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by KronisLV 991 days ago
> Software that doesn't run on your computer doesn't necessarily need to be in your control, right? As long as the clients are free.

I really liked the idea of Service as a Software Substitute (SaaSS): https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-s...

It's gotten to the point where most cloud services are no longer managed instances of open source or even compatible software.

You could take a managed cloud PostgreSQL instance and migrate to something self-hosted if the prices were to hike up or something else happened that would necessitate it.

But how many of the cloud services in your stack does that apply to? Geocoding or routing? Push notifications and messaging? Payment gateways? Authentication and authorization solutions? File storage solutions? Web Application Firewalls?
1 comments
loxdalen 991 days ago
Thank you, that was an enlightening text, made me understand better GNUs view of SaaS.

There are many cases where running a self hosted version is not feasible, which are also mentioned in the text. Social media and other services where the information is an important part of the service or software that can not be run on my own machine due to limits in my hardware. But outsourcing simple calculations that can be done locally is a bad thing I agree.

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KronisLV 990 days ago
> Social media and other services where the information is an important part of the service or software that can not be run on my own machine due to limits in my hardware.

I mean, fediverse sites like Mastodon or Lemmy, or even something like PeerTube show that it's possible to at least run instances of a larger federated service, albeit the user experience could be better (the average person asking "What do you mean, I have to pick a server to join?").

Admittedly, video hosting is the hardest due to space and bandwidth requirements, though perhaps the real reason why none of these platforms see real widespread success is the network effect - most people already are pretty comfortably in popular walled gardens and don't feel like they want to switch to anything else.

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