The future of all of our devices having extremely fast connections existing in a world of amazing, free, peer-to-peer applications still seems so far away.
BTW just today I was thinking about IPv6 VPNs. Seems like a good way to extend one's Intranet of Things to one's mobile devices.
The challenge is how do we make it economically viable for both the producer of the technology and the end user to keep it useful and local, while also making it a good user experience?
The thing about cloud-based services is that they leverage scale well, making many things cheaper than they ever could be locally unless you buy a device and use it for long time AND fixes can be rolled out quickly with no lagging install base to cause problems or bad user experiences.
I really do want to have my privacy and keep my data safe but I also recognize that's hard to do without higher cost or more hassle (or both).
- Reasonable cost
- Availability
- Ease of use, especially setup
- Eye candy
- Social connections
If you can check all of those for an FOSS solution, then I think you are home. Unfortunately most of the points are still not available for average Joe users with FOSS.
Add to that, most people will give you a blank look when you start discussing how companies own your data, and even those who understand just shrug and go the route of least resistance.
We have a long way to go with all of the above points before we need megaclouds with asic and huge data *to move the state of art forward.
All of the above be solved without creating a new unicorn startup.
Our devices have incredible amount of computing power now - a great untapped potential that we could use for something else than for supporting unnecessary indirection layers.