Hi all — I’ve been spending more time with remoteStorage recently and really enjoying how clean the model is for personal data and simple sharing via public paths. Thanks for working on this project and building a community around it.
Feels like I’m 10 years late to the party, and I see discussions around adding new features to the spec that I am interested in today. Specifically, I want to explore how far I can take RS to build apps with granular sharing, and realtime feedback (not discussed here), since many apps/users expect these features these days.
From what I understand, granular sharing has come up multiple times over the years, but hasn’t really landed — partly because:
- remoteStorage is intentionally focused on simple personal data storage
- identity and permissions become complex quickly, especially across servers
- and there hasn’t been a clear, low-complexity model that fits the existing philosophy*
I’d like to explore whether a much more constrained version of sharing might work, and wanted to sanity check the direction before going deeper.
Specifically:
- same-server only (no federation, no cross-provider identity)
- folder/subtree-level sharing
- simple roles (reader / writer)
- server-enforced ACLs (not app-layer only)
- treated as an optional capability, not part of the core protocol
The goal would be something closer to: “shared folders between users on the same storage server”, rather than a full distributed sharing model.
I’d like to support use cases that go slightly beyond purely personal data (shared collections, small-team apps, etc.), while still keeping things aligned with the RS model.
I’m also curious whether something like this could:
- live as a server feature (e.g. Armadietto extension)
- be exposed via rs.js as an optional capability
- and map onto existing backends like Dropbox / Google Drive (where sharing already exists)
Open questions
- Does this still run into the same fundamental objections as earlier ACL discussions?
- Has anything like a same-server-only sharing model been explored before?
- Is there any concept of “extensions” or capability negotiation in RS that this could fit into? Perhaps so I can work on this out of spec, while keeping it tightly integrated?
If this has already been explored in a similar form, I’d love pointers.
Otherwise, happy to sketch something more concrete — just wanted to make sure this is not a really bad idea.
Thanks!
