35 lines
2.2 KiB
Markdown
35 lines
2.2 KiB
Markdown
# Rethinking Backend Ownership
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## Motivation
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Modern applications are powered by backends that run on infrastructure and systems controlled by centralized entities. Whether it's social platforms, collaboration tools, or data-driven apps, the backend is almost always a black box — hosted, maintained, and operated by someone else.
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This has profound implications:
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- **Loss of autonomy:** Users are locked out of the logic, rules, and data structures that govern their digital experience.
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- **Opaque control:** Application behavior can change without the user’s consent — and often without visibility.
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- **Vendor lock-in:** Switching providers or migrating data is often non-trivial, risky, or impossible.
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- **Security and privacy risks:** Centralized backends present single points of failure and attack.
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In this model, users are not participants in their computing environment — they are clients of someone else's backend.
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## The Vision
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The purpose of this initiative is to invert that dynamic. We aim to establish a paradigm where users and organizations **own and control their own backend logic and data**, without sacrificing connectivity, collaboration, or scalability.
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This means:
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- **Local authority:** Each user or organization should have full control over how their backend behaves — what code runs, what data is stored, and who can access it.
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- **Portable and interoperable:** Ownership must not mean isolation. User-owned backends should be able to interact with one another on equal footing.
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- **Transparent logic:** Application behavior should be visible, inspectable, and modifiable by the user.
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- **Delegation, not dependence:** Users should be able to cooperate and interact by delegating execution to each other — not by relying on a central server.
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## What We Stand For
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- **Agency:** You control your digital environment.
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- **Decentralization:** No central chokepoint for computation or data.
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- **Modularity:** Users compose their backend behavior, not inherit it from a monolith.
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- **Resilience:** Systems should degrade gracefully, fail independently, and recover without central orchestration.
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This is about building a more equitable and open computing model — one where the backend serves you, not the other way around.
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