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Local-first software (2019)

(www.inkandswitch.com)
863 points gasull | 4 comments | | HN request time: 0.274s | source
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DataDaoDe ◴[] No.44474024[source]
Yes a thousand percent! I'm working on this too. I'm sick of everyone trying to come up with a use case to get all my data in everyone's cloud so I have to pay a subscription fee to just make things work. I'm working on a fitness tracking app right now that will use the sublime model - just buy it, get updates for X years, sync with all your devices and use it forever. If you want updates after X years buy the newest version again. If its good enough as is - and that's the goal - just keep using it forever.

This is the model I want from 90% of the software out there, just give me a reasonable price to buy it, make the product good, and don't marry it to the cloud so much that its unusable w/out it.

There are also a lot of added benefits to this model in general beyond the data privacy (most are mentioned in the article), but not all the problems are solved here. This is a big space that still needs a lot of tooling to make things really easy going but the tech to do it is there.

Finally, the best part (IMHO) about local-first software is it brings back a much healthier incentive structure - you're not monetizing via ads or tracking users or maxing "engagement" - you're just building a product and getting paid for how good it is. To me it feels like its software that actually serves the user.

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charcircuit ◴[] No.44474277[source]
>you're not monetizing via ads

Yes, you are. You can find tons of purely local apps that monetize themselves with ads.

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thaumasiotes ◴[] No.44474770[source]
> You can find tons of purely local apps tha[t] monetize themselves with a[d]s.

How do they do that without hitting the internet?

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kid64 ◴[] No.44474794[source]
It's "local first", not "local only".
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1. thaumasiotes ◴[] No.44475163[source]
Sorry, a "purely local app" isn't "local only"?
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2. satvikpendem ◴[] No.44475843[source]
You can hardcode ads into each build that don't need Internet access.
3. kid64 ◴[] No.44476384[source]
Well if you're gonna get all accurate on me...
4. senko ◴[] No.44478509[source]
Not OP, but no.

IMHO, a fully local app is an app that can run locally with all the functionality, not that it's isolated from everything else.

Browser, email client (running locally on your device such as Mail.app, mutt, Outlook,...), Zed (text editor, runs locally but can check for updates... as can many other modern apps)...