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The future is not self-hosted

drewlyton.com

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Re: The future is not self-hosted

#21

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

jqpabc123 wrote: post #2

What we need now from this vibrant community of smart, dedicated, part-time sys-admins is to think... beyond individualism What we need first is incentive for smart, dedicated, part-time sys-admins to devote time and effort to community hosting. Without this, it will work --- in the same way that open source works --- without any guarantees or commitments whatsoever. In other words, you're on your own for the most pa…

I think that cycle will break one day.

It's easy to trust a corporate overlord with your pictures or your email, because the immediate damage doable by somebody who has compromised those things is relatively low. Privacy is important I guess, but not when compared to things like whether your car or your insulin pump does what it needs to to keep you alive.

Eventually, the bad guys will be sophisticated enough, and the tech will be integrated enough, that it's no longer safe to trust economic incentives alone. You're going to want your sysadmin to share your interests (in a more specific way than you get from they-also-like-money).

Re: The future is not self-hosted

#23

Post by arscan »

rs186 wrote: post #13

> My wife and I now have a computer in our house that runs open-source equivalents to Google Drive, Google Photos, Audible, Kindle, and Netflix. It syncs to all of our devices. It's secured behind our own VPN. And it's wholly, truly owned by us. Good for you. But for most people, it is an endeavor with zero gain, meaning no positive impact to their daily life, if not full of negative impact.

A danger with the arrangement of this article is that it takes awhile to get to the point, which actually in line with your view. He hints at it in the title and the very next paragraph, but maybe you didn’t get that far?

> And this week, I want to share with you how I did it, what I learned, and why I think self-hosting is NOT the future we should be fighting for.

Re: The future is not self-hosted

#25

Post by meonkeys »

Well-said, Drew! This is inspiring.

The privileged enjoy far more privacy and autonomy and this is brought into sharp focus with wonderful hobbies like self-hosting. Perhaps it all boils down to end-stage capitalism, and perhaps there's a technical solution where selflessness overcomes end-stage capitalism. Someone else mentioned incentives and yeah, that'll help, but hopefully we'll collectively choose to do the hard thing because it's the right thing. Heck, maybe the right thing will also be the easy thing if we come up with better ideas like yours.

Re: The future is not self-hosted

#26

Post by VikingCoder »

So, the thing we have right now is Tailscale - and it's freaking awesome.

But I want the next thing. Which is like Tailscale2, but for people, not machines.

I want to tell Tailscale2 about all of the people in my life, and which of my self-hosted apps they're allowed to talk to. And if they're also running a self-hosted app, then I want our apps to federate together.

It feels like we're suuuuuper close to having this.

I get that you can basically do this with Tailscale. Basically. But I want the next thing to be designed from the ground-up around this kind of design. People, sharing apps with each other.

Re: The future is not self-hosted

#27

Post by NoboruWataya »

MoreQARespect wrote: post #9

Self hosting reminds me of the world of smartphones just before the advent of the iPhone. Using a phone as a mini computer was possible. Downloading and using apps happened. I even used offline maps. It was still the preserve of nerds while regular people "couldn't understand why you'd use a phone to do anything other than text and call". SUDDENLY once it became seamless and trivial to set everything and it was all b…

Unlike with smartphones though, I don't really see that anyone has a strong enough incentive and deep enough pockets to bridge that gap.

Re: The future is not self-hosted

#28

Post by theamk »

MoreQARespect wrote: post #9

Self hosting reminds me of the world of smartphones just before the advent of the iPhone. Using a phone as a mini computer was possible. Downloading and using apps happened. I even used offline maps. It was still the preserve of nerds while regular people "couldn't understand why you'd use a phone to do anything other than text and call". SUDDENLY once it became seamless and trivial to set everything and it was all b…

This still exists... OsmAnd, offline map app for Android, has 10M+ downloads. Maps.me has 50M+ downloads. Sure, that's not 10B+ of Google Maps users, but still a lot of users.

I don't think the "advanced users" market has shrunk much, it's just the whole pie became so much bigger that the overall ratio decreased.

Re: The future is not self-hosted

#29

Post by nicman23 »

VikingCoder wrote: post #26

So, the thing we have right now is Tailscale - and it's freaking awesome. But I want the next thing. Which is like Tailscale2, but for people, not machines. I want to tell Tailscale2 about all of the people in my life, and which of my self-hosted apps they're allowed to talk to. And if they're also running a self-hosted app, then I want our apps to federate together. It feels like we're suuuuuper close to having this…

that is just usenet with extra steps

Re: The future is not self-hosted

#30

Post by kreco »

I strongly agree with the global sentiment.

If you can't actually download a copy of a digital content as a mere file, then you can't really host it and serve it.

You can't host your own Spotify-clone even if you are allowed to listen to songs. However, you can still download music on Bandcamp to feed your Spotify-clone.

You can't host your own your own digital Video Game Store usually because of various DRM, or because it's painful to "export" the content and painful to "import" it back.

Still on the video game side, You can't even backup your game save (at least on the Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2 and Xbox Series), it's not because of any copyright infringement or IPs misuse, it's only a way for them to get more online subscription with online game save backup.

There is still a positive side: when it will become impossible to legally own anything, I'm pretty sure some illegal system will enable you to have a massive library of whatever you want at the cost of few clicks and/or a couple of bucks. I'm saying "positive side" even though it's illegal because I mostly talk about the comfort of having your own local library.

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