Writing about Cloudmorrow

In one line

Cloudmorrow is free, open-source software for keeping your own data, on your own computer, and changing the apps around it whenever you like.

In a paragraph

Cloudmorrow is a personal cloud you run yourself, on a small computer at home or a server you rent. Your notes, tasks, calendar, messages, files and passwords live in it, in standard shapes that every app agrees on. The apps, called quills, sit around that data and only touch what you let them. Remove a quill and nothing is lost; move to another server and everything comes with you. It is free software under the GNU AGPL v3, made by BramLabs in Vordingborg, Denmark, and anyone can help.

The longer story

Most software keeps your data inside the app. Leave the app and the data stays behind, or comes out in a shape nothing else reads. Cloudmorrow turns that around. The data is the durable part, and the apps are the disposable part. In one sentence: Cloudmorrow separates durable, user-controlled domain data from a disposable and replaceable application layer.

A Cloudmorrow is a server you own, for a person, a household or a company. It stores your data in standard shapes: a contact is a contact whichever app made it, and the same goes for a task, an event, a message, a file or a secret. These shapes, the datamodels, are published and versioned at cloudmorrow.com, and a quill that needs more adds to them rather than inventing a second kind of contact.

A quill is a small, shareable piece of software: screens, jobs, an API, tools for an assistant, or any mix. One description of a quill gives the same thing on the phone, in the browser and in the terminal. Installing one shows, in plain words, what it asks to see and change, and waits for a yes. Every quill and every assistant is on one screen with its access, and a switch to cut it. The Quill Catalog at cloudmorrow.com lists them; every one is free and open source.

Everything written to the disk is encrypted under a key the server holds. You sign in with a password and never handle a key. Cloudmorrow runs on a Raspberry Pi, an old laptop, a container or a rented server. It is free software under the GNU AGPL v3, started and looked after by BramLabs in Vordingborg, Denmark, funded by the people who use it, and open to anyone who wants to help.

The facts

What

Free, open-source software for a personal cloud: a server you own, holding your data in standard shapes, with the apps (quills) around it.

Who

Started and looked after by BramLabs in Vordingborg, Denmark, with anyone who wants to help.

Licence

GNU AGPL v3. Every repository is public at github.com/Cloudmorrow.

Costs

Nothing. No hosting by us, no plans, no prices; funded by donations.

Runs on

A Raspberry Pi, an old laptop, a container or a rented server. How installing works.

The name

Cloudmorrow, one word, capital C. The mascot is Morrow, a hedgehog on a cloud.