Sandstorm News

Demo box; App updates

By Kenton Varda - 11 Jul 2014

A few quick updates today.

New Demo server

It’s now possible to try out Sandstorm without an invite, and without installing it locally. Just go to demo.sandstorm.io.

On the demo server, anyone can create a one-hour trial account. We hope that this will make it much easier for people to understand what Sandstorm does, before they install it or wait in line for an invite. If a picture is worth a thousand words, a demo is worth ten thousand.

App updates

We’ve posted updates to several apps with bug fixes and other improvements. Currently, in order to update an app, you must re-install it from the app list. (Push updates for apps are on our todo list.) So, if you’ve installed any of the following, install them again.

• Mailpile: Fixed bug where sent mail sometimes wasn’t saved.
• IPython Notebook: Added numpy and plotting packages, so you can now plot graphs.
• Etherpad: Minor UI tweaks.

New features and fixes

• We’ve added a “reset” button to the top bar, which lets you restart an app if it somehow gets wedged. This is rare, but otherwise really annoying when it happens.
• Apps now receive the user’s display name and a unique stable identifier, which are useful for collaborative apps meant to be used by more than one user.
• We fixed a crash that happened when updating a Sandstorm instance that runs as non-root, and tightened some security knobs in this mode.

License is now Apache 2.0

Several people told us they were not comfortable contributing to Sandstorm when licensed under the GNU AGPL, or that their employers were hesitant to allow them to contribute. We think this is entirely understandable. We have always intended to switch to Apache 2.0 after gaining some momentum (which is why we have asked contributors to sign a CLA allowing us to make this change). So, we’ve gone ahead and made the switch now.