I don't think "command line hard" is the worst part of self-hosting.
I've seen a lot of people saying things that amount to "those tech nerds need to understand that nobody wants to use the command line!", but I don't actually think that's the hardest part of self-hosting today. I mean, even with a really slick GUI like ASUSTOR NASes provide, getting a reliable, non-NATed connection, with an SSL certificate, some kind of basic DDOS protection, backups, and working outgoing email (ugh), is a huge pain in the ass.
Am I wrong? Would a Sandstorm-like GUI for deploying Docker images solve all of our problems? What can we do to reshape the network such that people can more easily run their own stuff?
You are viewing a single comment
The sad truth is that non-techy types will never want to host something themselves unless there’s a reason why doing so is better. I’m not just talking about better the way you and I think of better, either. Nobody really cares about privacy or security or ownership of data. A lot of people like to say those things matter but until it’s as easy to host your own email as signing up for gmail, and doing so provides all the fringe benefits you get with Google, you’re not going to get completely non-technical people self hosting.
You’re right, though. As part of this, there needs to be a way to have an all-in-one package that defaults to enabling the things you’re talking about. There are a lot of plug-n-play methods of self hosting any number of things, but the hard part of hosting is doing it right and securely.
Not even techy types want it. It's not a coincidence that SaaS offerings are viable in enterprise contexts. Why build a shit ton of knowledge and drag yourself through the mud of learning tons of different tools if you can as well pay someone who already has all that knowledge. Then you can use the free mental capacity to solve your actual problems.
The only reasons to self host are "paranoia" (no matter if warranted or not) and - which is the important thing for us self-hosters here - curiosity (or rather the drive to learn shit). We basically do it for the sake of doing it.
That’s true. Though I would sub paranoia with control.
I self host things because I want control. I want to be in control of when it gets updates and goes down. I want to be in control of how to fix it when it breaks. I want to be in control of my account and whether it’s backed up etc.
I thought of that as well but concluded that this is also some kind of paranoia. The SaaS providers promise you availability, security etc, but we don't believe them and want that in our own hands. So IMO we only want to be in control, because we fear we could suddenly lose access or get betrayed. Which is a specific manifestation of paronia.
Fair point.