Freedom from the web's monopolies

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We love the web!

Monopolies have formed proprietary, centralized layers on top of it. We need to take back control!

Software evolution

Let me tell you about how software evolved, from desktop to the web, what the problems are and what we see as solution.

At the core, we have applications and your personal documents, photos, etc.
Secure but also confined to your personal computer.
That was the desktop. With web apps it’s different:
Hosted software is an app+storage package deal.
But it’s accessible from anywhere, with any internet-enabled device.
Even your smartphone.
Everything with a web browser. This good part we don’t want to miss.

And we want to give you back control over your own documents!

From the current architecture …
User data needs to be separated from the applications.
Then every time you use an application …
… app and data only meet in the browser.
No multiple accounts, no data lock-in – but data safety and full advantage of the web.

Mindblowing, right? So how is this possible?

One key part is Javascript. We believe it is the future of free software on the web. It all runs in your browser, so you don’t have to trust a server you can’t control. Regardless if free or proprietary, it can be fully inspected. That’s why all applications should be purely client-side, HTML and Javascript.

The other part is per-user remoteStorage. Your home folder for the web that you can use with every compatible application.

It is an open protocol stack, a very simple combination of open standards:

Webfinger
user@provider

OAuth

CORS
cross-origin
AJAX calls

GET
PUT
DELETE
key-value
store

remoteStorage.js

For app developers, there’s the remoteStorage.js client-side library. Drop it in your app, make a few changes and your app is compatible. Including a widget for people to easily connect their storage.

Let’s look at this again.
First, you have your one remoteStorage, with some provider or on your own machine.
User data needs to be separated from the applications.
User data needs to be separated from the applications.
User data needs to be separated from the applications.
User data needs to be separated from the applications.
User data needs to be separated from the applications.
User data needs to be separated from the applications.
User data needs to be separated from the applications.
And everything gets synchronized.
And when you sign out …
… all your data is only at your storage. The application knows nothing of it.

And if you think that’s cool, check out the real apps we develop!

Libre Docs is a free web office suite.
You can just connect with your user address …
… authorize the application at your storage …
… and then start writing!
We used Etherpad Lite as base for editing, it’s an open source document editor.

There are already many remoteStorage providers. Next to the free software ownCloud and Pagekite supporting it, there is 5apps, a developer startup in Berlin. But the best thing is that through SURFnet, every Dutch student now has remoteStorage!