How exactly are “communities offering services” a different thing than “hosted software”?
It’s a lot easier to ask Matt down the street to customize or add a feature than it is to ask Google, FB, etc.
Case in point: I’ve run my own email server since 2013 or so. I’ve got friends and family that use it. One of my friends asked if there was any way to setup rules to filter emails and such. I was like “yep” and added on Sieve to Dovecot and setup the webmail (Roundcube at the time) with the Sieve plugin.
Granted, that’s a pretty basic feature that pretty much all commercial email providers offer, but the point is someone asked for it and I made it happen for them.
How exactly are “communities offering services” a different thing than “hosted software”?
I think what they’re saying is that the ideal wouldn’t be to force everyone to host their own, but rather for the people who want to run stuff to offer them to their friends and family.
Kinda like how your mechanic neighbor sometimes helps you do shit on your car: one person shares a skill they have, and the other person also benefits. And then later your neighbor will ask you to babysit their kids, and shit.
Basically: a very very goofy way of saying “Hey! Do nice things for your friends and family, because that’s kinda how life used to work.”
But:
How exactly are “communities offering services” a different thing than “hosted software”?
Trust.
I trust my brother more than Google. Same with Jim down the street.
I trust my circle of acquaintances more than Google (et al) , especially since Google (et al) have demonstrated, repeatedly, to be untrustworthy.
In fact, they’ve demonstrated they are outright adversarial to me and mine.
It’s a lot easier to ask Matt down the street to customize or add a feature than it is to ask Google, FB, etc.
Case in point: I’ve run my own email server since 2013 or so. I’ve got friends and family that use it. One of my friends asked if there was any way to setup rules to filter emails and such. I was like “yep” and added on Sieve to Dovecot and setup the webmail (Roundcube at the time) with the Sieve plugin.
Granted, that’s a pretty basic feature that pretty much all commercial email providers offer, but the point is someone asked for it and I made it happen for them.
I think what they’re saying is that the ideal wouldn’t be to force everyone to host their own, but rather for the people who want to run stuff to offer them to their friends and family.
Kinda like how your mechanic neighbor sometimes helps you do shit on your car: one person shares a skill they have, and the other person also benefits. And then later your neighbor will ask you to babysit their kids, and shit.
Basically: a very very goofy way of saying “Hey! Do nice things for your friends and family, because that’s kinda how life used to work.”