Excellent article. I like the sound of OSv, which attempts to make appliances that run on hypervisors: https://github.com/cloudius-systems/osv

Sandstorm looks interesting. I'm slightly skeptical as the homepage has a link to their enterprise sales, yet it's hyped as a project of good will. I'd like to hear more about their business model. From a technical side, the project makes a lot of sense. But I'd rather see something like OSv be made to run on users' machines and phones and not just cloud systems, which would let app authors distribute directly to users with little hassle.