[cube00]

There's something so innocent about the early days when even Microsoft thought we'd be running Personal Web Servers and hosting our own websites in a peer-to-peer fashion.

Although cynically, in 1996 Microsoft would probably tell you anything you wanted to hear if it got you using Internet Explorer.

The Personal Web Server is ideal for intranets, homes, schools, small business workgroups and anyone who wants to set up a personal Web server.

https://news.microsoft.com/source/1996/10/24/microsoft-annou...

[eddythompson80]

I always held the belief that we (as programmers and industry) failed the initial premise of the "distributed internet". On one hand, the core of the internet (whether its arpanet or even tcp/ip) was designed to be fully distributed, trustless, selfhostable, etc. The idea that you if you want an email you do a `pkg_add email`, want a file server, `pkg_add file-server`, want remote access, `pkg_add openssh` and you're done. But what we have today is [1].

Securing all that got very technical and nuanced with hundreds of complex scenarios and tools and protocols. Tech companies raced to produce services the mass public can use, hiring hordes of very smart, expensive and technical developers to develop and secure, and they still get it wrong frequently. While the FOSS community adopted the "get good or gtfo" approach as in [1].

The average person has no chance. That's why closed wall-gardened platforms like iOS and Android are winning.

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40SnEd1RWUU