4 ms·

Sure, but I'd say 1 hour/week is quite a bit more than the a normal person would like to spend on maintaining apps (probably 0). Why someone would want to run

Sure, but I'd say 1 hour/week is quite a bit more than the a normal person would like to spend on maintaining apps (probably 0). Why someone would want to run their own instance of their favorite web app when most are given away for free, no maintenance required.

zwarag 11y ago
Because there are people out there who got priorities where other just do opportunism.
jeena 11y ago
> when most are given away for free Free as in beer, not as in liberty, that is my problem and why I want to run my own instances. You might not value freedom as high as I do.
INTPenis 11y ago
The average person is not supposed to maintain their own node for these services. That's why they have us who give our free time and our VPS accounts to host such things. It basically comes down to trusting Big Media or trusting your neighbour with your data. I personally doubt we'll see a big breakthrough for Big Media alternatives because people go where their friends are. I am unfortunately expecting fragmentation in that field, sort of like reverting back to the early days of the internet when us nerds who could connect were considered a subculture. Now that everyone can connect we're creating a subculture of people who choose not to use Big Media and instead gravitate towards smaller and less centralized alternatives. That doesn't matter though, I have always enjoyed being on the fringe and I believe I will continue enjoying my time there. :)
- dragontamer 11y ago
  * Federated vs Centralized * Usenet vs Internet. * IRC vs AOL Instant Messenger * Email vs Xanga / Myspace / Facebook * Torrent vs Dropbox / Cloud Storage Federated has its advantages. Centralized has its advantages. 40 years from now, people will continue to use the federated platform. The centralized platform only stays around as long as it is profitable. But while the centralized platform is around, things are a lot more convenient and mainstream.
  - deerpig 11y ago
    Damn good observation -- but it begs the question, why can't federated be as frictionless as centralized? Is this a matter of effort, funding and organization, or something more fundamental?
    - dragontamer 11y ago
      Its a fundamental difference. Consider HTTPS, SSLv2, SSLv3, and TLS1.0, and TLS1.1. As web security standards evolved, the people who run HTTPS servers flat out refuse to upgrade the security protocols. Federated admins don't necessarily run their servers as a full time job, while centralized organizations are well funded and well paid. It takes a lot longer for infrastructure in federated networks to upgrade. Facebook can add new features across the entire network immediately. Imagine if you wanted to add a game protocol to IRC for example. You'd create the protocol, then you'd try to get Freenode to switch over to the new and improved game protocol, and then they won't do it. So you create your own IRC server and no one comes. You give up and open source the project. Years later, some guy finds your open source implementation and maybe the protocol finally becomes popular enough to be used... or maybe they'll use your protocol as a base for their ideas and it will evolve into something else. -------------- When "federated" works, it is mostly due to the big players agreeing that a particular federated protocol is amazing. Take OAuth for instance, which got Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft support early. Ultimately, it is very difficult to make money from federated services, so there's no money (or investment) going into those projects. OAuth was a pro-bono non-political effort to make the web better. Such efforts are extremely rare. In fact, most federated protocols exist to give a particular company an advantage (or to levy disadvantages on a particular company's competitors). So there's a healthy amount of distrust to any newly proposed protocols... for good reason. Ex: Theora / MPEG4 / video tag nonsense, or DRM support in web browsers. The big daddy federated network: Email / SMTP, was basically a research project from the late 1960s, and received public investment in the 1990s as IMAP and POP3 protocols were developed. (Anyone else remember paying for Juno email on their 33.6kbps modems?). Due to years of use, it has found its niche and no "competitor" will ever really displace it.
rndmind 11y ago
Hosting your own node is reserved for hobbyists, and privacy, cryptography, tech enthusiasts, not regular users. Although regular users can support by simply using the services and contributing.
- st3v3r 11y ago
  And now that comes back to the problem that was pointed out in the other thread: Which one do you join?

zwarag 11y ago

Because there are people out there who got priorities where other just do opportunism.

jeena 11y ago

> when most are given away for free Free as in beer, not as in liberty, that is my problem and why I want to run my own instances. You might not value freedom as high as I do.

INTPenis 11y ago

The average person is not supposed to maintain their own node for these services. That's why they have us who give our free time and our VPS accounts to host such things. It basically comes down to trusting Big Media or trusting your neighbour with your data. I personally doubt we'll see a big breakthrough for Big Media alternatives because people go where their friends are. I am unfortunately expecting fragmentation in that field, sort of like reverting back to the early days of the internet when us nerds who could connect were considered a subculture. Now that everyone can connect we're creating a subculture of people who choose not to use Big Media and instead gravitate towards smaller and less centralized alternatives. That doesn't matter though, I have always enjoyed being on the fringe and I believe I will continue enjoying my time there. :)

dragontamer 11y ago
* Federated vs Centralized * Usenet vs Internet. * IRC vs AOL Instant Messenger * Email vs Xanga / Myspace / Facebook * Torrent vs Dropbox / Cloud Storage Federated has its advantages. Centralized has its advantages. 40 years from now, people will continue to use the federated platform. The centralized platform only stays around as long as it is profitable. But while the centralized platform is around, things are a lot more convenient and mainstream.
- deerpig 11y ago
  Damn good observation -- but it begs the question, why can't federated be as frictionless as centralized? Is this a matter of effort, funding and organization, or something more fundamental?
  - dragontamer 11y ago
    Its a fundamental difference. Consider HTTPS, SSLv2, SSLv3, and TLS1.0, and TLS1.1. As web security standards evolved, the people who run HTTPS servers flat out refuse to upgrade the security protocols. Federated admins don't necessarily run their servers as a full time job, while centralized organizations are well funded and well paid. It takes a lot longer for infrastructure in federated networks to upgrade. Facebook can add new features across the entire network immediately. Imagine if you wanted to add a game protocol to IRC for example. You'd create the protocol, then you'd try to get Freenode to switch over to the new and improved game protocol, and then they won't do it. So you create your own IRC server and no one comes. You give up and open source the project. Years later, some guy finds your open source implementation and maybe the protocol finally becomes popular enough to be used... or maybe they'll use your protocol as a base for their ideas and it will evolve into something else. -------------- When "federated" works, it is mostly due to the big players agreeing that a particular federated protocol is amazing. Take OAuth for instance, which got Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft support early. Ultimately, it is very difficult to make money from federated services, so there's no money (or investment) going into those projects. OAuth was a pro-bono non-political effort to make the web better. Such efforts are extremely rare. In fact, most federated protocols exist to give a particular company an advantage (or to levy disadvantages on a particular company's competitors). So there's a healthy amount of distrust to any newly proposed protocols... for good reason. Ex: Theora / MPEG4 / video tag nonsense, or DRM support in web browsers. The big daddy federated network: Email / SMTP, was basically a research project from the late 1960s, and received public investment in the 1990s as IMAP and POP3 protocols were developed. (Anyone else remember paying for Juno email on their 33.6kbps modems?). Due to years of use, it has found its niche and no "competitor" will ever really displace it.

rndmind 11y ago

Hosting your own node is reserved for hobbyists, and privacy, cryptography, tech enthusiasts, not regular users. Although regular users can support by simply using the services and contributing.

st3v3r 11y ago
And now that comes back to the problem that was pointed out in the other thread: Which one do you join?