I'm still not convinced that would have helped maintain a decentralized web. For one thing, such tools existed very early on. I seem to recall WYSIWYG HTML editors with integrated FTP support being common. Many ISPs also included web hosting, which would have taken care of the web server and DNS part. While such a setup wasn't decentralized, it was certainly less centralized than the web today. I simply think the number of people who are interested in typing more than a paragraph or two at a time is quite limited. In that case, the effort is minimal and the tools required to support it can be quite simple (e.g. there is very little need to deal with formatting, creating links to other pages, etc.).
> Imagine if instead of using a web browser, consuming web content consisted of a command-line tool to download files from a server, and then opening them up separately in other tools to view them.
That pretty much reminds me of Gopher. And you're right. Just look at how quickly the web took over.
>> Hosting has always been easy to find, but it is harder to find something stable across time. > Sure, but I think those problems would've been solved over time. We see them as difficult today because we always relied on large companies to solve them for us.
In a sense, you're right. Self-hosting wasn't an option for many people in the early days since they had ephemeral dial-up connections. So you had to rely upon someone else, which meant that there was a good chance you would have to "move" (e.g. changing ISPs in the ISP provided web hosting, or simply changing web hosting providers). Aside from reliability, security, dynamic IPs, and cranky ISPs, there are no barriers to self-hosting today. Most of those can be overcome with existing software. I simply don't think there is much demand for such software these days, which is why it is uncommon.
> But maybe all of this is wishful thinking by a jaded mind. :)
There is nothing wrong with hopeful thinking. Your suggestions are even valuable in the current context since there are people who are interested in building and hosting webpages in a decentralized manner. While a simple tool would revolutionize the lives for those people, I'm going to stick by my doubts about it revolutionizing the web.
