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This is why we need truly distributed webapps rather than monolithic tied-to-domain apps. Doing this right is a hard problem and many of current solutions are s
by dingdingdang 8y ago
This is why we need truly distributed webapps rather than monolithic tied-to-domain apps. Doing this right is a hard problem and many of current solutions are still essentially centralized despite their reliance on certain aspects of P2P.
- toomuchtodo 8y agoOpen standards are superior to the complexity of distributed webapps. I can port my Gmail account to Fastmail with a few clicks. There's no lock in with my email data. I can put my mail anywhere! That should be the goal of all hosted data; portability, so you're never beholden to a SaaS provider.
- omnimus 8y agoBut this is also starting to not be true. Gmail is very slowly adding features not in smtp/imap and one day they might just break away and have their closed email. This happened on multiple occasions with xmpp. At one point you could write from icq to hangouts to facebook messanger. After companies gathered critical mass of users they turned off federation. This is one of the main reasons people use facebook messanger (almost everyone has it) and this might happen to gmail quite easily. Almost everyone had gmail at some point so this idea is pretty possible. Many people would then keep gmail account just to comunicate with people who dont have email.
- toomuchtodo 8y agoI hate to beat the dead horse as I often do on HN, but the support of open standards requires constant vigilance. If Gmail begins to "wall the garden off", you must move to a more open provider (such as Fastmail, but any provider providing standards compliant email works).