What are some downsides of software being federated?

cybercitizen4@lemm.ee to Asklemmy@lemmy.ml – 185 points –
122

You are viewing a single comment

As I understand it, there's a huge downside to federated software in the requirement to be Always Online. Lots of people have slow internet connections, or no connection at all, preventing them from accessing their software. Everyone should be able to use the programs/apps they have without regard to whether they are online or can get online.

This isnโ€™t really specific to federated software. The client can go offline but the server canโ€™t. Same applies to all centralized services. The only place this really applies is for decentralized (as in, no central points) systems, and those tend to have a lot of special sauce to make other people being offline less painful