Update about page #351
Update about page #351
Conversation
Co-authored-by: Jim Garrison <[email protected]>
Deploying with
|
| Latest commit: |
ddfbeea
|
| Status: | ✅ Deploy successful! |
| Preview URL: | https://49d9130e.sandstorm-website.pages.dev |
| Branch Preview URL: | https://sandstorm-history.sandstorm-website.pages.dev |
|
I think this is on the right track. Some of the prose feels a bit rambly and stream-of-consciousness, and it feels like the history could use a bit more ...structure? One concrete thing that jumps out at me, the way the team moving to Cloudflare is discussed is kindof confusing; it doesn't actually say this, but if people took that to mean Cloudflare bought the company it would not be the first time someone had gotten that impression. It also just feels like it's putting too much spin on it? Like, the company went out of business, and couldn't pay full time developers anymore. Maybe something like:
You could even omit the bit about Cloudflare entirely; I think it's fine as a one-off, but doesn't actually seem super relevant, since it's not like they're doing stuff related to Sandstorm in their new jobs. Also, talking about Workers in the section about Kenton makes sense as a "this is what he's doing these days," but it feels very out of place in the project history section, since it really has nothing to do with Sandstorm. The whole section really kindof makes it sound like the project is much more connected to Cloudflare than it is, and I think this just reflects a lack of focus wrt what the section is supposed to be describing. |
|
I agree entirely, I'll definitely clean that up, and I think considering Kenton's bio covers a lot of that, we can comfortably omit a lot of that from the history section. Re: Structure, I think that is largely what has put me off about making it merge-ready. It doesn't feel as clean/professional as I'd like for website copy. |
Co-Authored-By: Daniel Krol <[email protected]>
|
Okay, I included changes based on Dan's feedback, handled some of my own concerns with the focus on dollar values and such which aren't super important to list, and hid the Team Members section entirely, along with addressing Ian's feedback and reducing the discussion of Cloudflare in the history section. |
|
This is the handy browing URL for the new version: https://49d9130e.sandstorm-website.pages.dev/about I'm happy with it personally, so I'm going to remove the draft flag. |
| <p>Mark is one of the leading experts -- arguably <i>the</i> leading expert -- in the field of capability-based security. He is the designer of the <a href="http://erights.org/">E Language</a> and the <a href="http://erights.org/elib/distrib/captp/index.html">CapTP protocol</a> on which <a href="https://capnproto.org">Cap'n Proto</a> (Sandstorm's underlying communications layer) is based. | ||
| </ul> | ||
| </section> | ||
| <p>In early 2017, Sandstorm Development Group <a href="https://sandstorm.io/news/2017-02-06-sandstorm-returning-to-community-roots">ran out of funding</a> and the team primarily <a href="https://sandstorm.io/news/2017-03-13-joining-cloudflare">joined Cloudflare</a>. Sandstorm development continued with a major rewrite of the HTTP proxy, a refactor of the account model, and the addition of localization support. However, the pace of development slowed, and the Oasis <a href="https://sandstorm.io/news/2018-08-27-discontinuing-free-plan">free plan was discontinued</a> in 2018. Finally, <a href="https://sandstorm.io/news/2019-09-15-shutting-down-oasis">Oasis shut down</a> for paying customers at the end of 2019.</p> |
There was a problem hiding this comment.
Reading the article start to finish, it's a little confusing that the team ostensibly disbanded but development continued. I think at this point it was a "community project" right? Even before 2020. Maybe clarify that?
Okay, this is a draft of my about page rework for the site. It's really nice that removing this from the actual software lets me not worry about localization (for now).
Currently, this removes all team members and advisors except Kenton from having a full bio/blurb. I left it as a half-width because I think eventually we may want to add community team members here. I think highlighting Kenton and his experience is still very key here. I changed "co-founder" to "creator" and updated some of the links.
I also made a first attempt at summarizing Sandstorm's history of crowdfunding, startup life, and post-startup progress. There are rough patches with this, I think the dollars and cents of funding and backers is probably silly here. And as an outsider, I don't know if there's other things that are important to describe about the SDG era of Sandstorm. I included both former employees and advisors of SDG in this narrative area because I felt their contributions remain particularly noteworthy, and their involvement is significant to the pedigree of the Sandstorm platform.
I removed the individual sections and images for key individual and corporate sponsors, but retained a special callout for them above the list of backers, including linking to websites or pages about them. (I found several results for HumanWeb, but couldn't conclusively identify which HumanWeb result was the one that participated in the crowdfunding for Sandstorm.) I added FundOSS as the matching contribution from them was significantly over the $1k mark, and indicated OpenCollective sponsors were also included. (I think we could write a post inviting donors to OpenCollective or FundOSS to request their name added here, FundOSS backers are not public, so they would need to send me a screenshot of a receipt or something.)
I am intentionally leaving it as a draft for now, because I am not happy with it myself at this point, but would like comments/review.