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I suspect the market may actually be of decent size if you consider enterprises, journalists, politicians, and the like. Users who aren't necessarily tech savvy

I suspect the market may actually be of decent size if you consider enterprises, journalists, politicians, and the like. Users who aren't necessarily tech savvy, won't stop using default services/apps without a fight, but who require a level or privacy that is currently somewhat compromised.

vkou 4y ago
Have you seen the unmitigated dumpster fire that is mass-market Wordpress hosting? Now imagine that, but even worse. Users who aren't tech savvy who are trying to run their own mission-critical software on their own hardware: 1. Should expect to pay $200+/month for a support plan. That will buy them one hour of an engineer's time per month. They are going to need that time, because deploying software is hard, keeping software running is hard, and there are no SRE/DevOps economies of scale when every Tom, Dick, and Harry wants to run their own service on their own hardware. 2. Should expect to either deal with all the problems (stability and security) that come with regular auto-updates, or regularly getting pwned (because they aren't auto-updating, and because they are a juicy, high ROI target for bad actors). 3. All this stuff already exists for enterprises, and they aren't complaining in these HN threads, because their needs are being met by cloud providers (As are the needs of politicians. Because they generally don't need security, they need security theatre. As long as they can check the compliance checkbox, they are in the clear.) The people whose needs aren't met are the long-tail small-fry of journalists and hobbyists and their ilk. Who aren't enough of a market, and can't afford the money, and the time, because see points #1 and #2. Like, maybe the NYT can afford to have this set up, and set up well for their people, but they already have dedicated IT teams doing just that!

vkou 4y ago

Have you seen the unmitigated dumpster fire that is mass-market Wordpress hosting? Now imagine that, but even worse. Users who aren't tech savvy who are trying to run their own mission-critical software on their own hardware: 1. Should expect to pay $200+/month for a support plan. That will buy them one hour of an engineer's time per month. They are going to need that time, because deploying software is hard, keeping software running is hard, and there are no SRE/DevOps economies of scale when every Tom, Dick, and Harry wants to run their own service on their own hardware. 2. Should expect to either deal with all the problems (stability and security) that come with regular auto-updates, or regularly getting pwned (because they aren't auto-updating, and because they are a juicy, high ROI target for bad actors). 3. All this stuff already exists for enterprises, and they aren't complaining in these HN threads, because their needs are being met by cloud providers (As are the needs of politicians. Because they generally don't need security, they need security theatre. As long as they can check the compliance checkbox, they are in the clear.) The people whose needs aren't met are the long-tail small-fry of journalists and hobbyists and their ilk. Who aren't enough of a market, and can't afford the money, and the time, because see points #1 and #2. Like, maybe the NYT can afford to have this set up, and set up well for their people, but they already have dedicated IT teams doing just that!