4 ms·

I would argue that the opposite is true: > Unfortunately the problem with the SaaS is lack of control, so after a couple of years, when the company shuts down

by JD557 8y ago

I would argue that the opposite is true: > Unfortunately the problem with the SaaS is lack of control, so after a couple of years, when the company shuts down you will be forced to move on to an alternative. And at that point you will lose all your data (in this case, gists) and links, let alone time. Even if the author stops posting updates, you can keep using the application for as long as you like. Since it's open source, you can even update it yourself if you really need it. Also, all your data is stored on a database that you control, so you'll never lose them (unless you delete the database). In this case, gists might even be stored as a git repository, so it might not be that hard to import them to another self-hosted snippets app.

scrollaway 8y ago
> Also, all your data is stored on a database that you control, so you'll never lose them (unless you delete the database). The opposite is true as well: > Also, all your data is stored on a database that you control, so you'll eventually lose them (unless you apply the same rigor in system administration, backups and security that large companies would). I used to always host everything myself. I knew the risks, and I knew they would bite me some day, but I wanted to learn. I don't regret this choice. But the day I lost my 10 years of IRC chat history was the day I subscribed to IRCCloud instead. The day I lost all the photos I took with my mom on some trip was the day I started heavily using Google Photos. Even long before that, the day I lost my only physical copy of my favourite game was the day I bought it back on GOG. Life's too short to care about this stuff for more than the learning experience. Using cloud services is a fucking immense productivity gain. Of course I still encourage people to run their own stuff, and I 100% back self-hosted alternatives (they're important). The best services in my experience provide self-hosted + paid hosted service. Those are the ones you can really trust. You choose your trade-off based on your use case, and you are very likely to get the advantage of data portability. Paying money for it also ensures you're less likely to get screwed by their whims.
- QasimK 8y ago
  It just sounds like all of the self-hosted services you were using were crap to be honest. They still are more or less. IRC and photos should have a one-click button to set up encrypted backups to a location of your choosing, local, remote, cloud. Ideally, of course, you’d configure this location once and then all apps would automatically use it. As for physical games, this is not a comparable example (physical self-managed vs virtual self-managed). In this case, you’d virtually back up the disk, and if you can’t because of DRM or something, then you don’t really own it. Your comment on self-hosted + paid-hosted I especially agree with and is one that I’ve quite recently also came to the conclusion of.
  - scrollaway 8y ago
    > It just sounds like all of the self-hosted services you were using were crap to be honest. No... they just match up with expectations of what I said: You need backup solutions. Those backup solutions need to work, need to be recoverable. And when a disaster happens, let's say there's a fire at my house, the last thing I want to be doing is spending hours recovering backup. That's a sysadmin's job, not mine. I don't know why you say IRC "should have a one-click button to set up encrypted backups to a location of your choosing" -- that's not the case of any existing service to my knowledge, possibly not even for photos. And I also wouldn't expect every single self-hosted service developer out there to have to set up something like that, especially given that the development of such a thing requires pretty extensive sysadmin knowledge and self-hosted projects tend to be open-source-volunteer ones. I'd love to have more things work like git though. Easy mirroring. Decentralized truth. In some way, IPFS, but not for like the entire internet; just for select projects.

by JD557 8y ago

scrollaway 8y ago

> Also, all your data is stored on a database that you control, so you'll never lose them (unless you delete the database). The opposite is true as well: > Also, all your data is stored on a database that you control, so you'll eventually lose them (unless you apply the same rigor in system administration, backups and security that large companies would). I used to always host everything myself. I knew the risks, and I knew they would bite me some day, but I wanted to learn. I don't regret this choice. But the day I lost my 10 years of IRC chat history was the day I subscribed to IRCCloud instead. The day I lost all the photos I took with my mom on some trip was the day I started heavily using Google Photos. Even long before that, the day I lost my only physical copy of my favourite game was the day I bought it back on GOG. Life's too short to care about this stuff for more than the learning experience. Using cloud services is a fucking immense productivity gain. Of course I still encourage people to run their own stuff, and I 100% back self-hosted alternatives (they're important). The best services in my experience provide self-hosted + paid hosted service. Those are the ones you can really trust. You choose your trade-off based on your use case, and you are very likely to get the advantage of data portability. Paying money for it also ensures you're less likely to get screwed by their whims.

QasimK 8y ago
It just sounds like all of the self-hosted services you were using were crap to be honest. They still are more or less. IRC and photos should have a one-click button to set up encrypted backups to a location of your choosing, local, remote, cloud. Ideally, of course, you’d configure this location once and then all apps would automatically use it. As for physical games, this is not a comparable example (physical self-managed vs virtual self-managed). In this case, you’d virtually back up the disk, and if you can’t because of DRM or something, then you don’t really own it. Your comment on self-hosted + paid-hosted I especially agree with and is one that I’ve quite recently also came to the conclusion of.
- scrollaway 8y ago
  > It just sounds like all of the self-hosted services you were using were crap to be honest. No... they just match up with expectations of what I said: You need backup solutions. Those backup solutions need to work, need to be recoverable. And when a disaster happens, let's say there's a fire at my house, the last thing I want to be doing is spending hours recovering backup. That's a sysadmin's job, not mine. I don't know why you say IRC "should have a one-click button to set up encrypted backups to a location of your choosing" -- that's not the case of any existing service to my knowledge, possibly not even for photos. And I also wouldn't expect every single self-hosted service developer out there to have to set up something like that, especially given that the development of such a thing requires pretty extensive sysadmin knowledge and self-hosted projects tend to be open-source-volunteer ones. I'd love to have more things work like git though. Easy mirroring. Decentralized truth. In some way, IPFS, but not for like the entire internet; just for select projects.