Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The cloud is a prison. can the local-first software movement set us free?

wired.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 215 posts

Re: The cloud is a prison. can the local-first software movement set us free?

#71

Post by ryandrake »

taylodl wrote: post #29

Anyone who's worked inside a large organization knows the cloud is the solution to be able to get things done and deliver value to the business. Why? On-prem solutions require I work with the infrastructure group, who wants to cookie-cutter me into their limited stable of infrastructure options; I have to work with the systems group, who gives me very limited options and configurations for the operating systems; the…

> Four groups! All with their own workflows, their own SLAs, their own exemption policies, etc. It's a nightmare to get anything done and the business is frustrated that things take so long.

This seems like a wound self-inflicted by a company that can't seem to run itself efficiently. You're not describing attributes of on-prem and cloud--you're describing a dysfunctional organization.

Re: The cloud is a prison. can the local-first software movement set us free?

#72

Post by gochi »

ryandrake wrote: post #71
taylodl wrote: post #29

Anyone who's worked inside a large organization knows the cloud is the solution to be able to get things done and deliver value to the business. Why? On-prem solutions require I work with the infrastructure group, who wants to cookie-cutter me into their limited stable of infrastructure options; I have to work with the systems group, who gives me very limited options and configurations for the operating systems; the…

> Four groups! All with their own workflows, their own SLAs, their own exemption policies, etc. It's a nightmare to get anything done and the business is frustrated that things take so long. This seems like a wound self-inflicted by a company that can't seem to run itself efficiently. You're not describing attributes of on-prem and cloud--you're describing a dysfunctional organization.

You've circled back to their point about forcing the rest of the organization into becoming cookie cutters.

Re: The cloud is a prison. can the local-first software movement set us free?

#73

Post by delfinom »

belval wrote: post #61
piker wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So your organisation is so inefficient that it’s easier to just engage a third party to syphon off any profitability?

> your organisation is so inefficient Very few organizations are able to stay efficient on the long run as they scale. This is a simple matter of processes being stacked on top of processes and inter-departement frictions. That complexity is inherent to having regulations and laws that you need to comply with that become hard requirements. For a more concrete example think of HIPAA compliance, during an audit you can…

>Very few organizations are able to stay efficient on the long run as they scale

Simply using AWS doesn't do anything to help with this in that same long run. Give it a decade or two and those same organizations will suddenly have multiple bureaucratic departments to approve new AWS resources and spending.

All AWS is offering is a channel that a bureaucratic process hasn't been developed for _yet_ and the organizations hivemind response is to allow its usage freely because it doesn't fit in the existing form template of rules

Re: The cloud is a prison. can the local-first software movement set us free?

#74

Post by jeanlou »

piker wrote: post #34
taylodl wrote: post #29

Anyone who's worked inside a large organization knows the cloud is the solution to be able to get things done and deliver value to the business. Why? On-prem solutions require I work with the infrastructure group, who wants to cookie-cutter me into their limited stable of infrastructure options; I have to work with the systems group, who gives me very limited options and configurations for the operating systems; the…

So your organisation is so inefficient that it’s easier to just engage a third party to syphon off any profitability?

I sense that you're writing this as if software is an end to itself as opposed to a mean. It's normal to engage with third party, especially for activities that are not part of your core business.

Re: The cloud is a prison. can the local-first software movement set us free?

#75

Post by robertlagrant »

akho wrote: post #27
shafyy wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CleanShot X for Mac is a great example of this. It's basically a screenshotting and screen recording tool that you install. But you can also tell it to upload your images and videos to their cloud and get a link to share them with your friends or coworkers (especially helpful for screencasts for example).

Why not dropbox or whatever place you use to share files normally? a screenshot program does not need a cloud.

Dropbox would do well to make a decent screenshot tool and make it share dropbox links.

Re: The cloud is a prison. can the local-first software movement set us free?

#76

Post by jeanlou »

ilc wrote: post #66
belval wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> your organisation is so inefficient Very few organizations are able to stay efficient on the long run as they scale. This is a simple matter of processes being stacked on top of processes and inter-departement frictions. That complexity is inherent to having regulations and laws that you need to comply with that become hard requirements. For a more concrete example think of HIPAA compliance, during an audit you can…

Just because AWS is HIPAA compliant, doesn't mean what you do there is :). But at least it solves the basics.

That's just nitpicking

Re: The cloud is a prison. can the local-first software movement set us free?

#77

Post by pixl97 »

delfinom wrote: post #73
belval wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> your organisation is so inefficient Very few organizations are able to stay efficient on the long run as they scale. This is a simple matter of processes being stacked on top of processes and inter-departement frictions. That complexity is inherent to having regulations and laws that you need to comply with that become hard requirements. For a more concrete example think of HIPAA compliance, during an audit you can…

>Very few organizations are able to stay efficient on the long run as they scale Simply using AWS doesn't do anything to help with this in that same long run. Give it a decade or two and those same organizations will suddenly have multiple bureaucratic departments to approve new AWS resources and spending. All AWS is offering is a channel that a bureaucratic process hasn't been developed for _yet_ and the organizatio…

>Give it a decade or two

A decade or two is someone else's problem.

Re: The cloud is a prison. can the local-first software movement set us free?

#78

Post by Agingcoder »

theshrike79 wrote: post #67
piker wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So your organisation is so inefficient that it’s easier to just engage a third party to syphon off any profitability?

I can literally right now, sitting here in my underwear, spin up 4 clustered servers in 3 different continents with a globally replicated object storage and a master + 2 slaves setup of SQL databases on each location. And all that for less than the price of _one_ competent sysadmin's monthly salary. How would you suggest a company would match that with local servers and sysadmins? One sysadmin per 8 hour shift = 3 pe…

It depends on the size of your company. If it has 200k employees, you can mutualize the salaries of your dbas. There are also intermediate steps between ´build your own dc’ and ´run everything in was’. You will build monitoring tools anyway, and will most likely have sysadmins too if your fleet is large enough etc.

Cloud is not always an obvious win, and depends a lot on where you work

Re: The cloud is a prison. can the local-first software movement set us free?

#79

Post by aloer »

I like the term local-first software and I think p2p collaboration (think: protocols other than HTTP, e.g. to prevent nation-wide censorship or decentralized / synchronized via local means during emergencies) and e2e encryption are amazing features. Possibly increased performance for local sync is a nice benefit as well.

That said, the article and most of the comments here somehow talk about or even compare to The Cloud and I don't think that is particularly relevant.

The cloud has nothing to do with companies owning all the community data (user relationships, crowdsourced information). Facebook, twitter, reddit etc. are not "the cloud"

The cloud has little to do with data privacy concerns. Self-hosting exists and it is not a problem of trust in infrastructure. Self-hosting on AWS should be considered safe for all but the most extreme cases (legally forbidden content?)

The cloud has little to do with proprietary data formats. It is absolutely possible to build a SaaS with proper import/export protocols. Financial incentives are misaligned, not technical.

An example is excalidraw (https://excalidraw.com/). AFAIK they don't use CRDTs but they are what I would consider local-first.

Here, local-first adds the features mentioned above. In addition to that it is self-hostable from a small local raspberry pi to a proper server in someone else's data center / "The Cloud".

I would propose more use of the cloud for something like this.

If self-hosting became easier then perhaps more people would care for open data (access & standardized formats). A managed, serverless and on-demand model seems perfect and could enable non-technical people to host their own collaborative whiteboards or photo galleries or chatroom for family & friends.

Re: The cloud is a prison. can the local-first software movement set us free?

#80

Post by pratio »

The comment section seems to be going in the direction of On-Perm vs Cloud while the article is about the local machine of the user. As in instead of using google doc to collaborate, we each use a document editor on our local machines and then sync without going through a middleman.
Post reply on HN