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An important feature of the decentralized web is that one Harvard/MIT person doesn't get to design it.
I'm not sure what your objection is. Why shouldn't one Harvard/MIT person design it? I mean, somebody has to.
I think all three of these principles are important but miss an obvious one that should come first. A decentralized web should have decentralization as its central principle. If we're talking about our ideal pie-in-the-sky protocol (where people have total control over their data) then let's dream big. Web hosting should be completely decentralized. DDOS attacks should become infeasible because there are no dedicated…
I only discussed what matters to the user (control, interoperability and portability) - extending the list with technical perspective will then come soon.
Does the web here mean a network of hyperlinked documents, does it mean HTTP, or does it mean "browser stuff"? Personally, I think we should retire the idea of The Decentralized Web. It doesn't help clear thinking. BitTorrent is one of the most successful decentralization stories out there right now, but it's 0% part of "The Decentralized Web".
I don't think control of data, user or otherwise, is an inherent part of decentralisation. If fact it may be the opposite. So as a principle for a Decentralised Web its a contradiction. Maybe it works as a part of a more broad set of principles (eg. a Healthy Web).
Can you expound? Why is user control if data the opposite? To me this seems in keeping with the basic principles of decentralization of power, that I should have autonomy over my own domain.
Just because data isn't centralized doesn't mean users will have the control.
I think all three of these principles are important but miss an obvious one that should come first. A decentralized web should have decentralization as its central principle. If we're talking about our ideal pie-in-the-sky protocol (where people have total control over their data) then let's dream big. Web hosting should be completely decentralized. DDOS attacks should become infeasible because there are no dedicated…
This. Decentralization needs to be the foremost feature of a decentralized system. No single points of failure. Scaling up and down with demand. Resilience and choice for everybody. Money has been decentralized. Social networking hasn't, yet. Security hasn't, not really. Have you installed the latest SquirrelMail patches yet? You probably use GMail so you don't have to worry about it.
An important feature of the decentralized web is that one Harvard/MIT person doesn't get to design it.
The Open Mustard Seed (OMS) project is an open-source framework
for developing and deploying web apps in a secure,
user-centric personal cloud. The framework provides a
stack of core technologies that work together to provide
a high level of security and ease of use when sharing and
collecting personal and environmental data, controlling
web-enabled devices, and engaging with others to
aggregate information and view the results of applied
computation via protected services.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure what your objection is. Why shouldn't one Harvard/MIT person design it? I mean, somebody has to.
Web centralization is a structural and economic problem that is not going to be solved by the tech elite. We don't need new protocols; the ones we have worked fine back when the web was decentralized.
We're using stock Ubuntu cloud images w/CloudInit so everything that runs on Portal will run anywhere Linux VMs run. Once there are some standards for importing/exporting data we're going to make that a one-click operation. Users can already download all of their data and completely wipe all remote copies.
The original promise of the internet was that we would all control our own domain names. Instead we ended up @gmail.com facebook.com, and twitter.com. We can fix this for less than $10/user/mo now.
In a world where every person runs their own cloud server, all we really need to do is install the same apps as each other. Apps can just invent their own (open) protocols and other developers can make apps that interoperate. Standards can emerge naturally over time.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This. Decentralization needs to be the foremost feature of a decentralized system. No single points of failure. Scaling up and down with demand. Resilience and choice for everybody. Money has been decentralized. Social networking hasn't, yet. Security hasn't, not really. Have you installed the latest SquirrelMail patches yet? You probably use GMail so you don't have to worry about it.
You should look into diaspora, an open-source decentralized social network. IMO diaspora has formidable foundation and interesting content. Highly recommend. However, as Eben Moglin said, the next facebook should never happen.