TLDR: Cloud successful a Bottle is your open-source individual cloud: containerized apps, unified auth, bully UX. Self-hosting should consciousness for illustration utilizing a smartphone that serves webapps, not a sysadmin broadside job.
I'm disappointment pinch the authorities of the integer world. The package we usage is truthful misaligned pinch our ain incentives (intentionally addicting, loaded pinch ads, search you and trading your data, enshittifying). Software is easier than ever to make; really did we extremity up here? I deliberation a large logic is the displacement of package into the cloud. Software served from the unreality (think Google Docs vs Microsoft Word) delivers a awesome acquisition - nary install, accessible connected each your devices, contiguous sharing/collaboration. But to service thing successful the unreality costs money, and truthful conscionable astir everything connected the modern web has a institution down it - unfastened root authors people don't want to salary to service their free package to the world. And those companies person a financial inducement fundamentally misaligned pinch our own.
In the pre-cloud days, unfastened root worked - authors distributed their software, and everyone "hosted" it for themselves (i.e. ran it connected their ain PC). Nowadays, unreality package is centralized, pinch 1 lawsuit of the package serving the world, and the costs borne by the creator. This is because individuals don't person an accessible measurement to put package into the unreality for themselves.
Self-hosting exists already, but it's niche and unapproachable. When I looked astatine the existing options, nary of them felt right:
- sandstorm.io: very adjacent successful tone (their article from 2014 makes fundamentally the aforesaid statement I'm making here), but unluckily agelong abandoned. It besides required important changes to existing package to tally connected their platform.
- nextcloud: slow and unreliable, and much enterprise-targeted now
- yunohost: apps tally straight connected the host, nary sandboxing. 1 insecure app compromises the full server.
- coolify: hosts containerized apps, but each app is an land pinch its ain login and small integration pinch the big aliases different apps.
We created Cloud successful a Bottle to return different stab astatine this. At the core, it's conscionable an Ubuntu instrumentality pinch a web server that hosts a dashboard and routes HTTP(s) requests to containerized apps. Apps are (rootless, hardened) containers, truthful it tin tally existing package pinch minimal changes - and successful a reasonably unafraid sandbox. But beyond conscionable hosting containers (like e.g. coolify), location are various opt-in level features that apps tin return advantage of to make the acquisition better. In a way, I want it to consciousness for illustration your "cloud smartphone" - thing that you own, wherever uncovering and installing awesome apps is trivial, and wherever the personification acquisition is arsenic bully arsenic the closed root products we're trying to replace. As a basal example, if you're logged into your instance, you're automatically logged into each your apps - nary abstracted accounts successful each app. And there's an interface to let permissioned entree to information and capabilities betwixt different apps successful your instance. More mostly - deliberation of each the different APIs that Android aliases iOS supply to alteration apps to present a great, integrated acquisition (sensor access, notifications, wellness information sharing, etc). We've put a batch of clip into reasoning astir the correct analog of those APIs successful the discourse of a individual cloud.
It's unfastened source, self-hostable, zero telemetry, and intends to beryllium arsenic elemental and "magic-free" arsenic possible. We (Imbue, the institution I activity for) besides connection a managed version, which I deliberation is really important to making this wide accessible - and it gives america a straightforward business exemplary to support the project. But the open-source/self-hosted way runs precisely the aforesaid codification and will ever beryllium first-class.
We're launching now aft building and testing it privately for 6+ months, now that the halfway level is mostly complete and stable. I've been slow moving my integer life into my ain Bottle instance, and it's felt great. That said, there's a chickenhearted and ovum problem - without a broadly accessible measurement to self-host unfastened root web software, the assemblage for specified package is small, and the disposable package is limited. A large extremity of ours is catalyzing the creation of much awesome unfastened root web package - things we tin urge to friends and parents, not conscionable different package nerds. Our curated app catalog is 1 measurement successful this guidance - we purpose to support a precocious bar, only adding things that really present a awesome personification experience, truthful it's beautiful mini correct now. But we're adding things each week - and we dream to turn it faster pinch the thief of the community. For now, early users will apt request a spot of method familiarity (or a coding agent) to find/create/adapt the things you want to tally connected your lawsuit (it's really easy!). Over time, arsenic the catalog gets deeper and we polish the acquisition further, we dream for it to go progressively accessible to everyone.
Want to cheque it out?
- Try a managed lawsuit for free ($10 credit)
- Self-host connected a unreality VPS
- Install connected your ain hardware (in a VM aliases bare metal)
- Check retired the codification connected GitHub
- Chat pinch america connected Matrix
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