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That would seem to be a fairly deep architectural flaw. Namely, that (roughly speaking) all users of the basecamp server experience performance and reliability

by dasht 17y ago

That would seem to be a fairly deep architectural flaw. Namely, that (roughly speaking) all users of the basecamp server experience performance and reliability roughly equal to that of those users experiencing the worst performance and reliability at any given moment. The guys who depend on the service for $2^N value per day are in the same boat as those who depend on it as those who depend on it for $2^(N-K) value. Each group that depends on it for $2^N value CAN NOT differentiate themselves, reliability, from their competitors who also rely on it for $2^N value. That's old news, really. It's well known that that's a problem with SaS, centralization, and applications without competition. It's well known that it would be fixed by letting basecamp users install and run the system on servers under their own control with full software freedom over the thing (trading, probably, a little bit less reliability for each customer against faster recoveries for most and no "global outages" and the ability to invest in hardening the infrastructure for a competitive advantage).... it's just interesting to see those theoretical defects confirmed in practice.

zefhous 17y ago
That doesn't really fix the issue though... Sure, you won't have "global outages," but I would bet that the overall amount of downtime would be significantly larger when installed on private servers and not centralized and managed by 37signals. I doubt that recoveries would be faster anyway.
- dasht 17y ago
  Recoveries would (likely, for now - less likely a few years from now) be more often necessary and slower for most users all else being equal, but it's not that simple. First, if users have software freedom and are running the system on servers under their own control, they are free to spend as much as they like, exactly how they like, to improve reliability. That's the main point of $2^N analysis: if Alice's Transnational Inc. stands to lose up to $500K on a given day if the service is out, she can buy insurance in terms of back-up servers (and her back-up servers only need to serve her users, not every user of the software, anywhere). Alice is not limited to the same QoS as Bob's Main St. Paint Store. 37signals has to optimize its present and future profitability - not Alice's value received. There's a misalignment of incentives, there. Second, if the software were free and generally deployed in a distributed, decentralized fashion, it's architecture could evolve to be more of a P2P system such that many different servers would all have to go down at once to cause more than a slight inconvenience and performance degradation.

by dasht 17y ago

zefhous 17y ago

That doesn't really fix the issue though... Sure, you won't have "global outages," but I would bet that the overall amount of downtime would be significantly larger when installed on private servers and not centralized and managed by 37signals. I doubt that recoveries would be faster anyway.

dasht 17y ago
Recoveries would (likely, for now - less likely a few years from now) be more often necessary and slower for most users all else being equal, but it's not that simple. First, if users have software freedom and are running the system on servers under their own control, they are free to spend as much as they like, exactly how they like, to improve reliability. That's the main point of $2^N analysis: if Alice's Transnational Inc. stands to lose up to $500K on a given day if the service is out, she can buy insurance in terms of back-up servers (and her back-up servers only need to serve her users, not every user of the software, anywhere). Alice is not limited to the same QoS as Bob's Main St. Paint Store. 37signals has to optimize its present and future profitability - not Alice's value received. There's a misalignment of incentives, there. Second, if the software were free and generally deployed in a distributed, decentralized fashion, it's architecture could evolve to be more of a P2P system such that many different servers would all have to go down at once to cause more than a slight inconvenience and performance degradation.