nice!

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