This article is originally posted on https://tomavelev.com/blog/Levels+of+Independence+in+Software
Independence is the reason we have so many variations of all kinds of stuff. To fight the way the Western Game is played – there is a need to have – legal, physical, software, financial, intellectual even mental independence of the tools and activities – technology, software product, framework, book, song, dance and whatever. The things that need independence are – programming languages (remember the fight between Oracle and Google over Java in Android), Internet Browser Independence (that creates support hell for developers), Separate implementations of Specifications and Standards, Application Software (so the Big Companies could lock the businesses to their Platforms), Lockdown of the features to their hardware (Apple), Server Hardware and Software an so on.
The least independent and with minimal number of features are the Platforms that you have USER account in – social medias, unified places for posts, podcasts and videos – Medium, LinkedIn, Vimeo, YouTube, WordPress – if set upped directly on WordPress.com, Shopify, Wix.com and many more. I’ve seen many MLM Businesses also to use custom platforms with similar approach. Having a provider so you don’t care about hardware and software gives you possibility to focus on the people side – psychology, marketing, advertising and more – where the actual money are. But also this gives you less possibilities for customizations, integrations, optimizations and also comes with more expensive prices for every single thing – even for things that are potentially free if you have the knowledge and experience – to set them up yourself.
The next variation is – you to manage the Software side and let hosting and cloud providers to manage the hardware. This is very popular option. The software is probably the most customizable part and if you focus on it, you’ll save time and energy on the iron part. So now you’ll need to work on – bringing money and the software side.
Because of legal issues and because of having the hands untied to do whatever the companies want – every big corporation has created their own programming languages, operating systems, Internet Browsers, Application Servers, Programming Frameworks and Libraries. Because of the compatibility issues over the years – big part of the software is Standardized, many frameworks are open sourced – so to bring-in more developers to give feedback and improve them.
Sometimes this layer goes beyond the Application Layer. Google for example has DNS servers and HTTP – SSL provider services. Having also the hardware in their hangar – minimizes the travel time of the bytes around the Internet.
The ultimate independency is to have your own hardware and if the software requires – even specialized chips – created in-house to run the software that users consume. This comes with the price to manage the server computers – electricity, duplication of data and backups, high bandwidth Internet connection – that the Big Companies – even go that deep – creating their own fiber networks. To archive speed – they also create data centers around the world, because it takes time for the bytes to travel around the world – even that they use the speed of light. But the result is happy users – instantly fast software, endless copies of the data that they use for endless types of software and services.
All the independence is important especially for Conspiracy Theory individuals and whistleblowers and unlawful actors. I consider - screaming for free speech around the Internet - on platforms that are not yours a little bit like Don Quijote - fighting the windmills. The Big Sites/Platforms/Services are proprietary and could censor whatever they want - like the television, radio, the governments and so on. If someone is so good - high in standards, moral and more - they must set up all the above themselves and also play the people game. Yes, this is many times impossible task. That's why the world is in the situation that it is today.
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