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0 pointsjwwest15y ago0 comments

Simplicity mostly. People want to be abstracted away from the nitty gritty details. Open ID failed because you couldn't explain it to your grandmother. But you can explain, "oh yeah, you can just click this button and login with your facebook account" Maybe this is just marketing.

If individuals don't run their own server and hold control of their own data, then who does? Whoever is running the node.

I know as nerds, we like to get our geek boners over cool projects that aren't mainstream, and fight the man and all, but people on the street could give a crap less. It means that these are stillborn ideas. Does this mean you should stop fighting the good fight? No, but I wouldn't hold my breath for critical mass.

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michaelchisari15y ago

people on the street could give a crap less. It means that these are stillborn ideas.

People don't need to know what an apache, django or drupal is in order to use a website based on it. It's a fallacy to think that the user has to be aware of what the underlying software is in order for that software to catch on.

__david__15y ago

> Open ID failed because you couldn't explain it to your grandmother.

Counter example: XMPP/Jabber. People who use Jabber can talk to each other with no problems. Including Google Talk, which is a huge use base. I regularly talk to friends on Google Talk with my account on my local server.

Another large counter example: SMTP. Put someone's address in your email program and it just works. Plenty of people run their own email server, despite them being notoriously complicated to set up.

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