RS on Indie Hosters

So it’s coming up? :wink:

It’ll be some time this year, I think. I would like to offer storage-first as well though, which is currently not implemented in reStore. And I need to automate user creation and backups.

It’s already available if someone wants to have remoteStorage on their own domain name and pay 8 euros per month for it. Once one person signs up for that I’ll add it to my packaging queue (which is currently: Cozy, GitLab, Matrix, so it would be the fourth project in the queue). And once LetsEncrypt launch (announced for mid-2015), I will activate https://remotestorage.yourdomain.com/ for all existing users.

Is that the storage base URL? If yes, I think it you might want to shorten it a bit. We’re not even content with storage.5apps.com after the fact now. rs.5apps.com might have been even nicer. Although storage is definitely already nice then remotestorage I think. :wink:

The user address will still be username@yourdomain.com, right?

By the way, a lot of users with personal servers I know, myself included, provide services for their family members, too, so when using e.g. a domain with the last name, it’s practical to just have one technical family member set it up (via IH in this case) and then be able to give storage accounts to relatives. Just a thought, because you mentioned that it’s not necessary to have user accounts on personal domains somwhere.

The URL would only be visible during the OAuth dance. I might go for storage., yes.

Multiple users would work (I think reStore supports it), but I’m not a fan of it.

The only reason to put multiple people on one domain name is saving on DNR costs. The disk, CPU, and RAM costs are the same for me (because I host all servers behind snickers). So I don’t prohibit hosting more people on the same server, but if people ask me I advise them to just get more servers, one per person. So far, both have happened.

I just presented you with a perfectly valid, popular use case, which is not that.

That would make that person the IndieHoster. The product is a managed personal server. You can share it between multiple people, but the idea is you don’t need a technical person to use it. If you’re savvy enough to use Tumblr, then you can also use Known. You don’t need any complicated things. There’s no gap in usability anymore once you have a managed personal server.

Yeah, it’s possible, and the ‘@’ symbol in the addresses does work nice that way, but I’m still not a fan of this setup. I think every human being should have their own domain name.

You will have to accept that a sizable number of other humans disagree. :wink:

I certainly want to be firstname@myfamilyname.something and be able to give my sister herfirstname@ on the exact same machine so I don’t have to deal with multiple instances.

… in case it wasn’t clear enough: I’d love to not be an Indie Hoster myself, but use the service from one and still be able to do that. So I’m talking about technical people who value the freedom, but don’t want to run it themselves providing the service to family members who they don’t want to trouble with any of it, but just set up their email and storage for them on their computers without them having to know what just happened.

Maybe that’s out of scope for Indie Hosters, and maybe I don’t understand exactly who it’s for. That’s just how I personally would like to use it.

It’s cool if you help them configure their email client, but if that means that you set it up in such a way that they cannot unfriend you without having to undo what you set up for them, then they did not gain full autonomy.

I would agree to host such a “family server” but only if the other accounts are clearly understood as “guest accounts”. It could make sense to have such a group server for a family event or something, especially if you host group software on it that is (still) incapable of running in a decentralized (federated) way.

If the software allows you to create extra accounts, then you can do so, obviously. But these guest users of your server will not be first-class citizens of the indieweb and decentralized internet.

One “family server” only liberates one person (the admin user). The guest users will not have gained their autonomy (cannot easily migrate their identity to another hoster, for instance).