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

Post by raxxorraxor » Fri, Aug 04, 2023, 11:39 AM UTC

jedahan wrote: post #64

samwillis wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite true there is some irony to that. There has been a little talk of building a local first community platform, sadly doesn't exist yet.

Discord's UX is miles ahead of Element, and I setup and maintain communities on that use both. For something like local-first, like a local principled makerspace, we are happy to deal with the friction and try and contribute back on Matrix/Element. That said, infrastructure churn can be disruptive. Don't envy your position.

Post by oblib » Fri, Aug 04, 2023, 5:37 PM UTC

mixmastamyk wrote: post #191

oblib wrote: post #133

I worked on a local first version of an app I sell. I use CouchDB to store user data so it was pretty easy to implement because CouchDB will sync a local CouchDB to the Cloud based CouchDB as soon as any changes are made. That app is now 20 years old and over those years I've had users who quit using it call me years later to ask if I could give them access to their expired account or a copy of all their data. CouchD…

Seems like one problem is that you didn’t set it up automatically and expected them to do it on their own. Regular folks aren’t going to do that kind of thing without pressing need. Harder when it’s primarily a web app, but customers can be convinced to try mobile/desktop apps at times. Maybe give a discount?

Post by mixmastamyk » Fri, Aug 04, 2023, 9:43 PM UTC

oblib wrote: post #203

mixmastamyk wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like one problem is that you didn’t set it up automatically and expected them to do it on their own. Regular folks aren’t going to do that kind of thing without pressing need. Harder when it’s primarily a web app, but customers can be convinced to try mobile/desktop apps at times. Maybe give a discount?

>> Seems like one problem is that you didn’t set it up automatically and expected them to do it on their own. Downloading and configuring CouchDB on their PC isn't something I can do for them, but it's really simple and easy to do and I provided step by step instructions. I didn't charge them anything at all to get and use the offline first version of the app. They already paid for the online version (that's a yearly…

Post by thrixton » Sat, Aug 05, 2023, 7:02 AM UTC

retrocryptid wrote: post #105

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…

At least with on-prem, you can talk to the infrstructure team's management to negotiate adding currently non-supported features. I was hired at Amazon 8 years ago to implement a couple of features. One of them was difficult because it required communication / buy-in from multiple two pizza teams. By the time I left it was stalled. Three years ago I randomly started at an AWS customer who needed that feature as they h…

Post by thrixton » Sat, Aug 05, 2023, 7:16 AM UTC

datadrivenangel wrote: post #136

idlewords wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies embrace cloud tech because it turns large capital budgets into operating budgets, and prevents dental implant companies or soda distributors from having to figure out how to hire competent sysadmins.

Replace all your competent sysadmins with even more expensive cloud architects!