[freedomben]

I thought of this recently as well. SaaS and the modern "cloud" services really have radically changed the game in this regard. Even as recently as 10 years ago, the idea that you would willingly exfiltrate your most precious data to some company, where they would then essentially "own" it (in the sense that your data is in their database, and you don't have direct database access to it. You can only access it through what they provide an API for), would have been really difficult to fathom. We had nearly everything "on prem."

In many ways I think the change is good. It's certainly more convenient. But the radical shift in mindset is something I deeply regret. The SaaS-ification of everything, where the user has zero control over anything (even installation of updates) has had a majorly negative impact on my life. I loathe the fact that every few days, something important to my workflow/routine is probably going to break in some way from a CI/CD deploy that contained a bug, and I'll be stuck until they patch it. And of course there are times when you are mid-something, and the app starts 500ing and you click refresh, and congratulations! You're the first user of the massive UI overhaul that you didn't want or need, so now you get to re-learn how to use the app!

As a dev I love SaaS. It's so wonderfully convenient for me! As a user, I hate it.