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Open Source has done a lot for developers, but it's not very present on the actual surface of the web – the surface that people interact with, and that defines the Open Web. If developers are going to build up the open web, then it feels like this is something of an issue. To live up to one's potential as a developer, you can't just make your own choices in support of the open web, you have to facilitate other people. But I sure as hell don't want to run a service hosting people's content. It's a pain in the ass! And to top it off I have to pay for the privilege. Building up a whole company in support of a service is an option, but then I'm not a developer, certainly not an open source developer, I've instead become an "entrepreneur". I don't want to be an entrepreneur! Hell, that's even more of a pain in the ass than giving stuff away. I think we (open source developers) really need a platform to build on. An actual hosted platform. One where, as a developer, I can do interesting things that empower people, things that participate in the web as a whole, things other people can build on. I'd be willing to compromise SO MUCH if it means I can give people cool things without any of the incurred debt. As a strawman, maybe it could start as just a bit of static hosting, with easy discovery and management from in-browser code. Neocities has an API, for example (https://neocities.org/api), but you have to already use Neocities, so I couldn't publish an app that would be easily used by non-Neocities users. |