> Even nerds do not want to run their own servers at this point. Even organizations building software full time do not want to run their own servers at this point.
I want this to be wrong.
Broadband providers make it very difficult to run your own server. Server construction is also in a very bad place as well, so this has spread from consumers to companies. There are just too many externalities from all of your vendors that are left to you to solve and that opens up space for a small number of companies who have people who work on those problems as a full time job, amortized out over X vendors and Y customers.
Until or unless that changes, a bunch of things I'd like to have happen won't happen. I should be able to pull files from my home computer when I'm stuck in an airport in Paris. That was the original promise, but we ended up with something else that has a lot of rent-seeking involved.
I think there are a few people working on the servers problem, probably nowhere near enough, but Broadband companies are also largely to blame for this. I'm not sure if Starlink or municipal broadband that is run like power and water, are ways out. But what we have isn't going to work, and consolidation is just going to get worse and worse until someone fixes it.
Groups like DappNode are doing good work here. You can buy a nuc from them with their os installed and then pick from a list of apps to install (owncloud/ eth nodes/ ipfs pinner/etc) and it handles the messyness of dyndns/openvpn/updates and all of that. Anyone can contribute docker packages with their markup for people to install new programs. I’m working on a funkwhale port so I can pull my music back locally and not digital ocean
I want this to be wrong.
Broadband providers make it very difficult to run your own server. Server construction is also in a very bad place as well, so this has spread from consumers to companies. There are just too many externalities from all of your vendors that are left to you to solve and that opens up space for a small number of companies who have people who work on those problems as a full time job, amortized out over X vendors and Y customers.
Until or unless that changes, a bunch of things I'd like to have happen won't happen. I should be able to pull files from my home computer when I'm stuck in an airport in Paris. That was the original promise, but we ended up with something else that has a lot of rent-seeking involved.
I think there are a few people working on the servers problem, probably nowhere near enough, but Broadband companies are also largely to blame for this. I'm not sure if Starlink or municipal broadband that is run like power and water, are ways out. But what we have isn't going to work, and consolidation is just going to get worse and worse until someone fixes it.