I'm saying I think it is important for free and open systems to be competitive with closed ecosystems, and to take advantage of the power of local systems.
I believe in a world where we - as developers - can build systems that have both maximum safety and maximum utility for users.
Currently there are two ways of distributing software that takes full advantage of the hardware users have:
1. AppStores, with centralized, permission based certification of developers in an attempt to make apps safe.
2. Binary downloads, relying on the operating system to make them safe for users.
I believe there should be a third way - a platform that sandboxes users from the worse things that are possible and breaks reliance on cloud platforms.
I think the web platform is the closest to achieving this. I think the security and privacy concerns are valid and well-founded, but I think the trade-offs in pushing permission-based systems are worthwhile.
Take this project as an example. The alternative to web-serial is to download a random executable binary and firmware written by who knows to your computer, with full read/write permissions. I think that is a riskier outcome for users than enabling this API.
I've been using the web since 1994, and it's always distributed applications. I mean what were WAIS and Veronica except attempts to build applications - and they were (vastly inferior) predecessors to the web.
The web is the most ugly, horrible, messy, fantastic and beautiful Commons in human history and I love it.
Yes, people will block it and Balkenize it and make it ugly and make terrible apps that run horribly.
But it is better than anything else we've built, so there is that.
