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Whether you have to log in or whether any data is stored locally isn't a technical distinction made by whether the client is implemented as a browser applicatio

Whether you have to log in or whether any data is stored locally isn't a technical distinction made by whether the client is implemented as a browser application or a native application. Your post is one big non sequitur. Moving from streaming music from my Spotify Javascript client to streaming music from my native iTunes Swift app does nothing for me. I'd say it's actually worse because now my solution isn't cross-platform anymore and I've lost the browser chrome's dev tools like the network inspector. A browser client puts much more control in the hands of the user. It's one of the last bastions of freedom that we have before all software in locked behind app stores and app approval processes.

paulryanrogers 6y ago
The point seems to be that users usually don't control the servers. If the app is entirely local then users may have full control.
- resfirestar 6y ago
  The fact that users don't usually control the servers with web apps is just a reflection of the fact that users don't usually control anything these days, and most user facing applications these days are implemented as web apps. The average user doesn't have control over their desktop apps either, those apps are dependent on Microsoft/Apple/Adobe servers and even if they aren't "helpfully" syncing everything to a cloud they're sending disturbing amounts of telemetry. As hombre_fatal points out, there's no intrinsic link between the freedom question and the technical question. Enough free software developers (understandably) just prefer a traditional desktop app/local storage design over an API/web client design that people get the impression that freedom respecting apps are always desktop apps. Partly because of that choice, free software is going to keep looking outdated and inconvenient to use while more people flock to SaaSS for the services' superior cross-platform and multi-device capabilities.
  - paulryanrogers 6y ago
    > The average user doesn't have control over their desktop apps either, ... Right, that's why I mentioned "entirely local".
robenkleene 6y ago
My native iTunes app supports hosting my entire music collection as MP3 files that I've bought from any number of services (or ripped myself) on my hard disk that I can simply copy to any other computer and it will play them just fine, in any application that supports that format. That's exactly what 100% data ownership looks like, rendering your claim that the post is "one big non sequitur" absolutely ridiculous.

paulryanrogers 6y ago

The point seems to be that users usually don't control the servers. If the app is entirely local then users may have full control.

resfirestar 6y ago
The fact that users don't usually control the servers with web apps is just a reflection of the fact that users don't usually control anything these days, and most user facing applications these days are implemented as web apps. The average user doesn't have control over their desktop apps either, those apps are dependent on Microsoft/Apple/Adobe servers and even if they aren't "helpfully" syncing everything to a cloud they're sending disturbing amounts of telemetry. As hombre_fatal points out, there's no intrinsic link between the freedom question and the technical question. Enough free software developers (understandably) just prefer a traditional desktop app/local storage design over an API/web client design that people get the impression that freedom respecting apps are always desktop apps. Partly because of that choice, free software is going to keep looking outdated and inconvenient to use while more people flock to SaaSS for the services' superior cross-platform and multi-device capabilities.
- paulryanrogers 6y ago
  > The average user doesn't have control over their desktop apps either, ... Right, that's why I mentioned "entirely local".

robenkleene 6y ago

My native iTunes app supports hosting my entire music collection as MP3 files that I've bought from any number of services (or ripped myself) on my hard disk that I can simply copy to any other computer and it will play them just fine, in any application that supports that format. That's exactly what 100% data ownership looks like, rendering your claim that the post is "one big non sequitur" absolutely ridiculous.