The goal is banishing any and all questions of what to download, what desktop, what apps, packaging formats, software stores, user accounts, backing up, all of it: run the browser locally, sync the data – and only the data – to the cloud.
That is not really popular in the open source world. Who finances the cloud, is it open, who can read or sell your data?
I would argue it goes against the desires of the open source world.
ChromeOS is a product designed to suck people further in to the Google ecosystem. All its limitations, like basically being a web browser with access to the Android Play store, are built around that. The simplicity of not having to worry about anything else is how Google sells that as a benefit of their platform to the masses.
I don't know any of my fellow nerds who want a ChromeOS kind of experience, so why would any of us dedicate our free time to making one?
"I don't know any of my fellow nerds who want a ChromeOS kind of experience, so why would any of us dedicate our free time to making one?"
Interesting perspective. Per the article, this is a method of circumventing the W10 issue coming up.. I would guess that you have family members or friends that might be caught up in that? Even ones that are not nerds?
I think the idea pairing would be with with a very open cloud-app based solution. Something like Sandstorm where you can install your own cloud apps and have them available via the web on all your devices.
I really with Mozilla would get in this game. For most apps for most people, hosted PWAs make the most sense. But right now we're either stuck with local native software or only web apps from closed providers.
It would probably make sense to build an end-to-end encrypted sync library using S3 for storage. Then users can choose which cloud to use, or self-host.
That is not really popular in the open source world. Who finances the cloud, is it open, who can read or sell your data?