alt Hacker NewsThe ability to run your own server--or even not requiring a bespoke set of operations--isn't a special property of a CRDT; the same thing should be doable with something like ShareJS and it's generic tree/JSON structures.
FWIW, though, the author of ShareJS had said some pretty strong things pro-CRDT in the past and even kind of lamenting his work on OT, so...
Hi, that’s me!
OT would work fine to make this collaboratively editable. It’s just not local first. (If that matters to you.)
With an OT based system like sharejs or google docs, the server is the hub, and clients are spokes connecting to that hub. Or to put it another way, the server acts as the central source of truth. If the server goes down, you’ve not only lost the ability to collaboratively edit. You've also usually lost your data too. (You can store a local copy, but sharejs not designed to be able to restore the server’s data from whatever is cached on the clients).
With Yjs (and similar libraries), the entire data set is usually stored on each peer the server is just one node you happen to connect to & use to relay messages. Because they’re using Yjs, the author of this travel app could easily set up a parallel webrtc channel with his wife’s computer (in the same house). Any edits made would be broadcast through all available pipes. Then even when they’re on the road and the internet goes down, their devices could still stay in sync. And if the server was somehow wiped, you could spin up another one. The first client that connects would automatically populate the server with all of the data.
But whether these local first characteristics matter to you is another question. They might be a hindrance - for commercial data, centralisation is often desirable. I can think of plenty of use cases where replicating your entire database to your customers’ computers (and replicating any changes they make back!) would be a disaster. It depends on your use case.